Ferrari

There are more than a few people who have been quick to jump on Kazunori Yamauchi and his company, Polyphony Digital, for the glacially-slow gestation of Gran Turismo 5, the latest installment in the Playstation-exclusive cash cow franchise. After all, trans-Pacific rival Turn 10 Studios has released a pair of Forza Motorsport titles – numbers 2 and 3 – since GT5 development began in earnest about five years ago. Surely the Tokyo-based developer couldn’t have anything up its sleeve to make its latest product worth all that waiting…right?

Well, at last year’s E3 it was announced that GT5 would feature licensed content from both NASCAR and the World Rally Championship, and this year’s E3 saw confirmation of collaboration with your favorite motoring program and ours, Top Gear, as well as damage rendering that includes rollovers and variable time-of-day. But for those of you who thought Yamauchi and Co. had run out of awesome bombs to drop, guess again. In fact, at this week’s Gamescom expo in Cologne, Germany, they brought enough awesome bombs to lay waste to a city’s worth of naysayers.

The Ferrari California is, like any model to emerge from the Maranello plant since, say, the shiver-worthy 348, a brilliant car. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that the latest “starter Ferrari” was practically born to be purchased by rodent-sized-canine-owning celebrities who neither know nor care about the car’s thousands of engineering man-hours or the storied marque’s extensive competition record both past and present. (“Fernando Alonso? He’s, like, an opera singer, right?”)

This pre-installed stigma is bad juju for types of true enthusiasts who would buy this car. You know, the folks who wake up at stupid o’clock in the morning to watch Formula 1 live on Speed and can appreciate technology like the direct-injected 4.3L V8 and available 7-speed double-clutch transmission, because the gearhead of lesser means who sees them cruising down the street will tend to assume the person behind the wheel thinks "Imola" is the name of a meat-borne pathogen and merely bought a California because it’s a convertible and it has a back seat on which to place the pet carrier of Aphrodite, their Mexican Hairless.

A few weeks ago we caught our first glimpse of Ferrari’s newest V8 powered spec racer, the 458 Challenge. We licked our chops at its reduced weight, firmer suspension and tweaked electronic driver aids relative to the street version and how all those changes would add to the car’s ferociousness. But numbers can only tell us so much; visuals do a much better job of conveying how quick (or slow) something is.

How convenient, then, that some intrepid car spies recently managed to catch some 458 Challenge test mules hot lapping Ferrari’s Fiorano private test track. A cursory glance at how fast they move through the scenery indicates these prototypes are quite fast. Like, a scant two-tenths of a second slower than the FXX fast. The soundtrack, on the other hand, is something of a disappointment. Whether this is a function of background noise, distance from the mic or whatever, it just doesn’t…well…watch the video after the jump and you’ll hear what we mean.

Ever since the 355 Challenge of the late ‘90s, Ferrari has been producing lightly-modified, track-only versions of each of its mid-engine V8 models and putting on one-make series in which they can compete. No points for guessing, then, that Maranello’s newest “budget” model – the 458 Italia – would spawn the competition version seen above.

Taking a cue from its predecessors in that it's named the 458 Challenge, this latest rich-boy track toy reatains the street version’s direct-injected 4.5L V8, producing the same 570hp. However, it has less mass to schlep around thanks to weight-saving bits like Lexan windows and carbon fiber body panels. Reprogramming the paddle-shift dual-clutch transmission and tweaking the gear ratios relative to the standard car gives it even more scoot.

Historically speaking, Ferrari and Lamborghini (and their respective supporters) have been quite dissimilar. Ferrari has typically been all about elegant styling and its racing pedigree, while Lamborghini has been about wild pantomiming and general rebeliousness, the latter no doubt rooted in the famous disagreement between Feruccio Lamborghini and Enzo Ferrari that led the former to get into the supercar business himself. Bottom line? Some fans dig both, but there is still a fair bit of partisanship.

Now, however, the relationship between these two marques and their followers has become considerably more complicated, thanks to the Japanese tuning house Auto Veloce. Using the outgoing “cheap” (har har) Ferrari – the still mighty good F430 – as a starting point, Auto Veloce adds new front and rear fascias, rocker panels and a rear wing to create, as you can see, a four-wheeled jackalope called the F430 Super Veloce Racing.

Ferrari, along side Pagani, Lamborghini, and Porsche, is among an elite list of manufacturers who make adrenaline pumping machines. Of course, in the world of tuning, too much adrenaline is never enough. The Ferrari F430 has served as playground for the aftermarket set with everything from high-horsepower monsters like the Novitec Rosso 747hp Edizione Special to more mild manner offerings with slight cosmetic overhauls and minor tuning tweaks like the ASI Ferrari F430. Status Design, from Russia, is late to the party but still most welcome.

The company has just released the Ferrrai F430 SU35. The name, 'SDSU35' is derives from the famous Sukhoi Russian fighter jet. Their tuning kit boosts the F430 Scuderia from 490hp to 525hp. This is done through a new retuned computer, a new high-performance exhaust system, and new air filters. But don't think for a second that Status Design has stopped at a mere 525hp. For those so-called 'adrenaline junkies', they offer an optional supercharging kit that increases the 525hp to a pupil dialating 700hp.

If there’s one thing Forza Motorsport 3 does really well (aside from racing action, car customization, online play…) , it’s presenting the gorgeous car models in gorgeous fashion. The painstakingly-rendered machines feature gobsmackingly-realistic detailing everywhere you look, be it the lights, the interior or, on some of the old race cars, the rivets on the body. But while you can rotate and zoom in on the cars while in the garage, you can’t really recreate the sensation of walking around them, looking at them up close and, most of all, opening the doors and hopping in.

However, with the advent of the Xbox360’s new motion-based control system, Kinect (nee “Project Natal”), Microsoft’s flagship racing franchise has loads of new avenues for innovation open and ready to be taken.  As you’ll see in the video after the jump, you’ll be able to walk around cars, explore their features, and even “sit inside” them and look around. But that’s not all…

One of the unfortunate truth’s about the blockbuster racing game Gran Turismo 5 is that, if it were a spouse in couple’s therapy, its mate would almost certainly describe it as “distant” and “uncommunicative.” Other than a few updates here and there (some from series creator/director Kazunori Yamauchi, some not), the gestation of the latest and rumored-to-be greatest installment in the groundbreaking franchise has been kept under more wraps than a sumo wrestler attending a toga party where deep-fried Double Downs are merely the appetizers.

However, with the gimongous industry pow-wow that is the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 to its friends) kicking off tomorrow here in Los Angeles, Sony and developer Polyphony Digital have decided to throw the fans a bone in the form of a new GT5 trailer. Well, “new” in the sense there's some heretofore unseen clips of tracks on the streets of Rome and the hills of Tuscany. Mixed in with these vignettes are previously seen looks at the likes of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG and the Ferrari 458 Italia, as well as NASCAR at Indianapolis and Super GT at Tsukuba Circuit. Make the jump to see it all in glorious motion.