Ferrari go for speed thrills

PRAISE be! Ferrari has side-stepped the current pre-occupation with hybrid technology in supercars to produce its fastest ever road car.

PRAISE be! Ferrari has side-stepped the current pre-occupation with hybrid technology in supercars to produce its fastest-ever road car.

Good old-fashioned V12 grunt has been favoured by Ferrari in the creation of the 670bhp 599 GTO, leaving their HY-KERS electric boost system on the side-lines...for now.

Sharing its suffix with two of my favourite Ferraris of all time—the 1962 250 GTO and iconic 1984 GTO—the finely-tuned berlinetta weighs in at just 1,495kg and will accelerate to 62mph in less than 3.4 seconds and hit a top speed of 208mph.

It has also set the a record lap time at Ferrari’s Fiorano test track of one minute, 24 seconds.

Despite the lack of any electronic power source, the 599 GTO is packed with a host of track-biased technology.

Carbon-ceramic brakes, new aerodynamic innovations and a driver-car interface which offers Virtual Race Engineer (VRE)—instantaneous information on performance—are all part of the GTO’s set-up which targets ultimate performance above all else.

Based on the track-only 599XX the 599 GTO is destined to reach 599 customers worldwide as a limited-production model which is sure to sell out, financial crisis or not.

The public debut of the 599 GTO will take place at the Beijing International Motor Show later this month.

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