Fifty. Talk about a milestone. It’s not one of those that you can just whistle by, like turning thirty. I’m three years away from the Big Five-O myself, and it definitely feels daunting. How precipitous will the other side of the hill be? Will it be more of an Indian summer or an early winter storm? How many terrible similes about aging will I be able to dredge up to ruin everyone’s mood? There is another way to confront it: do what Ferrari did and bring the big day forward by a couple years.
The F50 was supposed to coincide with Ferrari’s 50th birthday, just like the marque’s 40th had been celebrated by the F40 back in 1987. But perhaps because the F40 had been such a successful halo car, the men from Maranello worked on its replacement very diligently – a little too much so, in fact, to meet the deadline. The F50 was basically ready by 1993, a full four years prior to Ferrari turning fifty.
Ferrari slowed the project down a bit, but there was no way they could hold off on the car for that long. Everybody knew about it, and billionaires are not patient people. They wanted their red hypercar ASAP, no matter what the calendar said. So the car was officially made available for sale at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1995.
As might be expected, the F50 was a showcase of Ferrari’s engineering prowess. Most of the car was derived from Formula One technology, whether we’re talking about the extensive use of Kevlar and carbon fiber (including the monocoque itself), the double-wishbone suspension or the 520hp V12 pretty much literally sat just behind the driver. That motor, mated to a six-speed manual, was the same block as used in Ferrari’s F1 racers of the early ‘90s, though bored up from the regulation-sized 3.5 litres to 4698cc. This propelled the F50 to over 200mph / 320kph – a respectable figure, if not an Earth-shattering one.
But pure performance was not the entire story here. The F50 was a targa top – our feature car has the hardtop fitted, but it was designed to be driven without it, F1-style. The Pininfarina body was not as slippery as could be, either – the F40 was a little quicker than its successor. As were the F50’s two main rivals in the rarefied air of the mid-‘90s hypercars: both the Bugatti EB110 and the McLaren F1 were more powerful (by about 100hp) and faster, as were the Lamborghini Diablo SE30 Jota and the recently departed Jaguar XJ220.
Not that these things really mattered much, in the final analysis. Anybody who could afford toys like these (the F50 retailed at over $500k in 1995, which would be worth about twice that amount today) would have picked the car of their choice according to a number of variables. The Bugatti’s quad-turbo engine and AWD drivetrain, the McLaren’s prodigious speed and quirky three-seat layout, the Lambo’s outrageous wedge design, the F50’s swoopy lines and racing pedigree – they all had something to brag about.
What the F50 didn’t provide much, for a car of its class, was creature comforts for its wealthy occupants. Two dials (plus a digital display) in the instrument cluster, three stalks on the column, three buttons on the left of the dash and a knob or two scattered elsewhere and a bit of leather trim, but that’s it. There must be HVAC controls somewhere, but I’m not sure where they would be. No radio – surely the dulcet tones of the V12 ought to provide adequate aural accompaniment? – no power windows, because that’s what weight-saving looks like, and certainly no airbags because Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna didn’t get those either.
The problem with the F50 was that it was a bit too uncompromising for its own good. Directly bolting the V12 to the frame and attaching the rear suspension to the transmission makes sense in a Formula One racer, but it allegedly makes a road car a bit hard to live with, especially if there are absolutely zero frills besides.
But it’s a super-expensive Ferrari, so of course they had no problems selling the 349 units they had decided to manufacture. When the last car left the factory, it was 1997 already. Just in time for the firm’s official 50th anniversary. Subsequent Ferrari hypercars would be a little less extreme, probably because of customer feedback from the F50. Not a few of them were probably also entering their sixth decade in this world, and us old folks do like a minimum of pampering. The other side of the hill need not be a bumpy ride.
Fifty’s not so bad. Except for, well, everything. Most amazing is the realization that this thing is already 30 years old, but at least you (slighty foggily) actually remember it having been introduced and can’t believe it’s been anywhere near that long. As with Ferrari apparently though, the century mark is just around the corner…Like being in an F50, everything including the passing of time happens much faster from now on. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Speaking from the other side of 50, it’s certainly downhill from here but more like a rollercoaster. Some ups and downs, some thrills and fun to be had before you arrive at the station and have to exit.
As for the F50, I think dad and I had cancelled our Road & Track subscription by 1996. We tired of hearing breathless descriptions of hypercars we would never get to see, much less experience.
So good for whoever owns this now, at least they remember to take it out for some exercise.
Fifty seems like a long time ago; or was it just yesterday? As Jim said, time is speeding up, even more so at 73. The weeks zip by in what feels like hours. Hang on for the ride…
If Tatra87 is worried about the downhill from 50, the 50s, 60s & even 70s were terrific, now into the 80s, there are a few moguls on the downhill.
Stay busy, stay active, including conversations with your many friends & enjoy every moment….
Dave
I turn 60 in June…argh…
Age is just a number!
As for the F50 it came out right in the heart of my childhood, so I of course thought it was cool but it never supplanted the F40 poster I had, and at the end of the day it kind of had all the same cool visual traits it had (the translucent louvered engine cover and mesh taillight panel being my favs). I generally preferred (even as an 8 year old)the 70-80s rooted 308 derived body shape of the F40 to the more F1 like F50, but the F50 has regrown on me for what it is, and by today’s standards it’s once wild styling looks positively restrained in the best of ways.
I still can’t quite get passed the two different top appearances though, I get F1 cars have open tops but it doesn’t look like a F1 car anyway, I wish they just committed to one look or another
“F! 50?” is what I said when my clock turned half a ton, though by the time the surprise wore off, another seven years had passed before I could write this sentence. Yep, it speeds up alright, which seems logical enough considering that more and more bits of one add lightness by ceasing to function (or falling off). I shall be a stripped chassis racer at 90: pity the nurses for the sight of that.
These hyper-dyper silly cars have long come to represent ostentation, not engineering. As late as the ’70’s, buyer still drove their Fazzforgini’s hard and lots. I mean, really, what’s the point of stuff-all miles on your uber alles Supercrunch Chiron, other than that Others May See on the times when you turn a flat-bottomed set of wheels?
Anyway, whatever its speedy virtues, there’s no doubt that these F50’s are ugly bastards. Ill proportions make the driver look like he’s perched on the skinny end of a wrinkly hot chilli. The great Leonardo Fioravanti fairly recently commented that the idea of pure racing car stuff on road styling wasn’t much good, and this particular car began that trend with force. Sorry, aficianadi, but F1 cars have long been as ugly as a hatful of arseholes.
Here’s a well-known pic of the Australian editor Peter Robinson – whose was three times banned from Maranello for saying such things as the pretty rubbish Mondial was pretty rubbish – during a period of forgiveness, with (he said) the F50 at the steering stops, which the great handling made it quite feasible to do.
Actually, he’s still speeding along in his eighties, which no doubt was 11 minutes ago from 1996 in his mind.
Yes, 50s a bit of an eye-opener. I’m not aware of any midlife crisis, but I did go out and buy a big V6-engined slushbox instead of a four-cylinder coupe, but there were long-distance reasons involved.
I have a Bburago die-cast of the F50, but it was towards the conclusion of my Ferrari delusion – I was developing a sneaking suspicion that it was largely nonsense, unless one has a full-sized racetrack in one’s back garden and that the Japanese were suddenly making better road-sportsters.
I think the time goes faster thing is not helped by the fact that we get increasingly forced to do bureaucratic compliance-nonsense – even younger people complain abut how time flies.