Breathe And Stop

As the sun gradually sets on seven decades of Maranello’s commitment to the naturally aspirated engine, Wheels lights the touch paper on Ferrari’s fiercest atmo specials.

- Chris Chilton

OVER the past 70 years Ferrari has given us tiny V6s, monster 12s – bent and flat – and screaming heights. But they have almost – though not quite exclusively – shared one trait: until very recently they were all naturally aspirated machines.

Turbocharging is rife these days, and we understand why. It makes small engines perform like big ones everywhere except at the pumps. Even Ferrari adopted turbocharging for its 458 successor, the 488 GTB, partly to cut emissions, but mainly because it couldn’t meet its power and performance targets with a driveable naturally aspirated engine. The resulting F154 engine is hugely impressive, but for us even the 488 is missing something that the older cars had – an organic connection you only get when there is zero lag between the movement of your foot and the punch in the back.

So to celebrate seven decades of instant gratification we’ve collected three of our recent favourites to represent the state of the naturally aspirated art: V12 Enzo, V8 458 Speciale, and V12 F12 tdf.

Seventy years from now people will still be raving about the Speciale because it was the swansong for unfettered Maranello sports cars, a real out-with-a-bang machine that burned all too briefly (metaphorically speaking; immolating 458s had been fixed by then). But also because it’s so good the pharmacy in Sant’Agata must have had a run on Xanax the moment Lambo’s engineers got behind the wheel.