Ferrari Enzo

Ferrari Enzo - Ferrari slashed the promised test time because the F1 team needed the track, and the only person allowed behind the Enzo's wheel was Ferrari's own test driver who, though fast, was unfamiliar with our procedures and our test gear, which, anyway, was periodically fritzing out. The test gear spit out a jumbled mess of numbers that had to be sorted back home.

See, Ferrari doesn't lend out Enzos for magazine tests. As with the F40 and F50, we had to track down an owner in the U.S., someone who would let us drive an Enzo around without putting it through the pricey punishment of actual testing. That's when something good really did happen. We met Bob Rapp.

So do a lot of other people with the cash to afford an Enzo, so Rapp submitted the requisite application to Ferrari and promptly sold his entire car collection. After some haggling and a few stressful cell-phone calls, his Enzo landed at Foreign Cars Italia in Greensboro, North Carolina, in March, painted in Ferrari "fly yellow" with caramel-colored seats and a set of fitted Ferrari luggage. Sure enough, everyone wanted to see it.

This time, Ferrari is exchanging greenbacks for the Enzo with no apparent strings attached. Ferrari would not actively help us find a car, but officials did promise not to interfere (and they did apologize graciously and profusely for that April day at Fiorano). Chicago-area Ferrari dealer Rick Mancuso made some calls and discovered a willing Rapp. “I like making people happy,” Rapp explains with a shrug.

Once in Greensboro, we giddily crooked a finger under the Enzo’s hidden door latch and lifted the forward-hinged, upward-swinging panel. Inside, the charcoal-hued cave of bare carbon fiber is all business. Sparse rubber floormats are the only covering over the glistening cured-resin skin of the carbon-fiber tub.

Turn the Ferrari Red key, and push the Ferrari Red start button. From behind, the harmonic cadence of 12 pistons fed by 48 valves is packed into the whistling suck of the carbon-fiber-shrouded intake and the sonorous throb from the quad tailpipes. “The Sound” swirls up your eardrums and does shiatsu on the pleasure centers of the brain.

The Enzo’s six-speed is the most refined of the paddle-controlled breed. The changes are quick and quiet, the loss of momentum is brief, and the jerky clutch engagement has been buttered up into a gentle shove. There is no auto mode; shifting is via the carbon-fiber paddles only, but they can be tapped from most points on the steering wheel. The V-12 is exceptionally content puttering at school-zone pace, the revs sliding up and down without temperamental surges or uncouth stumbles.

The luxury of power steering and brakes as well as other refinements helped inflate the Enzo’s weight. At 3262 pounds fully tanked, the Enzo outweighs a McLaren F1 by 683 pounds; its predecessor, the F50, by 182 pounds; and a Chevrolet Corvette Z06 by 81 pounds.

Trouble is, turns come rapid fire at this track, many of them just over blind rises and with fast-changing cambers and barf-bag drops. The Enzo pulls 1.05 g on VIR’s skidpad (also stickier than its forebears and any other current production car we’ve tested) but plows into tight corners and can snap abruptly to oversteer at the exit by the ticklish electronic throttle and the explosive power it produces. Balancing the Enzo is a challenge; it reserves its best behavior for the talented and attentive.

On the trip back from the track, Rapp complained that the Enzo’s special Shell Helix 10W-60 synthetic oil, of which the V-12 requires 12.2 quarts, runs him $60 per quart. If a $732 oil change sounds criminal, consider that the factory won’t warrant the engine if you don’t use the oil and estimates the replacement bill at $200,000.