Ferrari

Ferrari's racing pedigree may be more commonly associated with Formula One, but unsurprisingly the Italian firm has also got a very impressive endurance car racing record. Last year the Ferrari F430 GTC of Scuderia Ecosse looked almost certain for a win, until a threaded wheel nut dropped them down to a third place. The winner from Ferrari's low was the slow but reliable Panoz Esperante - LeMans once again throwing a curve ball. Like the Porsche 911s the Ferrari F430 will be aiming to beat, as well as that Panoz, the Ferrari races in GT2.

That means it's closer to its road car relatives than the GT1 cars like the Aston Martin and Corvette.

Unlike Porsche with its 911 GT3 RS Ferrari F430 has yet to reveal a stripped for the road version of its Ferrari F430. We're promised it's coming, but really there's not a lot wrong with the standard car. How does 483bhp from a 4.3-litre V8 sound? Absolutely spine-tingling, that's how.

And you'll hear plenty of them at LeMans.

In terms of Italian cultural cornerstones, Ferrari is right up there with Dante. From America, we can't see the passion that the Italian automaker incites in its homeland, but that passion affects daily necessities such as walking and eating in the birthplace of the Renaissance.

We recently tested the newest Ferrari, the F430 coupe, on the twisty roads of Italy's Emilia-Romagna region. Throughout the day, pedestrians stopped dead in their tracks as we drove by. One teenage Italian boy, who had been riding his bicycle around the streets of Maranello, Ferrari's home, halted alongside the Ferrari F430 as we waited at a stoplight.

Smears of leather-bonding cement on seatbacks and chassis welds that would flunk a Federal Aviation Administration home-built airplane inspection used to be commonplace for Ferraris, despite their legendary status, performance and style. Such were the charming idiosyncrasies of a handmade exotic.

The current Ferrari F430 coupe and its soon-to-be-released convertible version, the Spider, are thoroughly modern and well-built sports cars that dispense with such "charms," despite still being largely assembled by humans and not robots.

Okay, the Ferrari F430 isn't quite up to the build standards of German super cars. Peer into the similarly configured engine compartment of a Porsche Carrera GT, which like the F430 has a mid-engine motor just ahead of the rear axle, and you'll find nothing but the most precise crafting and advanced materials. An Ferrari F430's engine bay may seem crude by comparison. Admittedly the $446,000 Carrera GT is well more than twice the Ferrari F430's $180,000 base price, but either of those numbers should buy perfection.

The Ferrari F430 is the least expensive and most exciting Ferrari. The company's other current offerings — the 575M Maranello, Superamerica and 612 Scaglietti — are substantially more expensive front-engine grand-touring cars. The Ferrari F430 coupe and Spider are more nimble with the best power-to-weight and horsepower-per-liter ratios of the bunch.

The Ferrari F430 rides the bumpy blacktop on the sinuous mountain roads near Ferrari's F430 Maranello headquarters amazingly well for a sports car that has nineteen-inch wheels and rubber-band tires. It's super-stable at all speeds, its only flaw a lack of wheel travel over the sharpest bumps, which occasionally cause the nose to pitch and scrape the underchin spoiler on the deck.

Full rear view of a Ferrari F430
Coming up to another series of hairpin bends, the Ferrari F430 turns in as eagerly as a kid choosing candy. The steering is so intuitive and so beautifully weighted that placing the car is a cinch, and the chassis is so fluent and poised that it's easy to dial out incipient understeer with power. Once you've switched the traction and stability control off via the steering-wheel-mounted selector, you can even unglue the tail on the exits of these 180-degree bends. The Ferrari F430 corners flat and true, the fat Bridgestones gripping hard. This is sensory overload, and it's great.