The Boxster, the SPF, and the Enzo!!

[Enzo Alibrandi]

Here's our Enzo story.

Enzo, Enzo Alibrandi that is, was on the list for about two years to receive his 360 Modena from Shelton Ferrari. Bud Root called him in January and told him that his car was here and being unloaded and to come right over. When he got there they were unloading the first "Enzo" sold to the public. Since he was the only customer they had named Enzo they wanted him to be there. He took pictures and had a great time. They started it up and enjoyed it and then they unloaded his 360 Modena.

It seems that every time he upgrades his Ferrari there is always a nicer one to see!! I thought when Enzo bought the 328 he was really happy, then he started me telling me about this 355 which he acquired and I thought this is it, he's really happy now. But then low and behold we had to have the 360 and this would be it for good. Answer is no, now he is on a list for the new Monza model that is suppossed to be out in 2006 which will be the Modena replacement with a V-10, 500 horses. He is number 12 on the list in the USA. Next I suppose I'll here with a name like Enzo he needs one of those too. The never ending story.

Paula

[4RE KLR]

Paula

You know Enzo NEEDS an Enzo, right! He IS worthy.

[TomH]

Paula,

While you may not be able to get Enzo an Enzo, you can get him a replica of Enzo's desk while he suffers through the "360 Phase"


Enzo Ferrari's Desk

[scottj]

Originally posted by Excaliber


No way I could justify a $30K brake job, regardless of the cars value. Those fancy rotors should not have been "worn out" to that point even with track time.

No doubt they cannot be "turned on a lathe" to clean them up,,,,,,or whatever. Bad engineering when the pads AND the rotors go together. At that rate the car would not even be able to run the 24 hrs of LeMans without a "rotor" change. For a "race car" that would be ridiculous.

This is clearly a case of:
More money than brains.

Ernie

Bad engineering? More money than brains? I couldn't agree more! In fact I think they should scrap the whole Formula 1 thing on the basis that all that bad engineering wastes money.

First the manufactuing process required to produce a Carbon-Ceramic brake rotor like the Enzo and F1 cars use takes 6 months and then it can't even be turned on a lathe! And why? Just so some guy can stop faster, longer, and with better feel, than with any other other brake system man has ever made.

Scott

[TomH]

ScottJ

Go back to the Girling discs on the original Cobras and racing cars of that era and a lot of your same arguments could be made.

You are correct about the manufacturing cycle time for Carbon/Carbon brakes that are the staple of F1, but the Carbon/Ceramic brakes on the Enzo are significantly different.

For the sake of accuracy, the quote from C&D in their July issue is: "Also, Rapp, 77, and his son, Robert, actually drive the car. Hard. Within a month of delivery Rapp’s Enzo showed 1200 miles on the odo, about half of which were accumulated on tracks. Rapp likes to believe his is the first customer-delivered Enzo in the world to burn through a set of $6000 carbon-ceramic brake pads and a $24,000 set of similarly constructed brake rotors. You just gotta love this guy."

It didn't say that he burned up the brakes in 1,200 miles. Rather that he put 1,200 miles on the car in the first month and that he is the first customer to go through a set of brakes. How long he had driven the car before the brake job is not stated anywhere in the article. The best indication that he is clocking more than 1.2K/mi per brake job is that he appears to be happy with the car and that the C&D writer wasn't very outraged.

[Excaliber]

Something is STILL wrong with those numbers.

At the low miles stated would the car be able to finish LeMans without a ROTOR change? If not it seems like the advantage of the brakes would be lost in pit time to change them out!

PADS I can see, but having to change the ROTORS in the middle of a race sounds like a "bad engineering" idea to me.

F1 cars, being much lighter are a different animal all together. Note also that in the past few years several F1 teams have disappeared because of the "cost" and have NOT been replaced! There IS concern that if this trend continues F1 could be become an "endangered species", based soley on cost!

Ernie

[TomH]

Ernie,

The point of quoting the article is that I do not think the Pads/Rotors had to be replaced at 1,200 miles. I suspect that two independent facts were erroneously combined.

You are outraged at that kind of durability, I would be too. The odd part is that the owner seems to be pretty damn pleased with the car and it's his money that we're talking about. Something tells me that there is more to the story.

[scottj]

Greatly increased wear life (over cast iron) is one of the more significant attributes of Carbo-Ceramic Material. From a financial standpoint, F1 and other racing markets could never support this technology. It was developed for a much heavier animal than F1; large aircraft and high-speed trains.

Surface Transforms, the company that manufactures the brakes for Brembo, recently completed a new, high-production facility that has enabled them to reduce the lead time from quote,"many weeks to several days".

Ferrari began racing F1 with Carbo-Ceramic brakes in 1999.

Scott

[TomH]

Scott,

The Brembo CCM process takes it down to 5 days. I believe that the CCM discs for the Enzo are produced internally near ther HQ in Bergamo, IT.

You are correct that F1 sits at the top of a fairly long food chain insofar as Brembo supplies brakes to Planes, Trains, autombiles and Trucks.

What I don't know is whether Brembo's motivations are the same as Sr. Ferrari's, where the sole purpose of the commercial side of the house was to support a passion for racing.

[DanElam]

Time out on second guessing them on engineering.

The yellow Enzo that you see with the red Cobra is the same Enzo from Greensboro that the guy loaned to the magazine. I think there is a little confusion - he didn't say he had replaced the rotors after 1400 miles. They only mentioned the $30K price of the rotors and that he had driven the car 1400 miles at that point. The rotors will last a while with somewhat normal care. I can't remember if he had changed the brakes pads, but sometimes we can only get 200 miles on a set of pads at the track. (We do usually get more, but it does depend.)

The rotors and pads are straight out of Formula 1. They really are the very best you can buy. Absolutely incredible stopping power AND NO BRAKE FADE.

When talking about modern Ferraris, I think you have to give the benefit of the doubt to Ferrari. The quality on the cars has gone up considerably to the point where a 360 Modena (or even a 355) are much better everyday cars than the Cobras from a reliability perspective. The maintenance bills are going to be more, but that is because Ferrari is trying to make race cars.

On the race side, Ferrari is so far ahead of everyone that it is downright silly. The paddle shifters are something like 4 times faster than the next nearest thing you can buy. The through-the-body downforce is supposed to be great enough that you could literally drive the car upside down on the roof of a tunnel and have it stick there. Right now, even the Japanese are playing catch-up. The Ferraris in ALMS and Grand-Am aren't just faster than the factory Vettes and BMWs - they are way faster. The pendulum will swing, but right now Ferrari has it clicking on all cylinders. Err, maybe humming, not clicking.

The Enzo is meant to be a sort of McLaren-type car. It isn't for the faint or heart or checkbook. But $20-30K brake jobs aren't uncommon for race cars on the very edge of technology. $8,000 brakes are common for serious privateer teams. $700 oil changes? Well..... maybe, but it is a new synthetic and the only thing they've tested with.

Feel free to disagree with the styling, but (and no real Ferrari fan here) I have to give them credit on the engineering side.

[Excaliber]

You think those engineers on the big red Fiat know what there doing?

,,,,yup, no doubt about that.

Ferrari has gone through substantial changes in the last 5 to 10 years. No question there empahsis has been on reliability and driver comfort, while maintaining their status as a world class leader in raw performance. They've done an admiral job on all counts.

I suspect the facts in this case are confusing as to what really HAD to be replaced on the Enzo and at what mileage it occured.

I always did like them, I seriously considered one before I bought the Cobra. A BIG factor there was in fact "maintanence costs"!

Ernie