Ferrari 599 GTO 2010 Review

Ferrari 599 GTO

We liked
>> Astonishing engine strength and sound
>> Brilliant integration of handling software and hardware
>> Just soooo fast

Not so much
>> Steering is still too light
>> Name is a bit cynical
>> That's about it, really

Overall rating: 5.0/5.0
Engine/Drivetrain/Chassis: 5.0/5.0
Price, Packaging and Practicality: 5.0/5.0
Safety: 5.0/5.0
Behind the wheel: 5.0/5.0
X-factor: 5.0/5.0

About our ratings

The mountain people gathered outside the trattoria. The school leaked adolescent boys. The thin man from the tyre shop closed his door and walked down the cobbled hill. The old dowager bent steeply over her walking stick and hobbled over and, out of respect, those already assembled parted to allow her through.

They know their Ferraris up here in Zocca, perched high on Italy's Apennine range. They should. Ferrari's home town is only half an hour away and the lumpy, narrow, tortured road between them is a test-driver favorite.

And the locals know, instantly, that the 599 GTO, parked with insouciance at the front door of the trattoria (at the pleading of the chef himself), is something new and special. And they couldn't be more right.

What they don't know is that this is the fastest road-going Ferrari ever built; a light-weight, V12 coupe masterpiece with its deep, carbonfibre front splitter, stripped interior and enormous, F1-esque double-curve rear diffuser.

When told, there's an assembled intake of breath. Even the crooked old woman knows that alone would make this car special, even if its two GTO predecessors would turn over in their museums if they knew how contrived its name was. Where the 1962 and 1984 GTOs were homologation specials, built to challenge for Le Mans victories, this one swings the other way -- a road-homologation version of the 599XX.

LEGAL FOR THE ROAD, BUILT FOR THE TRACK
Whatever they've called it, it's stupendously fast and it's hardly the GTO's fault that sportscar racing no longer allows road cars to win the classics outright.

Even so, Ferrari expects all 599 of its GTOs to spend most of their time on the track, and it is a second faster at the Fiorano test track than even the mighty Enzo and the cheekily fast F430 Scuderia.

It can do all of this because where the 599XX was the 599 GTB taken to unlivable extremes, the GTO has been backed off only just enough to make it road legal. And no further.

So there's power -- 483kW of power pumping out of the 5999cc V12 at 8250rpm. But that's not all of it. There's sheer, crushing strength, too -- 620Nm of torque at 6500rpm; 350hp at 4500 revs and another 100 just 1000 revs later.

With a 1605kg kerb weight, it's an even 100kg lighter than the 599 GTB, but it's the comprehensive manner of the stripping that is impressive. The bodyshell is thinner and so are all the windows, plus the hood and trunk are now aluminum. The exhausts are hydroformed so the walls can be thinned down from 1.5mm to 0.8mm to shave away 13kg.

Ferarri's even changed the insulation on the wiring from PVC to PPE to save 3kg, then they hollowed out the anti-roll bars for another 5kg. The boffins found another 17kg by using forged alloys, even though the Michelin tyres are much wider and stiffer than the standard items.

If that wasn't enough, the GTO gets shorter rations for all six gears. Shift times are just 60 milliseconds.

The lightweight, carbon-clad door flings open to reveal a two-seat cabin stripped of its luxury, though the sacrifices are less in-your-face than you get in a Lamborghini SV. There's light-weight Alcantara trim instead of leather and carbon-shelled Sabarth racing seats save 17kg.

It's got a radio but aside from the air conditioner (which is loud and struggles to keep the temperature down in the late spring heat), that's it for luxuries. The seats adjust manually and, even then, it's just forwards-backwards and the backrest angle.

LIVING UP TO THE HYPE
Once you hit the steering wheel-mounted start button, there's a long, long whirring from the fuel pumps before the starter motor defeats the 11.9:1 compression ratio and the GTO blasts out a high, sharp 'raaaaap' before settling down to a gentle idle.

Well, gentle depends on where you have the wheel-mounted Manettino set.

If the knob is on either Low Grip or Sport, it's a gentle idle. It's a louder, more aggressive story in Race, CT Off or CST Off modes, when the exhaust bypass valve opens up.

Unlike lesser Ferraris, though, you can't open the exhaust up in Sport mode, because Sport is designed for road use, and with the bypass open, the GTO is just too loud to be legal.

Funny thing is that the GTO is not too low for road work. It's a doddle to roll out of driveways and even the huge, single-plate clutch lets you trickle around town with more dignity than robotized manuals usually allow.

But it's better when it's not trickling. Everything Ferrari has done to the 599 to turn it into a GTO has been focused on sharpening up its responses, to the point where they claim the jump in responsiveness from the 599 to the GTO is about double the jump from the F430 to the Scuderia. And that feels about right.

It doesn't take much straight road to understand what they've done to the engine and gearbox. The first time you stand on the throttle, the gentle burble, even in Sport mode, erupts into a ferocious, seamless howl of anger and its bite is worse than its bark.

There won't be a flurry of wheelspin or tyre smoke, because the GTO is too sophisticated to think that's the fastest way. Once you've dialed up the launch-control mode, it will, instead, punch off the line with j-u-s-t a trace of wheelspin and, 3.35sec it's smashed beyond 100km/h. The next 100km/h bracket takes it just 6.5sec and Ferrari claims it will run all the way out to 335km/h (at 8200rpm!). It doesn't feel like an idle boast.

The GTO has had all of its electronic safety net functions developed in unison with a new, faster ECU and a second-generation carbon-ceramic braking system that's not only lighter, but faster and more accurate. Brembo has done away with traditional pads and the new system uses carbon-ceramic pads that match specifically to the carbon-ceramic discs. That means their behavior never changes with higher temperatures, which means they can be calibrated with an accuracy never seen before in road cars.

Out on the mountain passes, the GTO proves itself to be not only faster than the 599, but more stable as well. And Sport mode is, indeed, faster and more stable than Race. The power-down is ferocious and the grip at the front end feels unburstable.

It's not Porsche-like in the way it turns in to corners, because the steering itself is too light and the feedback it gives feels reactive, rather than proactive. But it's 20 per cent quicker to react to the wheel than the 599 and wherever you point it, the GTO goes. And then it leaves, quickly.

Map all of this knowledge together and the result is a mind-bending array of corner exit, short straight (no matter how long it actually is), a braking point much later than it looks and then enough mid-corner grip to hurl the wax out of your ears.

And it does it all while throwing every sense in your body into a competition for your brain's attention. Your ears are an obvious contender, because the GTO attacks its rev limiter as though it would like nothing better than to smash it into oblivion for restraining its unburstable V12 masterpiece.

Your eyes, too, demand brain space, because they're absorbing and transmitting what seems like an exponential rise in information and they struggle in vain to stop everything in your peripheral vision from losing shape and dissolving into a mass of colors.

But it's your body that leaves the lasting impression, and not just because the blistering acceleration is like a kidney punch every time you go near the throttle in the first three gears. Few road cars have ever boasted this sort of lateral grip and it's grip that's consistently available...

ON THE TRACK
Out of the mountains and back at Ferrari's Fiorano test track, it doesn't take long to figure out what Race mode is all about and why it renders both the traction and skid-control off settings as little more than giggle generators.

The absolute fastest way to drive the GTO is with the Race mode on, which opens up the bypass valve in the exhaust but moves the magnetic dampers, the brakes, the skid and traction control, the gearbox and the throttle settings to maximize every scrap of grip.

Indeed the GTO is simply magnificent on the track, with those astonishing Brembos laughing at the idea of fade and smashing the splitter down towards the asphalt time after time, letting you perfect your braking distance without worrying about a long pedal. You don't have to worry about it sliding under brakes, either, because the ECU can now control each brake pad independently to control oversteer and understeer.

So you tip it in towards the apex and the GTO snaps its head like a mid-engined car, and then you can just nail the throttle on the exit. If you're on the right line and steering smoothly, the F1-derived traction control will feed in exactly as much drive to the tyres as they can handle. And you will not get out of corners any faster using your own judgment, even if you're Fernando Alonso himself.

Couple all of that with a cabin that easily swallows six-footers, a boot that will take a full weekend's luggage and a comfortable ride and if you've just got to own one Ferrari in your life, you should absolutely make it this one.

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