The Ferrari F40 was produced to mark the 40th anniversary of Enzo Ferrari's debut into the automotive scene. From the start, this car was designed to be the worlds fastest and to be every inch a race car on the street. In effect, the F40 was a contemporary Group B racer dressed up in road going clothes. Dressed being the operative word as what lurked beneath gave many men fantasies few women could surpass..:) Pininfarina (the designer) had cooperated with the Ferrari factory body engineers and aerodynamicists to perfect what rapidly proved itself to be by far the most exciting super car built until that time, and one which for sheer adrenalin excitement left the altogether better-finished and far more sophisticated Porsche 959 somewhat overshadowed. Although only 450 were to be produced, many more were needed to fulfil clamorous demand. The chassis was a steel frame (not unitary pressed panels) which was rare for a mass produced high performance vehicle as race cars use this construction since it is time consuming and expensive to manufacture. The body panels which you can see are made from moulded carbon fibre bonded structurally to the steel frame and remember all this was built back in 1987! Kind of makes you think how pathetic the 90's have been in terms of high performance cars even including the F50 which is a pork chop compared to the F40. The weight of the F40 was a meagre 1110kg which gives it the power to weight ratio of a guided missile. But with this lack of weight (which is good mind you!) traction was going to be a problem. So a 6 speed ZF gearbox with twin plate clutch was slapped behind the engine to transfer the power to the wheels, and what wheels they are! 17 inch by-get this-13 inch wide (315/35 for all you metric heads!) Pirelli P700 tyres were needed to get the power to the ground. If you think this is overkill for a production car then you obviously haven't heard about the engine!
The powerplant in the back of this monster was an all alloy quad cam 32 valve 'baby' 90o V8 displacing only 2936c or 2.9 litres. But its what's hanging onto the heads that counts in this car! Twin Japanese IHI turbochargers were specified to push 20+ psi boost into the beautifully designed 8 runner plenum. Weber/Marelli management (injection,ignition and active boost control) which was similar to Formula 1 cars and 2 thick air-to-air intercoolers made sure the engine was tractable and powerful at the same time. Peak power of 478bhp was achieved at 7000rpm which gave it eyeball popping 0-100 km/hr times of 3.9 seconds and a heart arresting top speed of 355 km/hr ! To help keep this thing on the road, the engineers deployed a adjustable suspension with hydraulically actuated shock absorbers. The computer would automatically drop the car 20mm at high speed to achieve optimum aerodynamic form and raise it 20mm for practical manoeuvring at low speeds for situations such as parking. This is one car which was uncompromising in it's main function-race car/street legal. Although the quality of panel fit was dubious, the F40 is without a shadow of a doubt the best Ferrari ever made and quite possibly the best car ever.