History Matters
By Bill Campbell

That’s the recurring thought each time I grab second gear and prepare for what must be my twentieth 110-degree bend of the day. No complaint about that, to be sure. History came to mind because the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas are old enough to provide a terrain that is just about perfect for testing cars; it offers an astonishing variety of corners that, when mixed in with medium-length straights and high quality asphalt over hundreds of miles, add up to a track of sorts that almost makes the Nurburgring look claustrophobic.

My colleague Tom Martin and I were in the Ozarks to put in some major seat-time with the Ferrari F430 and Porsche Carrera S, our two candidates for numero uno in the Winding Road Top 50. While it wasn’t too difficult to come down to these two cars for the top slots, we just couldn’t get comfortable naming one of them to first place without a head-to-head test.

One or two years ago, we would have seen the Ferrari 360 Modena and the 911 (996) Turbo battling for supremecy. Fortunately, history marches on, and the two greatest living sports car manufacturers have served up new cars that correct some of the deficiencies of their old models. In the case of Ferrari, the 360 had a chassis and transmission that were once state-of-the-art, but could obviously be improved. As for Porsche, the 911 Turbo’s non-linearity made street drivers long for a normally aspirated car with close to the Turbo’s power level. And anyone with eyes wanted a cleaner design, both inside and out.

Ferrari and Porsche, of course, knew about these criticisms and have taken a first shot at addressing them with the new F430 and the almost new 911 (997) Carrera S. From prior experience with the cars, we knew that they were exceptional, as you might expect from manufacturers with a history of producing great cars. Not only that, in this case each manufacturer is working from their historical strength: The F430 descends from the 355 and 360, which were excellent, and the Carrera S descends from, well, the seemingly infinite line of 911s over the past 40 years. In an era of computer technology, we’ve all come to assume that newer is better, and that at any moment one manufacturer may eclipse another. But, in reality, car manufacturers almost never design new models from the ground up. Their new designs are modifications of what they have done in the past. So, history matters, and you can feel it when you drive several generations of 911s or V-8 Ferraris and then get into other cars.

 

As we headed south from Harrison,
Arkansas, on Route 7 in the F430, it
became clear that one of the areas where
manufacturers benefit most from historical
knowledge is in knowing how small things
make a big difference to the driving experi40 ence. On the face of it, the F430 is a 360
Modena with a bigger motor. Same basic
shape, same chassis layout, same F1 trans38 mission setup. But the F430 has a totally
different feel. When the 360 came out,
other manufacturers marveled at its chassis
stiffness and drivetrain refinement. Well,
boys and girls, the F430 chassis makes the
Modena’s look like it’s made from over33 cooked pasta. The F430, more than any
the heavy side. As you wheel the Ferrari in
and out of corners, it feels substantial. It
doesn’t feel large like a Murcielago, but it
isn’t small and agile either. If you’ve seen
the Audi R8 Le Mans cars race, you’ll know
what I mean when I say the F430 feels like
the R8 looks. The car seems wide and low
and glued to the ground, yet full of potential
– ready to vacuum up anything in front of it.
It doesn’t hurt that you sit low in the F430,
which emphasizes the width of the car and
the sense that it is big and powerful.
A quick switch to the Carrera S, as we
headed toward towns with colorful names
like Nail, Deer, and Ozone, provided a
dramatic contrast. Where the F430 feels
big and planted, the Porsche is light and
agile. The Carrera is by no means skittish,
and on highway straights it is the most
planted and stable 911 we’ve driven. It’s

whether the engineers might actually go
backwards. Not so. The Carrera S steering
has just about the right amount of feedback,
weight, and quickness to make you feel that
you can place the car right where you want
it. The higher driving position and open
glass of the Porsche helps with this
sensation, because you can clearly see
sharp bends that dip below or rise above
you, something that happened a lot in the
Ozarks. This latter observation is probably
more psychological than real, but it helps
make the Carrera into a coherent package
for carving up snaky roads.

This steering stuff is important because
the Carrera’s chassis is decidedly not about
racecar-like traction. The Porsche has pretty
high limits, but you will find them much
more easily than you will in the Ferrari. And
that’s part of the fun. As we slashed our way
across Highway 16, I repeatedly got into a
corner, felt the front tires slipping just a hair,
backed out of the throttle to bring the tail
out and front end in, and then rolled into
the gas. Of course, I didn’t always do this
perfectly, and I didn’t always anticipate
changes in the radius of the curves invented
by the Arkansas DOT, but the thrill of the
Carrera lies in working to get the car
balanced and to drive it smoothly
through corners.

For this to be entertaining rather than
work, the chassis has to be very easily
controlled. In this new version of the 911,
Porsche has given us as predictable a chassis as ever. Roll is low, though not in Ferrari
territory, and turn-in is sharp without being

YOUR HEAD FLIPS BACK, EYEBALLS PRESSED

INTO SOCKETS AND YOU’RE DEFINITELY ABOVE

THE SPEED LIMIT. WAY ABOVE IT, ACTUALLY.

other car, feels like it is carved from a single
block of aluminum or titanium. Just driving
though open sweepers and along straight26 stretches, the car feels planted and strong. I’m sure the aero package helps by supportng directional stability, but even with that in
mind, the solid, imperturbable feel of the car is overwhelming. Right away, I started won22 dering, “How could the 911 top this?” The steering reinforces these sensations.
The wheel is large and the weighting is on
just that when you get into the twisties,
Porsche has put together a steering,
handling, shifting, and throttle package that
is ideal for practicing your Bob Bondurant
driving school techniques.
In the Carrera, everything seems to begin
with the steering. Much has been made of
the changes in ratios, and the addition of
variable ratio steering. Part of the brouhaha
is that the 996 Turbo and C4S had fantastic
steering, so Porschephiles were wondering
darty. No amount of tuning, of course,
changes the historical decision to hang the
engine behind the rear wheels. On bumps,
the Carrera still unloads and loads the front
tires in a way that adds some thrill to the
proceedings. The chassis isn’t thrown off
very much by this effect, but you do have to
correct ever so slightly, which is part of the
game. And you’ll probably want to be
running at less than nine-tenths on a bumpy
road in the Porsche.
Because the throttle is a big part of the
control system for the Carrera, you’d ideally
want a really linear throttle setup along with
ample torque and a great shifter. For the
first time outside of the GT3, Porsche has
delivered on all three fronts. Porsche’s new
Sport-Chrono package amps up the throttle
response when placed in “Sport” mode, and
this yields just about ideal adjustability
when running through tight corners.
Fortunately, Porsche has made the Porsche
Active Suspension Management (PASM)
damper settings independent of the throttle
response switch. We say that because
PASM in “Firm” is just too stiff for typical
rippled back roads. With two separate settings, you can get the car dialed in for most
conditions. The only thing we’d like to see
Porsche do is to move the switches to the
steering wheel.
All the throttle response in the world
won’t help if you’re in the wrong gear and
the engine lacks torque. But the new
3.8-liter motor has plenty, although no one
will confuse the Carrera with a Corvette.
And with that engine hanging out back, and
the monster tires Porsche specifies providing
mucho traction, you can get the power
down big-time coming out of curves. Just as
important, the shifter is light, smooth, and
positive, which makes it a joy to use in
these situations. This is particularly unusual
for a transmission connected to a powerful
engine, and is part of what sets the
Carrera apart.
Of course, Ferrari takes a completely
different approach to the problem of transmissions connected to high-powered
engines. The F430’s new F1 paddle-shifted
transmission is indeed smoother than the
one from the 360, although the old transmission worked just fine for our tastes.
Still, nothing wrong with a little refinement,
which you also feel in the way the F430
rolls away from a stop or goes into reverse.
Ferrari, which already had the best paddles
by far among sequential manuals, has seen
fit to improve their shape, finish, and even
their sound. But the big deal as always is
the ability to grab the right gear seemingly
at will (this being code wording for, “Get
help from the transmission to cover up
some of your driving errors.”). Ferrari has
also added a downshift blip, which could be
annoying, but seems subtle enough while
adding some racy feel to the proceedings.
While I find a lot to like in the F430, after
time in the Carrera S I’m getting a little worried that the whole of the F430 is less than
the sum of the parts. The Porsche is all of a
piece, full of feedback and carefully
considered
controls. The Ferrari dishes out lots of interesting sensations, but what do they add up
to? Tom put his finger on it when he said at
one of our stops that the Ferrari seems so
stable that you feel like you need to go
extremely fast, which is to say too fast, to
make things interesting. Fortunately, head
ing south on Highway 309, between Paris
and Havana (I’m not making this up), I
started to find the rhythm of the F430.
The F430 comes into its own when you.
relax your hold on the reigns a tad. With the
Ferrari, you have to realize that the car is
supremely competent, and that you don’t
have to make constant adjustments for the
car’s mistakes. You drive smoothly and
focus on the big stuff. More Jackie Stewart
or Alain Prost than Jody Scheckter or Juan
Pablo Montoya.
Which could be boring, except that Ferrari
has provided a full-on, 5.1-channel sensory
overload system in this car. It works as fol-
lows: As you downshift for a corner, you get
the aforementioned throttle blips, which,
unless you’re on the way to the coroner,
move your heart rate up by five or ten ticks.
Initially the car seems to understeer, but this
is because the steering is relatively heavy
and slow on center. After adjusting to that,
the F430 pretty much goes where you
point it, and the steering is set up to allow
you to precisely select the path of the car.

 

Then it goes ‘round. The challenge and the
fun lies in getting the path right, not in mak-
ing a zillion little corrections.
Once the correct flight path
is confirmed, you can begin
thinking about when to roll on
the power. As in the Porsche,
the Ferrari throttle system is a
willing and responsive part
ner. Much more than in the
Porsche, which doesn’t want
the tail to let go no matter what, the F430 challenges your decision of exactly how
much power to put down and how quickly. With the Manettino (a **** on the steering
wheel that selects the settings for the active differential and suspension) in “Sport,” too
much power brings the rear end out,
though you and the car can prevent disaster if you aren’t too far off the mark. And since
you will be moving at quite a clip given the
Ferrari’s limits, you don’t want to be very far
off. Remember, keep it smooth.
Get the power setting right, and a magical
sequence starts. A tenor thrum – part
exhaust, part induction noise – begins
behind you. This sound is obvious, much
more so than in most cars, yet it isn’t loud,
suggesting that there is more to come.
There is. Thanks to ample displacement,
the car pulls strongly from about 3000 rpm,

WINDING ROAD / Issue No. 5 / 33
www.windingroad.com

 

thanks for the read.

theres another interesting article by a UK magazine comparing the f430 to an M5 and the outcome would surprise alot of people...

 

good article. thanks.