[Video] The Ferrari FXX’s raw V12 sound is brutal | GRR
Imagine, if you will, that the year is 2005 and you are a Ferrari owner. Not just the owner of a 360, F430, 575 Maranello or Enzo, but the owner of multiple Ferraris, old and new – you’ve ticked almost every Ferrari box there is. What do you do next? Answer, open the chequebook and slap down a deposit for a Ferrari FXX.
The Ferrari FXX announced the arrival of the FXX programme, an exclusive club that gave the very best Ferrari customers track-only toys and the support crews to run them, at any track you fancied. The programme has expanded over the years to include the 599-based 599XX, and LaFerrari-based FXX-K, but the FXX was the original, and as you’ll hear in this video it was built not just to set lap times but to perforate eardrums.
Based on the Enzo, the FXX featured a 6.3-litre, V12 engine, up from the Enzo's puny 6.0-litres, producing 800PS (588kW), instead of 660PS (485kW). Because of that extra power the car would, given room, hit 214mph flat-out. But it wasn’t just about a big engine, it was the fruit of Ferraris racing knowledge, applying all the lessons learned from a particularly successful period in Ferrari’s racing history to make the fastest road car-derived track machine possible. So it had 40 per cent more downforce than an Enzo, racing suspension, racing carbon-ceramic brakes, and the six-speed gearbox was developed with knowhow from Ferrari’s F1 cars, with changes taking less than 0.1 seconds. A bonkers 300kg had been binned, too.
The result was a track monster, a fast, furious Prancing Horse with a piercing, raw V12 voice, as you’ll enjoy with this footage from Monza in 2018. The word ‘brutal’ doesn’t quite cover it.
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