The ANNOTICO Report

If you have $350,000 in your bank account, you can NOT resist Ferrari's
'Superamerica'

To mark 50 years of US exports, Ferrari has launched a supercar with roof
that will make onlookers gasp.
John Simister tests it out

The Independent (UK)
24 May 2005

Rich Americans love a bit of quaint Yurrup, and one particular part of
Yurrup is proud to celebrate 50 years of association with the US. Yes,
Ferrari has been selling its supercars in the States for half a century, so
it was fitting to have an American reference in the name of its latest,
US-targeted, creation. Please meet, the Ferrari Superamerica, based on a
575 Maranello but with a very ingenious roof.

There have been America-branded Ferraris before. The first was in 1950, the
first with a "Super" prefix was in 1960, all were open-topped and limited
in their editions. And now the Superamerica is back, claiming to be the
fastest-ever open-top Ferrari ever.

Central to the Superamerica's being is its Revocromico roof. This
Italianate branding suggests that this both revolves and is photochromic.
Not quite - it's more complex than that. Photochromic glass, as used in
spectacles, darkens as the light intensity increases. But this is
electrochromic. Apply 1.5 volts through the fine tungsten wires embedded in
it, and an oxide coating darkens inwards from the roof's edge. In its
maximum setting, the roof wears the equivalent of factor 99 sun cream. This
is activated whenever the Ferrari is parked, to help keep the cabin cool
and light away from the interior trim.

We've done "cromico", so here is the "revo" bit. Press a button and the
entire roof revolves about a point behind the occupants' heads and does a
180-degree backflip to nestle, with a perfect fit, on the concave rear deck.

What was the rear window is now a wind deflector, the centre brake light is
still visible because it's double-sided, and the boot space has not been
encroached upon. The whole operation takes just seven seconds, plus another
three for the windows. It's as neat and simple as, say, a Mercedes SL's
metal roof is worryingly complex. And that sacrosanct luggage space - it
takes two golf bags, apparently important in the US - is a major advantage.

I'm in the Superamerica in Monaco harbour, the weekend before the Grand
Prix. The principality is awash with superyachts, and I'm ready to drive on
the F1 racing circuit.

I extract my hand from the too-narrow space between the drop-down handbrake
and the door, and move off over two speed bumps. The Superamerica feels
surprisingly soft as it crosses them with a lightly-damped bounce. What
does this tell me? The answer will come soon enough.

The F1 paddle-shift gearbox, with its sequential action and no clutch
pedal, is behaving well, with almost none of the surge and snatch that
troubled such systems before the software people got so clever. This rather
wide car is proving wieldy in the congested streets, too. I turn into an
tunnel towards the autoroute, and it's time to put my foot down. The roof
is down, of course, the better to hear the V12's engine music. And what I'm
hearing is a rich bellow that may well have been honed by computers but
which sounds fabulously organic to me.

It's not massively loud, and it certainly doesn't bring on a headache in
the way the smaller F430 Spider does, but to hear it echo in a tunnel or
from a cliff is to experience pure aural joy.
The regular 575 Maranello extracts 515bhp from its 5,748cc. But here we
have 540bhp, because the V12 is in the same state of tune as when fitted to
the larger 612 Scaglietti to offset the 60kg weight increase brought about
by the roof and associated body strengthening. We have a little more than
that still, because this Superamerica has the GTC pack, which includes a
slightly louder carbon fibre exhaust silencer. Other delights of the pack
are firmer springs and recalibrated settings for the adaptive dampers.
Flicking the Sport switch firms them up anyway, but they are always
altering their stiffness to suit the forces acting on the car.

Right now I'm not in Sport, and two things don't feel quite right. The
steering is too soft for such a potent car, and the transmission might be
smooth but it's slurring its changes, making the Superamerica feel clumsier
than it should. This is fine for Sunset Boulevard, but not quite right for
a brisk run inland from Monaco and Nice. So I flick the Sport switch and
the Ferrari undergoes a major personality transplant.

Now the steering is sharp, the transmission has woken up and the throttle's
electric actuators have recalibrated their movements, making the pedal's
response near-hyperactive.

This is how a Ferrari should be. I accelerate hard out of a bend and feel
the tail edge out then dig into the road, feel the force as the F1 gearbox
does another lightning up-shift. Yet this is not a scary car - huge power
is not a worry as long as you can control it. This is a benign beast. And
it even has a decent automatic mode named F1A - "A" to emphasise its
credibility.

There's great fun to be had squirting past the traffic, which can then
revel in the receding sound. And it is massively fast, able to reach 199mph
and hitting 60mph in 4.1 seconds. But there's a problem. Sometimes it feels
like it might shake itself to bits.

Unlike the F430 Spider, whose open body is rigid despite its lack of a
roof, the Superamerica feels very flexible. That's probably why the damping
is so soft in non-Sport mode, to minimise the shocks of badly maintained
roads. But you need Sport to enjoy this Ferrari properly on an open road,
and if that road is a bit decrepit there's a lot of oscillation going on.
This is a car for smooth roads.

Exactly 559 Superamericas will be built, based on anticipated demand
balanced against exclusivity. Two hundred Superamericas will go to the land
of their name, and around 60 to the UK where customers will pay £191,000.
That's £34,300 more than the steel-roofed Maranello, and then you'll need
another £7,800 for the F1A shift.

All this presupposes that you can actually find one, because all have been
ordered. That said, sometimes a customer pulls out. So if you're rich, you
like the sun but you're fed up with that greasy sunscreen stuff, this could
be the supercar for you. Just avoid the bumps, and enjoy the most
futuristic roof in the car world.

http://motoring.independent.co.uk/
features/story.jsp?story=640857