Ferrari 458 Italia News

Back in the summer of 2010, Eric Clapton stopped by the Ferrari factory in Maranello, Italy, with one request: could they build him a 458 Italia with a V12? Nearly two years later, this is what resulted. Reportedly called the SP12 EPC (bearing the initials of the famous rock guitarist), the one-off product of the Ferrari Special Projects division first ...

Ferrari has been known to produce one-off vehicles for customers, most notably the F430-based SP1 created for a wealthy Japanese collector in 2008 as well as the P540 Superfast Aperta created on the 599 FTB Fiorano platform in 2009. Now, if the Ferrari afficianados over on FerrariChat.com are correct, Ferrari Special Projects program has built a third ...

It's been a long while since the guys at Motor Trend went through the trouble of picking the best driver's car, and for good reason. In order to pull off an actual test with any merit, the publication would need to wrangle some of the most impressive pieces of automotive engineering together on the same track on the same day. When we're talking about ...

Competition versions of the Ferrari 458 have already been prepared for the Ferrari Challenge, Grand Am, and the GT3 and GT2 classes at Le Mans and its various associated series around the world. Now you can add one more to the roster: the FIA GT1 World Championship. Ferrari had previously left GT1 racing to the Maserati MC12, but Vitaphone Racing is ...

When is a Nissan Juke not a Nissan Juke? When it's the 480-horsepower, Godzilla-powered Juke-R, that's when. Then it's a supercar-beater. And to prove the point, Nissan UK took its one-off super-crossover down to Dubai for a little street racing action. So what did Nissan pit its Juke-R against? No, not other crossovers, but a pack of the leanest, ...

The Nissan Juke-R found some adventurous extracurriculars to take part in while in Dubai to pace the Dunlop 24-Hour race. Nissan said it would be making a film of the Juke-R taking on other street-legal supercars in the Dubai International Marina, but that race is meant to include a Mercedes/McLaren SLR-engined Mercedes-Benz SLK. This appears to be ...

Ferrari is headed to the Daytona 24 Hours with a new Grand Am version of the company's 458 Italia. The 458 Grand Am borrows heavily from the GT3 version of the supercar, though with an eye towards competition here in the States. Like the GT3, the Grand Am car was prepared for battle by the same house that's been responsible for race-bred Ferrari models ...

A hardtop convertible Ferrari? Yeah, you're gonna want a pretty blonde to cover that one. But this isn't the California. This is the 458 Spider. Right, better make it Vicki Butler-Henderson then. VBH, you see, isn't some boulevard-cruising talk-show host. Sure, she's presented her share of reality television shows, like the UK version of The Biggest ...

We at Autoblog love a good supercar battle, and of all the rivalries within the land of the exotic sports car, perhaps none is as fierce as Ferrari versus Lamborghini. And while Ferrari doesn't exactly have a direct competitor for the absolutely bombastic Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4, the folks at Underground Racing may have come up with a suitable (and ...

In Which We Fight The Urge To Name It "World's Best Car" When looking for exotic sports car thrills on public roads in the summer, it simply doesn't get any better than the Ferrari 458 Spider. How nice, too, that Italy's summer has gone on and on this year – it thoughtfully didn't end until the evening after our epic drive through the Apennine ...

Today, Motor Trend announced the winner of its 2011 Best Driver's Car competition. The Ferrari 458 Italia took the top honors, beating out the other ten cars in the field. The annual roundup takes into account several factors, including lapping at California's Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, instrumented testing and street driving. Interestingly, the 458 ...

Engineering a mid-engined exotic with a retractable hardtop is a bit tricky. Which is why it's never been done before – that is, until now. Feast your eyes on what Maranello's crafty engineers have wrought. Earlier this morning, we showed you the first video of the coming Ferrari 458 Spider, but now we have a batch of images and more information to ...

One of the most complex parts of a modern Formula One car is its steering wheel, which can be worth tens of thousands of dollars on its own and packing all the controls you'd expect to find on a dashboard right onto the wheel itself. Ferrari took a similar approach with the steering wheel on the 458 Italia, moving the starter button, chassis mode dial, ...

The debut is OFFICIAL! Click here to view official specs and images. Today, Ferrari is unveiling the 458 Spider, and official video of the new sports car's roof operation has already hit YouTube. It's as simple as it is slick. The rear-hinged tonneau flips up, after which the Superamerica-style roof panel rotates back into the space behind behind the ...

As far as autoworker jobs go, putting together a Ferrari has got to be one of the plum gigs. The company is consistently rated as one of the best places to work in Europe, but if the pleasant atmosphere and long espresso breaks weren't enough, you get to go home at the end of the day knowing that you put together a Ferrari. Not a pickup truck, not an ...

A whole string of new models from Ferrari are in the pipeline. And once in a while, we get an insider's glimpse at what to expect. This time, Automotive News Europe has what they believe is a handle on the Maranello marque's plans for the next few years, and so far things look promising. First up, reports are circulating that Ferrari will present the new ...

Generally speaking, we prefer driving cars to building them. Still, you can't do the former if the latter isn't taken care of. And since one of the cars at the top of our "must drive" list is the Ferrari 458 Italia, naturally we're curious to see what it takes to put one together. Thankfully for us, then, Ferrari brought a video crew into its ...

On any given Sunday, you can expect to find a Ferrari 458 Italia racecar screeching around one or more circuits around the world. Unsurprisingly, Maranello is serious about challenging the Porsche 911 for shear proliferation in sports car racing. That's why the mid-engined GT has already spawned Challenge, GT2 and GT3 racing versions, and has now bred ...

Close your eyes and picture a convertible Ferrari. Now open them. What kind of roof did it have? If you're thinking of folding cloth, Ferrari's made plenty of those throughout its history. But of the last three to roll out the gates of Maranello, only one of them had a soft top. And a makeshift one at that. That was on the limited-edition SA Aperta. The ...