Veloce Raptor

http://jalopnik.com/#!5760248/how-ferrari-spins

BHunt 72T

Good read. Interesting take. I wonder how often that happens with other Makes?

DCP

Brave writer. I do like his work. Hope that he continues working.

I was at a party last year with a fellow who works for a Ferrari dealer. He said that dealing with the factory was like dealing with the mafia. Slight exaggeration, no doubt, but pretty funny.

CWhaley

In the end nothing has changed sense the early days at Maranello. Enzo would not sell you are car just because he did not like your tie!

67King

It is as old as automotive journalism. Never heard the control freak thing from anyone before, but hopped up media cars at least used to be the norm. Jim Wangers of Pontiac caught crap for years, and insisted the 64 GTO that turned a 12.9 was representative for about 40 years. He recently fessed up that it was a hopped up 421, not a bone stock 389. That's just one pretty famous example, but the behavior is pretty standard.

Makes me wonder what Nissan did to the GT-R that is bigger, heavier, less powerful, and has a higher CG than the likes of the GT2 and ZR1, yet allegedly beat both cars by seconds on the 'Ring (both Porsche and GM bought them, tested them, and couldn't get the cars within 10 seconds of Nissan's claimed time).

Circuit Motorsports

Nothing new.

GM and Ford have done '2-4 day tests' at VIR right before the Car and Driver Lightning lap....

Charles A. Toupin

I really like Chris Harris. He use to write for GT Porsche (or GT purely Porsche, something like that).



c.

924RACR

Yeah, only that's for actual vehicle development - not tuning press cars...

2BWise

Hey, aren't you supposed to be up north!

Oh yeah you don't have any snow either.

But, yeah, what he said

Coochas

Wow - Chris Harris would not have any reason to BS so I'm guessing there's a lot of truth to what he's saying.

My favorite part:

ritzblitz

Awesome article. I always love reading Chris Harris.

bgiere

As long as the Ferrari posers 'think" they have the superior car I guess the factory is happy...Deceptive by any stretch.

DCP

From Jalopnik. Pretty funny.

Sterling Doc

I wonder how much Porsche stoops to this. I did read one review that they commented on how Porsche was comfortable enough to have just one Turbo at an event going launch controlled run after run, where Nissan had two GTR's, and despite limited runs, they put them into limp mode. This may be why Nissan took launch control out of the GTR after the first year.

It is sad to see this becoming the norm, though it seems Ferrari takes it to new heights.

shustermeister

Good for Chris Harris! It takes some guts to post a story like that, even if it could affect his career. When manufacturers use the auto media to advertise their cars, we all hope that the test cars are a reasonable facsimile of the ones available to customers. Perhaps if the media were to run all its tests with a factory-supplied car next to a customer-owned car, as a rule, the factories would cut this crap out.