Supercar

Description

The F40 was the last Ferrari road car to be approved by Enzo Ferrari, prior to his passing. Like its predecessor, the 288 GTO, the F40 was engineered and developed by Nicola Materazzi and upon its launch in 1988, was Ferrari’s flagship model, and its most expensive car to date. The creation of the F40’s shape was supervised by Pininfarina styling legend Aldo Brovarone, but was essentially the work of Pietro Camardella. It has become iconic as the genesis of the line of Ferraris designed to redefine the benchmarks of supercar performance. Like the 288 GTO before it, the F40 nestled a quad-cam, twin-turbocharged and intercooled V8, driving only the rear wheels via a five-speed transaxle. Despite common opinion, there were Australian-delivered F40s, and this is one of them.

Whilst essentially a road car, the F40 gave little to creature comfort other than feeble air-con; no radio, glovebox, interior door handles, no leather or carpet and the first cars had sliding lexan plastic windows, although later cars were given glass.

Again via the use of extensive composites as the 288 did, it was a light car but the F40 went further with aerodynamic development, featuring a near flat undertray under the radiator, front section and the cabin, and another that terminated in rear diffusers, but left an unsealed engine bay. The F40 is unquestionably one of Ferrari’s most famous cars, and has doubtless lead to the evolution of Ferrari cars as we know them today.