Pointless Car Sets Contrived Record, Audio/Video Still Epic.

The Ferrari 599XX isn't a car about which I can care much. Funny, I know, but I can't really see spending a cool one and a half million dollars for a car I can't take home, or ever use on the road. I'm sorry, but aside from the Enzo-derived, 700hp V12, I'm afraid Ferrari's not-really-a-racer for rich not-really-a-racers leaves me a bit cold.

And now, Ferrari have really gone out of their way to show just how far out of their way they have to go in order to inject some legitimacy into the XX program. In the spirit of the times, Ferrari have ventured to the Nürburgring's Nordschleife and set a very impressive lap-time; they also seem to have hit a bit of a snag. Very impressive ring-times are very impressive and all, but they're nothing without context. And that proves to be a bit of a problem when you're trying to sell a non-road worthy sports car that costs millions. See, most of the cars setting advertisable lap-times are road cars, and almost all of them are significantly cheaper.

Ferrari though, are a clever bunch, and where others might have seen a problem, they jumped at opportunity. If they couldn't set the production car lap record, they could invent a record for "production-derived" cars... yup.



As you can see, and hear, it's all very glorious. Fast too, faster than most all but a few cars to run the Green Hell. And Ferrari have managed to make it all sound like a big deal. The 599XX is now the absolute fastest production derived car to lap Germany's great bullshit dectector.

There are two problems with all of this:

The first is Britian's Radical, and their SR8, a road-legal sports car that just happens to be racing-derived. It's really little more than a racing car with indicators, and road-legal tires. The plucky Brits, have however, defied the cynics, and driven their car across Europe to the ring, set a time ten seconds faster than the 599XX, and driven home triumphant. The 599 arived on a trailer, as it always must.

The second is the unfortunately christened Gumpert Apollo Sport and its 7:11:57 lap. The Apollo (Let's just forget the surname for the moment)is a production car, period, and also set its time on street tires.

Granted, neither of these are cars you would probably want to use regulary. They're impractical as transport, and in the Apollo's case, thirsty. But at least they have the ability to work on the road, which is where I think cars belong. Fast, glorious, and loud as it is, the 599XX just isn't really a car to me; it's a toy, and one that is far too expensive for anything it does to be relevant. Thank goodness, I guess, that Ferrari has seen the light, and derived from it, a truely usable supercar, in the form of the 599 GTO, a car which, it is to be hoped, can compete on an even playing field.