Ferrari California Revealed
The Hugely anticipated Ferrari California has been revealed with three official images and first details. The new GT joins Ferrari's 8-cylinder family and slots in just below the 612 Scaglietti with its new V8 which for the first time in their history is placed in the mid-front position of the car. Despite earlier predictions of a coupe model, the California will be exclusively available as a convertible featuring a folding hard top.
Power comes courtesy of a new 4.3-Liter V8 Engine with direct fuel injection and a “flat” crankshaft, output stands at 460 horsepower at 7500 rpm which launches it from 0-100km/h in under 4 seconds. The new model is the first model in the range to benefit from a new 7-speed dual clutch transmission which helps enhance the performance figures and driving pleasure whilst simultaneously reducing emissions(c.310 g/km CO2). But the performance enhancements don't stop there, the California also gets a new multilink rear suspension system, the F1-Trac traction system originally debuted in the 599 GTB Fiorano and carbon-ceramic material brake discs.
The interior benefits from newly developed accessories and equipment such as the seats, steering wheel, instrument panel and infotainment system. The exterior shows a classic prancing horse design aerodynamically enhanced to be highly ergonomic and enjoyable car to drive regardless of whether the top is up or down.
The California will be publicly unveiled in September at the Paris Motor Show, but before then we are promised further details and images will be released
I've been so excited to see this car since the teaser site opened. I wanted to like it... but now, I'm not so sure about it... There's too much happening in this one... the gill slits, the big black hole above the diffuser, the hood scoop, the headlights... I dunno, maybe shots of the real car will do it justice. I hope.
On second thought, I think it's starting to grow on me. Hehe... Will still wait for live shots though :D
this looks better than the rendering we saw a couple of days ago... its a good thig that thy didnt go with the airvents by the headlights
This is the end of the Aston Martin V8! lol, Tata's gonna die..
please clarify.. i'm just too intrigued by ur statement!! :O
aston martin is NOT owned by TATA thats land rover and jaguar, Aston is provatly owned. they were sold first by ford 2 years ago.
The car looks gooood.. but the alloys r too boring!! :(
The proportions on this thing are sick, Competizione sick.
Like ^ says, then the tuners when they get a hold of it..
Its going to be the cash cow so ofcourse its predictable. It serves the purpose, well might I add.
I do partially agree with BabyMilo. It surely is a better image. This is neither unique nor pioneering design. This sort of design probably getting too old for us already or maybe used too many times in a past. This is a bit underwelming.
After a long periode of time, here is a Ferrari, I really like the design. the front and proportions of the whole car are amazing. Only the backend has an area around the exhausts, I don't like. It whould fit a TVR more then the elegant barchetta
I don't like it. This car looks too much like Toyota MR2 spyder. The exaust is copied from Lexus IS-F. Looks to simple. Maybe special rims would make it look a little better.
for a second i thought i was the only one who noticed the IS-F copy rear exaust lol... comon now ferrari
I agree, the exhaust looks rubbish, at least from this angle. Doesn't match the rest of the car and is a total copy of the IS-F's exhaust. But the rest of the car...very nice, reminds me of the 60's ferraris a little bit. It will be a huge hit.
I wouldn't say it's the most original of designs but it is beautiful. I'd rather have the looks of the Alfa 8C with the Ferrari innards.
exactly.. n it is believed that Maserati might get the Jaguar chassis for their future cars due to the Tata~Fiat JV.. its still a rumour at best.. n also another rumour in the air is that Tata is planning to take a small share of Ferrari for itself!! ;) seems like i'm giving more hot news than this website!! :P
what the hell, this is f'kin gross... couldnt be more disappointing, lacks subtleness and elegance.. looks like some amateur kit car from florida.. then again ferrari-pininfarina hasnt been able to come up with a truly beautiful car eversince the 456 GT: pitiful
Couldn't agree more with you, this is rubbish. Most people probably just like it cause its got a prancing pony on the front and back. I think it looks crap from the front, ok from the side and crap from the back. And seriously, those Lexus tailpipes are an abomination - amplified when added to this car. I'm just so disappointed because I know they could have done so much better. Sigh... I guess if I win lotto I won't have to think twice about choosing a Lamborghini LP 560 - 4 over this wretch. What a shame this car is.
Why dont you be a little more realistic, if it is not a supercar, there is nothing much to do, to take your breath away. You have certain aerodynamic concerns, ergonomical facts and requirements, traffic, daily use necessities and all sort of alike. It is a car you can enjoy on the Sunset boulevard, not on a race track. It is nice and pretty, except the xenon headlites.
looks really good, like that kind of old school touch, i also like the exhaust, even if it is kind of a copy, it looks better than the original IS one.
and i was the ONLY ONE to say that it will be a convertible, and everyone else laughed at me... Now i think I was right, for me looks great, but maybe i'm a bit blind by the magic of ferrari :)
can u recognize that something is missing from ferrari DNA? the prancing horse emblem is missing on the side of the car, it shoulg be placed on the bottom of the front wheel. still a simple buat beautiful design
Let's face it. It seems to be the first purely commercial Ferrari. They looked at the numbers on a unexploited niche, they looked at hardware that could be sourced from another "division" and they went for it..."a new model range." Very much like GM when they begun expanding. I say, be careful Ferrari. A mystique is a terrible thing to waste!
I wonder if its the right step for the only pure bred supercar brand to go down in the battlefields with AMGs, 911s and even ZR 1 Corvettes at a base price of about 165.000 Euro?
the styling is what you'd expect nothing breath taking.
I hope a lot more than this... Looks too much like the Maserati GT... Ferraris are meant to look better than that... What happened??
because it's designed by the same designer. i like the maserati. much more than any ferrari.
Like I said before...for the last 35 years or so, conventional wisdom (rich people's minds)... was that the ultimate design for this type and SIZE of sportscar is "MID-ENGINE." We all know by now that this is perhaps not entirely true, yet FERRARI, the zenith of exotic brands subscribed to THIS! Until NOW! IN ONE MOVE, Ferrari has legitimized everything from Aston, Z06, M3, new Lexus exotic, new NSX, GT-R, add-nauseum.....and what's worse...the damage is already done! Can't take it back! Front or Mid-front engines are viable for agile, exotic, avant-garde sportscars! PORSCHE must be FUMING!
i guess they've put the engine in the front beacuse of the retractable hard top
*lol* what's your problem? does a gaylike M3 have a transaxle gearbox? is a crappy lexus fitted with a ferrari diff? by the way: even the ferrari california is midengined, because the engine is placed BEHIND the front axis, like the 599 or the 612.
Doesn't the Quattroporte have a transaxle transmission? Yet the DuoSelect is one of the crappiest boxes ever, my uncle owns one and I've driven it many times. And FYI, an M3 has diff and front-centered engine as well, not to mention they offer a real manual tranny, not a GAYLIKE videogamer robotized system.
Overall, I think the styling is pretty good. I feel that the front would have looked better if they had made the front grille more squared instead of rounded (for the record, I'm not fond of designs that look like the car is smiling).
AstoN Martin is owned by a Kuwaiti company called Dar Investments
I don't like it at all. Too much ugly details on it. This is not Ferrari. Pretty qwirky car, but I'll wait to see it in person to get my final conclusion. For now, nothing special at all...
I love Ferrari. In my opinion, they are the finest sports car maker in the world. No other car company to date has produced a line of sports cars that has held so true to the essence of why enthusiasts have such a fervent love for automobiles. Far too many car companies today produce cars with a blatant lack of this “essence” or passion in their cars or “products” design, engineering and production. Ferrari has remained unparallel; by creating sports cars that are truly pieces of engineering and mechanical art that ooze with passion and the obstinate pursuit of why the affinity for driving exists whilst not being ostentatious.
That being said, I don’t like the California. This car strikes me as one that was not created primarily out of passion, rather necessity. It is apparent from certain design elements on the California that its existence did not emanate from the mind of a brilliant Italian engineering savant whilst making love to his girlfriend or racing around Lake Como, but more likely from a group of bald gentleman sitting around a board table trying to crunch numbers and figure out how their market capitalization can increase. For example, the air intake on the hood looks like something you would see on a Ford Mustang, which is obviously a design element trying to masquerade as a functional piece of equipment, possibly trying to distract from other shortcomings in the overall design. Next is the IS-F exhaust. It is a great disappointment to see both Ferrari and Pininfarina, the most famous design studios in the world, taking cues from Toyota, which judging by the way a Toyota looks, might not even have a design studio at all. I could go on for days about the California’s stagnant looking wheels, bumble-bee-butt proportioned boot or front fascia and headlights that would look more suitable on a Little Tikes Cozy Coupé. But, as I stated in the first sentence “I love Ferrari” and would rather focus my attention on the other magnificent automobiles that they have made, make and will create; while praying at night that there was not a coup d’état in Maranello and the bankers have taken over.
I think the rear bumper is the truly ugly part, the black section and then an extra bit- horrible. The rest of the car is a very nice Saturn, Toyota or some other mainstream maker, but Ferrari... too cheap. and how hard is it to style beautiful alloys- hell the Astra VXR has them
I don´t know what will be the cost of this thing, but I rather the 8C Competizione every day...
YES i figured it out (unless someone else pointed it out already!) who is alfa romeo owned by?? i dunno but this DEFINITELY looks like the 8C competizione... anyone? definite changes to the lights and all, but the over all chassis and shape is alfa. that rear 3/4 reminds me of that car so much!
This car doesn't appeal to me, which is a worry. But then I have always believed that coupe Ferraris look mich better than convertibles.
where's the pic with the hard top? it'll be so much more sexier with the top up..
here are pictures of the orginal CALIFORNIA SPYDER version back in 1960: it´s always difficult to redesign a classic:
http://www.ketchamimports.com/63_250_Spyder_pic_d.html
http://www.ketchamimports.com/63_250_Spyder_pic_g.html
http://www.ketchamimports.com/63_250_Spyder_pic_h.html
www.FerrariCalifornia.com ......... the nois is sooooo sick !!
If you were truly interested in cars you would know that design features are set long before the launch of the car. Which means that Lexus and Ferrari came up with the same basic idea regarding the exhausts, but Lexus launched the IS-F before Ferrari's California. So there was no copying! Next time you post a comment check your f'in facts first...
This is a front mid engine car just like the 599, maserati gran turismo as the engine sits behind the front axle. I love this Ferrari as well as the Maseratis. High reving italian stallions is where it is at! It is interesting the 599 designer continued that into the Maserati Gran Turismo which is really a Ferrari with a Maserati body. The Californian Ferrari has the Maserati underpinnings with the Ferrari body.
As Lamborghini is moving forward in making their cars as aggressive, violent and sexy as possible, not mentioning the bigger and more powerful engines...Ferrari is looking worse, more afraid and less passionate in every new model...just moving forward in “cars 4 nerds”......
It doesn't really matter between the Lexus and the Ferrari exhausts. The Ferrari exhaust is most likely FUNCTIONAL!!! The Lexus exhaust tips aren't functional at all, it's completely disconnected from the rest of the exhaust system. Lexus did it strictly for looks.
Did the Ferrari designer let his 12 year old son design this car? And the name... California?? Europeans may find pride when their product is referred to the place of origin, for example: certain brand name colognes and Paris. But living in California, I find the name of this Ferrari ridiculous.
front of that ish looks like a saturn sky/pontiac solstice....still looks good tho
Concerning transmissions---Maserati, Ferrari and Lamborghini paddle shifts are made by the same italian transmission company taylored to the specific car companies specs.
Ferrari should fire all their designers..Their new cars look terrible,they hardly have any character.And this one looks incredibly cheap,way too much happening on it. It also looks really similar to the TVR Tuscan...
LOOOL!!! it's amazing... I came here to say that I hate Ferrari's... 4 my own personal reasons... but because of the design of this car, a self-confessed Ferrari lover does the job 4 me... lovely!!!
I must admit tho that they got, what I've seen of the interior, spot on... the front is predictable, the back is ugly...
Nah, I take it back... this is the first Ferrari I dnt mind in more than a decade!!! apart from the 599GTB Fiorano in silver (wow)... good one...
I find it looks alright, quite predictable styling, they could fit better looking wheels though, the simple 5 spoke makes the car look boring.