Ferraris with traditional gated manuals

The owner of the 599 pictured in this thumb is not alone. To this day, many purists still regard Ferrari’s awesome F40 from the 1980’s as the greatest of all the prancing horse supercars. Unlike the cars of today, the F40 offered maximum driver involvement. There was no electronic stability control or paddle-shifted transmissions, just a twin-turbo V8 and a gated six-speed.

Pictured in the main pic up above is an F430 fitted with a conventional manual box. It seems the fever is catching on.
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SevorbeupstryIsBack - 6/11/2007 1:17:09 PM

+1 Boost

God I hate those flappy paddle nonsense! They're rubbish, only good for track use. But on the road, it simply doesn't give you the control you want. Sometimes you want a slow shift, sometimes a quick shift. It all depends.

These days, driving a Ferrari is easy. No tricky clutch like they used to have.. sad.

The same goes for Aston Martin (recently announced their flappy paddle nonsense gearbox), Porsche (tiptronic anyone?), Lamborghini (E-gear sucks), Audi (R-tronic is even worse than E-gear, they simply made the shifts slower for the R8), BMW, Lexus, ...

If I were to buy any of the above mentioned cars, it would be with a manual transmission.

In fact, does anyone has a picture of the F599 GTB with manual transmission?

SevorbeupstryIsBack - 6/11/2007 1:19:31 PM

+1 Boost

Never mind, I overlooked it in the article.

Great article by the way.

"No conventional gearbox could ever achieve shift-times that quick, so why would a customer opt for a traditional gated box. Then there’s the issue of having to deal with the delicate balance between the clutch and all 620hp and 608Nm of torque from the 6.0L V12. As seen in these images, some purists will never let go of the conventional transmission-tunnel gear-stick and clutch pedal even if it means going slower."

That's what driving is all about.

"Unlike the cars of today, the F40 offered maximum driver involvement."

That too.

Johnel - 6/11/2007 7:29:02 PM

+1 Boost

Purists, fancy way of saying people who are still living in the past good old days and cannot adapt to new technology.

If people would be honest enough to say that they prefer the good old fashion manual and simpler cars so that they could work on their cars then fine I would accept that reason.

I rather have the new tech and move on with the times.

I can imagine how many purists would have burned their clutches or blow their transimission or engines and bitch about it how much it cost them to repair. Also we'd see more Ferrari Enzo's crashing because some idiot shifted in the wrong gear, or simply didn't have the high tech electroinics to save his sorry ass as in todays Ferrari's.