Sounds like a mouthful to us Anglo Saxons but ‘599 GTB Fiorano’ makes a lot of sense to our Italian cousins. The easy part is 599. This is the size of the engine minus the last 9cc. GTB stands for Gran Turismo Berlinetta which gives us a clue to the body styling i.e. it’s a Coupe. And finally Fiorano is the handy little ribbon of tarmac just outside of Maranello which is great for pushing Enzo’s finest to their limits. Maranello must be a great place to live! The 599 has a lot to live up to though. Built as a replacement for the 575 Maranello it had to look good and from an engineering point of view it had to move the game on. Well Pininfarina did the styling under the capable hands of Frank Stephenson who’s cv includes having a hand in the New Mini, X5, F430, Maser Quattroporte, 612 Scaglietti and pretty little new Fiat 500. He then went on to Alfa to replace our friend Wolfgang Egger who then went on to Audi. There must be something in the wine in Northern Italy to produce such an abundant crop of styling gurus! Is the 599 beautiful? Not in a pretty way perhaps but in a dramatic way it succeeds. It certainly looks like a Ferrari. And the mechanical bits? If speed is the benchmark (and it invariably is) then a 0-60 time of 3.5 seconds recorded by Evo Magazine suggests that the boys with the spanners and computers at Maranello have been putting in some overtime. Some tests have recorded even closer to 3 seconds for the same sprint which places the 599 way near the top of the league for high-performance exotics. Want to buy one? Well give us a call on ++44 (0)1474 854490 because we know of a cancelled order for a 599 that is going to be ready towards the end of 2008 and there’s still time to change the spec!
The Car Spy 