WHAT IS FERRARI?

1940. And also 1947. After spending the 1930s preparing race cars for Alfa Romeo, company boss Enzo Ferrari went solo in 1940. But it took a further seven years for Il Commendatore to cook up his first Ferrari-badged road-going(ish) car, the 1947 125 Sport.

In the Ferrari factory. Which is in the northern Italian town of Maranello. Which is in the Emilia-Romagna region, a region that’s also home to Lamborghini, Maserati, Pagani and some excellent balsamic vinegar.

A lot more than it used to. In 2019, Ferrari sold just over 10 thousand cars worldwide, a new annual sales record.

For years, Ferrari limited annual production to 7,000 cars to protect the brand. “The exclusivity of Ferrari is fundamental,” said chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo early last decade. “We made the decision to make fewer cars because otherwise we risk injecting too many cars on the market.”

But since it was floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015, Ferrari has turned away from that keep-em-wanting-more strategy. Turns out ‘potential customers with massive chequebooks’ are more appealing than ‘the nebulous concept of exclusivity’.

Fast ones. Right now, Ferrari’s core range comprises four models: the 488 (two-seats, mid-mounted V8), the Portofino (two seats, front-mounted V8, folding hard-top), the 812 (two seats, front-mounted V12) and the excellently left-field GTC4 (four seats, front-mounted V8 or V12, four-wheel drive). None is exactly slow or exactly cheap.

There are plenty more Ferraris on the way, too. The 488 will soon be replaced by the F8 Tributo, while the Roma – effectively a very pretty hard-top Portofino, though Ferrari would prefer you didn’t call it that – is arriving at pace, too.

As is the SF90, a hybrid hypercar – Ferrari’s first plug-in, no less – that combines a 3.9-litre V8 and three electric motors for a power output of just under 1,000bhp.

Unlike most other top-end manufacturers, Ferrari has so far resisted the urge to release an SUV. But it’s in the pipeline, likely named the Purosangue and likely to sell bloody loads.

The bargain-basement Portofino, yours for a mere RM948,000. That's EXCLUDING duties, taxes, options and on-road costs, let alone hub caps and pine-scented air freshener...

If you need a Ferrari on your driveway and you haven’t got RM948,000 (actually, best to double or triple that) in the bank, you can pick up a used but not-so-old 360 or 430 for under RM400,000. But we advise to tread along this path with caution...

In terms of regular production models, it’s the V12 GTC4 Lusso, which starts from RM1,115,800 - again, that's EXCLUDING duties, taxes, and on-road costs. But if you were quick enough, and rich enough, to get your name down on the order list for the SF90 Stradale, you’d have been relieved of at least double that for the privilege.  

Still not spendy enough for you? Wave a large enough cheque in the direction of Ferrari’s Special Projects (SP) division, and they’ll cook you up a bespoke, one-off creation to your exacting seven-figure tastes.

But should you wish even more than that on your Ferrari, you’ll want to go old. Seven of the ten most expensive cars ever sold at auction were Ferraris, including the priciest of the bunch: a 1962 250 GTO that sold in 2018 for a puckering US$48 million - RM209.54 million based on current pandemic-driven exchange rates that is.

Basically if you want something from the Sixties, in good nick and with a Ferrari badge on the front, you’ll need to flog a Picasso or two from your collection.

If you’re talking acceleration, LaFerrari – Ferrari’s 900-plus horsepower hybrid hypercar of 2013 – tops the tree, with an official 0-100kph time of 2.4 seconds. The LaFerrari can also claim highest quoted top speed of any Ferrari to date, an entirely sufficient 350kph.

But it’s fair to say Ferrari has never chased massive v-max with the same fervour as, say, Bugatti. Ferrari cares far more about how fast its cars will go around a race track. Specifically how fast they’ll go around Fiorano, its private test track. Ferrari says the new SF90 will lap Fiorano faster than any road-going model yet, recording a 1m 19.0 lap, seven-tenths of a second faster than LaFerrari.

But that’s only road cars, of course. The fastest-ever lap of Fiorano was recorded by one M. Schumacher, a 56-second scorcher set in… Ferrari’s 2004 F1 car.

If you’re talking road cars, it’s hard to see past the F40. Released in 1987, it was the world’s first 200mph (322kph) road car (quite how many F40s would actually hit 322kph is a different story, though that’s probably a debate for another day), and, with its 2.9-litre twin-turbo V8 engine, hosed-to-the-bone kerbweight and utter lack of concession to comfort or ham-fisted driving, remains arguably the greatest supercar of all, even to this day.

But Ferrari likes to think of itself as a motor racing outfit that builds road cars on the side, so arguably its most cherished successes have come on the track.

Plenty of highlights to pick from here, but it’s probably a toss-up between the Scuderia’s six victories on the spin at the 24 Hours of Le Mans between 1960 and 1965, and Michael Schumacher’s five back-to-back F1 drivers’ titles with the Scuderia, between 2000 and 2004. When Ferrari wins, it wins big.

The box-office success of Le Mans 1966 will have been a none-too-welcome reminder of how Ferrari’s domination of the world’s greatest 24-hour race came to an abrupt end at the hands of Messrs Ford, Shelby and Miles. Still rankles in Maranello, that one.

More recently, having not won a F1 title since 2007 sits pretty high on the Scuderia’s current ‘to fix’ list, but at least it’s a lean period they’ve weathered with good grace and without chucking all their toys out the pram on an annual basis.

When it comes to road cars, Maranello’s most notorious nadir of recent times was the 1989 348, a mid-engined two-seater described by former Ferrari boss Luca Montezemolo as ‘one of the worst Ferraris in history’. Not one to pull his punches, big Luca.

When it arrived in 2011, the FF provoked more head-scratching than a primary school headlice outbreak.

Not only because the FF was a four-seat estate car (of sorts), not only because it boasted a brain-melting four-wheel drive system complete with second gearbox, but mainly because FF apparently stood for ‘Ferrari Four’. Making it the… Ferrari Ferrari Four?

No contest here. The Ferrari 512 Modulo of 1970. Five-litre V12 engine, a theoretical top speed of 220mph, or 354kph… but who cares about that stuff because it’s got a frickin’ canopy roof.

This was the future we were promised back in the Seventies. And we got the Nissan Juke instead.

If you want a Ferrari badge on something that isn’t a car, Ferrari will sell you that something.

There are some two-dozen Ferrari stores located (mostly in departure lounges) around the world, dedicated to merrily flogging you everything from official Ferrari-branded cufflinks to official Ferrari-branded keyrings to official Ferrari-branded umbrellas to official Ferrari-branded teddies to official Ferrari-branded hat boxes.

Owning any of these items will indicate to the world with great certainty that you do not in fact own an actual Ferrari.