With the F430, the Ferrari-Pininfarina partnership racks up another supercar to occupy the flagship role at Maranello. Derived from the 360 Modena, the F430 takes its progenitor’s sporty character and close relationship to the Ferrari racers a step further to present itself as a masterpiece of automotive engineering.
In the words of Lorenzo Ramaciotti, General Manager of Pininfarina Design: “The 360 introduced innovative technological and styling concepts, since it spoke an entirely different language from all its Ferrari predecessors. Now the F430 shows that revolution settling down. Which is why we have revamped the entire car: front and back; inside and out”.
Among the many updates to the exterior design, the most noteworthy focuses on the side and the line that rises from the front, spreading as it goes, to englobe the rear wheel. That was not merely a design decision, but reflects the need to draw more air onto the brakes and the oil radiator. Then, in our search for weight reduction, they even made the rearview mirrors more compact and less aggressive, as well as modifying the wheels that are still five-spoke but split in a way that both optimises cooling and reduces wheel weight.
On the inside, the designers have deliberately called a halt to the current trend, for even more heavy-handed opulence: “We had learned from the Enzo how to reduce the interior trim to a functional minimum while paying the requisite amount of lip-service to comfort”’, explains Ramaciotti. All those design features demanded a lengthy process of continuous tweaking. “It took us two and a half years to create the F430”, ends Ramaciotti, “and innovations were added as they cropped up. We weren’t starting from a blank sheet, after all, and it wasn’t easy to decide what to update and what to keep”.
The article continues in Auto & Design no. 149
