2002 Ferrari 360 Modena Coupe 2-door 3.6l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Ferrari, Maseratis trashed in Chinese off-road adventure

Ready to cringe? A group of Chinese motorists drove the Sichuan-Tibet Highway in a fleet of Italian cars, fording streams and hopping rocky terrain as they went. Well, they attempted to drive it, anyway. Only five of the cars managed to survive the truly unnecessary ordeal. The trip was reportedly the idea of a wealthy Chinese businessman named Ni Haishan. Haishan was driving the red Ferrari F12, with his employees following in what appear to be 10 Maserati Ghibli sedans. The Maseratis were gifts to his employees, which makes the loss of six of them along the way only slightly easier to stomach. Even the cars that made it to the finish line in Lhasa, Tibet, arrived with some serious damage. The unsurprising fallout included several wheels and tires on the Ferrari, including one wheel that took the studs it was attached to with it. As you can see above, the "highway" route was not exactly suited to these particular cars. There is some precedent for a car from Maranello driving to Lhasa, however. In 2005, Ferrari sent two 612 Scagliettis on a tour of China called "Ferrari 15,000 Red Miles" with various journalists at the wheel. That journey started and ended in Shanghai and took the cars all over the vast country, including two crossings of the Gobi Desert, along the Great Wall, and on some of Marco Polo's route. Of course, it also involved a lot of planning, a huge support team, and at least a modicum of common sense. All of this was supposedly Haishan's way of showing the world that business is good for him and that customers should trust their money with him. We might conclude otherwise based on the results. If you absolutely have to run this road in something Italian and expensive, may we suggest a Maserati Levante next time? Related Video: Image Credit: news.163.com Auto News Ferrari Maserati Coupe Luxury Performance Sedan ferrari f12 berlinetta maserati ghibli

Ferrari threatening to fine journalists $69,000 for breaking LaFerrari embargo?

In automotive journalism, we deal with embargoes on a regular basis. For the uninitiated, these are agreements between publications like Autoblog and manufacturers. While news embargoes (where pubs are provided with information and images and agree to hold until a predetermined date) are fairly common, today, we're focusing on drive embargoes. These are what we generally end up signing when we attend a vehicle launch. Generally, these are in the media's best interest. As drive programs are spread out over a week or two with multiple different "waves" of media, drive embargoes put the biggest and smallest publications on level footing when it comes to publishing reviews.
According to a report from Autocar's Steve Sutcliffe, Ferrari has taken its drive embargo for the LaFerrari hypercar a bit too far. See, initial reviews from the few publications that attended the drive event for the hybrid-powered monster can hit the newsstand or internet on April 30. Originally, syndicated stories - those sold by freelancers or publications to other outlets - couldn't be published until May 12. These syndicated reviews are big money for larger magazines and, in the case of freelance journalists, are a primary source of revenue. Inexplicably, though, Ferrari has pushed the syndication embargo back to May 26, which is bad news for everyone involved (aside from Ferrari).
This could have been nothing more than an annoyance. The stories would still get sold (although it might be for a bit less coin, considering the initial reviews will be nearly a month old) and you'll still be bombarded by reviews of the LaFerrari not once, but twice, just as Ferrari planned.

Supercar 'Holy Trinity' raced at the track, drag strip, and to 186 mph

There was a time when we weren't sure if we'd ever get the Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1, and Porsche 918 Spyder on the track together. Now, we've have a multi-part series dissecting how each supercar approaches all kinds of go-fast tasks. Supercar Driver (SCD) looks at their performances around the track, on the drag strip, and on a runway. SCD didn't get any help from the automakers, it used three cars all owned by one British gentleman, Paul Bailey. The first video has British Touring Car Championship driver Mat Jackson running all three around Silverstone. The second video takes the coupes to Santa Pod Raceway to run the quarter-mile. The third video runs them out to Bruntingthorpe Airfield for a drag race to 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph). We found that latter video especially interesting because SCD shows a graph of how fast each car hit speed marks, and it's interesting to see where the winner made up all of its time and the where the third-place getter lost its time. Nota bene, the McLaren is using its fly-paper sticky Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R tires. You'll find the first video in the series above, the second two videos below. If you still haven't had enough, then check out the Hyper 5 three-part series by Alejandro Solomon filmed at California's Thermal Raceway, starting with the Holy Trinity and adding the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport and Pagani Huayra. Chris Harris also did fantastic work around Portimao with the help of Marino Franchitti and Tiff Needell, with assistance from the factories. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Ferrari McLaren Porsche Convertible Coupe Hybrid Luxury Special and Limited Editions Performance Supercars Videos porsche 918 spyder mclaren p1 ferrari laferrari