*Performance:
- Acceleration 0 to 60: 3.0 sec
- Braking 60 to 0: 106 feet
- Quarter Mile: 10.9 sec
- Slalom: 74.9 mph
- Skidpad: 1.01 g
Ferrari makes a cool product. Everyone knows this. The “two-seater” sports car is synonymous with Ferrari and this new Spider iteration of the superb 458 Italia is no exception. Yes it has two seats and two doors, but what it doesn’t have (unlike the McLaren MP4-12C) is two turbo-chargers in it’s engine. For the rest of this posting I shall explain why this makes the Ferrari so compelling.
First of all, in case you haven’t noticed, most (if not pretty much all) high-end car makers like BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Bentley, Jaguar, and even Cadillac are switching from naturally aspirated engines to either supercharged or twin-turbocharged engines for better power-increases without sacrifices in fuel economy. Here’s the problem with that: inconsistent power band.
Take this Ferrari 458 for example. Because it has a naturally aspirated engine with tremendous red-line power (9000 rpm) it is very predictable and dynamic. The McLaren, no matter how good its twin-turbo system is, has the ever-so-slight tendency to produce turbo-lag, which makes the car handle a bit numb. In other words, it may put down similar performance to the Ferrari, perhaps even slightly better, but it leaves the driver wanting for involvement in the driving experience. McLaren, and several other brands mentioned above, have followed down this path of calculating and programming engine ECUs and digital throttle bodies for the turbos to produce the best statistics possible. However, there is more to the track driving experience than just making a car put down numbers, it’s all about how it puts down those numbers. Driving passion is fueled by driver involvement, not by computers that do all the work.
