Meh, I say, meh! The Enzo is one ugly ass car, IMHO. As far as high performance cars go, Ferrari’s are “belly buttons” (i.e. everybody has one). The Enzo, IMHO, is probably one of the ugliest cars Ferrari has ever built. A buddy of mine once considered buying a Ferrari (mind you, a car like that would be a total waste on him, since he’s got no idea of how to drive) and decided against it after a test drive. According to him the interior was cheap and shoddy looking and the car was uncomfortable. (He claimed that the interior was no different than the Fiat he owned at one time.)
I really don’t get the appeal of Ferraris (or most Italian sports cars in general) since you need to own two of them: One to drive, one to keep in the shop. Some of them look nice, but what’s the point of a car that constantly needs work? To be enjoyed, a car must be driven and a car that is a maintence whore, like a Ferrari is, can’t be driven all that much.
In terms of automotive benchmarks, I really doubt that the Enzo will ever amount to much at all. It didn’t break new ground in any areas that I’m aware of. The only reason people pay any attention to it is because it’s got “Ferrari” in the name. Were I to build a car identical to it, only under my name, nobody’d give a shit. (Well, besides Ferrari’s lawyers, that is.)
But are you sure you’re up to date with your rant about reliability? I was under the impression that Ferraris and other Italian exotics are now actually pretty reliable, and don’t need to spend half of their life in the shop.
They are also, apparently, a lot more driver-friendly than they used to be. Part of this, i guess, comes from the newer gear-shift mechanisms. Time was, you needed a powerlifter’s left leg to work the clutch, and couldn’t put the car into second until the gearbox warmed up (u-shaped first-to-third changes were common); i believe none of that is true anymore.
I might be mistaken, but I’ve not heard anything about their reliability reaching that of say, a Lexus, (Lamborghini might be an exception, since they’re owned by VW now).
No less than an automotive authority than Jay Leno depises the new Ferraris because of things like the computer controlled paddle shifters and the like. At one time you had to have skill to drive a Ferrari at even highway speeds, now, even your granny can handle one. Where’s the fun in that?
First, Ferraris were bad because of all their old idiosyncrasies, the things that made them different from other cars, and a unique experience to own.
Now, Ferraris suck because they have engineered out those idiosyncrasies.
Do you see the inconsistency here?
Also:
You realize, i assume, that there’s a lot of middle ground between traditional Italian exoticar levels of reliability, on the one hand, and Lexus levels, on the other? Just because Ferraris aren’t yet as reliable as a Lexus doesn’t mean they haven’t improved considerably.
There’s no inconsistency on my part. If I were going to plunk down several kilobucks for a car, I’d want to be able to drive it, not have it in the shop constantly. It’s entirely possible to have a car that has unique characteristics, that isn’t a maintience hog. Porsche has done it for years.
Yeah, but isn’t that like saying having your testicles crushed by one elephant isn’t nearly as painful as having them crushed by two elephants?
Really? I think maybe you will want to revisit the topic of this thread and revise accordingly, given that the whole point of this thread disproves your point.
This is what I was thinking. My plain ol’ off-the-shelf auto insurance policy states in the fine print that the insurer can deny my claim under that policy if I damage my car in a “race or speed test,” but that’s an ordinary auto policy for our ordinary Chevy. I would imagine that for a special car such as this, at an event such as this, the owner would have to negotiate some sort of special policy with the insurer, since a claim under an ordinary auto policy would probably be denied under the “no race or speed test” exclusion. But one-day special-event coverage is available for a variety of things, and this could be one of them.
Of course, if this was a set-up publicity stunt and the accident was planned, then a claim under even that special, separately negotiated coverage would be denied–no form of insurance is designed to cover intentional losses. But at any rate, I don’t think ordinary everyday insurance coverage, like we all have on our regular cars, would even be considered here.
I don’t want to buy into your particular debate, but this thread proves fuck all. It just consists of a bunch of people saying that the guy can’t drive over and over and over and over till you all believe it, despite the actual evidence one way or the other being close to zip.
Look. He said that Ferraris are now so easy to drive that Granny can do it. If that were the case, why are we discussing how someone totaled one? The evidence that this guy couldn’t drive one is in a few thousand pieces right now. How much more evidence do you need?
Man, this thread brings out the illogic in people.
Firstly, several people have chipped in to say the frickin’ thing is neither totalled, nor in a thousand pieces. Why the hysterics?
Secondly, the guy was gorram track driving ie by definition going faster than is strictly sensible. Everybody crashes under those conditions sooner or later. As I said earlier, Senna did it, The Stig did it, etc etc. Are they all bad drivers? I don’t know this Eddie guy from Father Christmas, but do you know that he makes a habit of doing this? Or are you coming to firm conclusions based on fuck all?
Unless you’ve got evidence that Eddie Griffin’s got experience driving a car at high speed, and experience driving that particular car prior to this event, I’d say there’s no point in my revising anything. It’s pretty damn stupid to hop into a car that you’ve never driven before and wind it up really fucking fast. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Ferrari or a Yugo. Nor do we know what Eddie was doing before the crash. Pretty much, all we got was a shot of him missing the turn and plowing into a concrete barrier. How fast was he going? I couldn’t tell from the video. How much experience does Eddie have driving, period? Lots of celebs spend very little time behind the wheel of a car.
I’m surprised it was Eddie Griffin wrecking a $1,500,000 car. You’d think for that kind of money they could have gotten it wrecked by Chris Rock or Eddie Murphy.
I was wondering when someone was going to point that out! What’s with those stupid side mirrors hanging out in midair? I not saying I wouldn’t test-drive one if somebody offered, but I would never buy one if I could afford it myself.
Yeah, but even a granny should have sense enough to not hop behind the wheel and open it up the first time she drives it. Every car handles differently. A VW handles differently than a Chevette. Put granny behind the wheel of either one of those and tell her to open it up and she’ll probably smack into something if all she’s ever driven are Buicks.
Besides, guys, I’m a granny and I can outdrive most of the young punks I see around so I really have to say that “granny” is not semantically equal to “crappy driver.” I’d say that the better comparison is “third rate ‘celebrity’ comic,” but we have empirical evidence that they don’t drive all that well either…
I have to agree that the paddle shifters are taking some of the fun and challenge out of driving fast cars–they may be smooth as silk but they tend to take over a bit too much. This is why I like older cars, no computers telling ME what to do! Sometimes a girl needs to shove the needle well into redline, I’m just sayin’.
Sorry for the hijack, but the most interesting part of the story, in the Stefan Eriksson Ferrari crash, was, for me, the things I learned about “police departments” in California. At the crash, a couple of people appeared, flashing badges and claiming to be from “Homeland Security”. They spoke briefly to Stefan Eriksson and left. Also at the crash scene, Stefan Eriksson told Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that he was a deputy commissioner of the anti-terrorism unit of a local police force. It turns out that in California, if you form a non-profit company that provides transportation services and contracts with a city program (e.g. providing bus rides to the elderly or disabled), then that makes you a “transit agency”. Transit agencies are permitted to form their own police force! Stefan Eriksson was the deputy commissioner of the anti-terrorism unit of the police department of the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority (SGVTA for short). At the time, the listed address of the SGVTA was the same as the address of a “Homer’s Auto Service” - the picture in the Los Angeles Times showed your standard car repair shop. SGVTA was a privately run nonprofit that had agreements with the cities of Monrovia and Sierra Madre to provide bus rides for disabled residents. From what I read in the Los Angeles Times, this police force of the SGVTA seemed to be almost non-existent.
The L. A. Times had another article around that same period saying that some police officials in California were worried that this provision in the state public utilities law would make it possible for a gang of organized criminals to attempt to set up a “police force” for nefarious purposes - e.g. tricking people into believing that they are police officers (I guess that they would actually be police officers) to gain entry to a house and rob the inhabitants.
Here are some Los Angeles Times articles that describe the accident and mention what I just said. You probably need a (free) login account at the Los Angeles Times website to be able to see the articles. I couldn’t find the article that mentioned the concerns some police departments have with these private transit authority police agencies. The first article is the one most relevant to the subject of my post.
