Ferrari ·¨À­Àû
For decades, one of the most legendary names in automobiles
Now, a new model is hitting the streets
One-and-a-quarter tones of high-performance sports car,
engineered with the precision of a spacecraft
The fastest, most powerful production car Ferrari has ever designed
And this is where it is being made
inside Ferrari's ultimate factory
High-end sports cars
They are fast
luxurious
and very very expensive
Each has its own claim to fame
But one has become an icon
Ferrari
To some, it's a car
To others, it's a work of art
To many, it's the perfect fusion of both
The name Ferrari conjures high-performance
and breath-taking design
Few cars have carried such an aura of legend and mystique through the decades
The Ferrari of the Formula-1 track
The winning of its name in the history of the sport
The Ferrari of the open road
an iconic sports car of the ages
Whether for the racetrack or for the road,
every Ferrari is handcrafted
Northern Italy, the town of Maranello
This is the site of Ferrari's ultimate factory
The factory is part hi-tech garage and part art studio.
It's a place where raw metal is transformed into raw power,
and where cars are created like sculptures.
And the buildings of the factory are every bit as sleek and modern
as the cars created within them.
Because Ferrari makes cars for the street and the racetrack,
the factory boasts some unique features.
It has a wind tunnel for research and development
designed by Italy's super-architect, Renzo Piano.
There's an engine works flooded by natural Light,
with trees to provide exactly the right humidity for engine construction.
There's even a three-kilometer-long private racetrack
that's used to trial Ferrari's latest race cars and road test its sports cars.
These are the buildings through which every Ferrari makes its first journey.
And for the 3,000 workers here, this job is an Italian dream.
For us Italians, Ferrari has always been a myth, always.
I mean, the boys here grow up with Ferrari in them.
Security is intense at the factory.
Few outsiders and even fewer cameras are ever allowed inside.
Ferrari's Formula-1 team is based at the factory,
and there's the ever-present threat of industrial espionage.
And Ferrari's Formula-1 secrets also go straight into its street cars.
This is the fastest and most powerful production car Ferrari has ever designed: the Fiorano 599.
It can top 330kmh and it costs more than 200,000 Euros.
The president of Ferrari is Luca di Montezemelo.
For me, these kind of cars means freedom.
Braking, acceleration, handling, engine, music,
all these ingredients make Ferrari something unique.
Five years of research and development have gone into Ferrari's latest model.
But so have 60 years of history.
Ferrari's legendary founder, Enzo Ferrari, was a racing purist.
For him, the production of street cars was simply a way to help fund his Formula-1 team.
Early Ferrari sports cars may have been beautiful to look at,
but they were notoriously difficult to drive,
because their racing characteristics weren't suited to the open road.
But over the decades, Ferrari has moved closer and closer to designing a sports car
that incorporates all the company's Formula-1 experience in the ultimate street machine.
That car is the Fiorano 599.
Ferrari's designers and workers face a daunting challenge.
They have to build a car with the soul, and speed, of a Formula-1 racer,
but that handles smooth as silk on the streets of the real world.
They have to make it beautiful, according to the Ferrari legacy of art in motion.
And they have to make it luxurious enough to warrant its price tag.
Race car, street car,
work of art and luxury item.
It's a tall order for the team at the Maranello factory,
a vast complex comprising 45 buildings, with enough space to fit 50 football fields.
In all, eight separate areas of the factory will be involved in building the 599 from scratch.
They'll include the fires of the foundry,
the beauty of the body shop,
the robotic precision of the engine works and paint shop,
the handcrafting of the 599's leather upholstery
and the final assembly line, where it all comes together.
The factory's first challenge is to give the 599 its signature trait, speed.
The 599 boasts a V1 2 engine, putting out 620 horsepower.
This key component begins its life in the foundry.
Here, Ferrari's metalworkers cast the two core elements of the engine,
the cylinder head and the engine block.
Most factories mass-produce these parts, but Ferrari turns them out one at a time.
A separate mould is produced for every single engine,
made out of compacted sand and resin.
Other car companies use sand casts,
but at high-end factories like Ferrari, workers finish the sand moulds by hand.
It takes around five hours to hand finish the moulds for a single V1 2 engine.
Then they're fitted together like an intricate three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle
to minimize the chance of chips, cracks or flaws.
This will be cast into the cylinder head of a 599.
A flaming torch blackens the sand model with a thin layer of carbon.
The carbon acts as a lubricant,
allowing the molten metal to flow smoothly into the spaces of the cast.
Finally, the moulds are ready.
Precision is critical in this casting procedure.
Any flaw could cause the finished engine to under-perform.
The moisten metal is prepared just as carefully as the sand moulds.
In the melting process, obviously, there can't be any mistakes.
It has to be of the highest quality to be able to sustain a car that goes over 200mph.
At a temperature of over 700 degrees Celsius,
the heart of the 599 engine begins its fiery birth.
In the Ferrari foundry, the main furnace is fired up.
This is where the metal
that will be cast into the core of the 599's mighty engine will be melted.
Some of the raw metal being fed into the furnace
comes from previously-cast components that have failed Ferrari's quality checks.
The metal melts almost instantly, as massive electrical charges are fired through it.
Melting the two tones of metal in the furnace uses enough electricity in one day
to Light a house for an entire year!
The raw molten metal pours into a giant crucible for further purifying.
At 700 degrees, it Looks Like Liquid silver.
But, in fact, this is a super-strong, super-secret aluminum alloy,
specifically created for Ferrari's engines.
Nitrogen pumps through the metal in the crucible,
combining with any impurities, which float to the surface.
The pure alloy is transferred to smaller holding tanks,
from which the engine components will be cast.
This mould of compacted sand is about to become the cylinder head
of one of the most powerful production car engines ever made.
Metal gushes into the mould.
A casting takes place here every ten minutes.
Incredibly, only one in every 50 components fails its quality test
and is sent back to the scrap heap
because of the care that's gone into preparing both mould and metal.
While the foundry casts the Ferrari's V1 2 heart, workers in another building fashion its body.
Like many high-end sports car makers, Ferrari's body shop is part art studio.
But while the 599 may be Ferrari's Latest artwork,
it's also a masterpiece of aerodynamic engineering.
Thousands of hours have gone into designing a sports car that's not only beautiful,
but can cheat the air almost as well as Ferrari's FormuIa-1 race cars.
In essence, the 599's body shape is the opposite of an aircraft wing.
At high speed, its streamlined body creates negative Lift,
using the airflow over and through it to press the car to the road.
The down force means more secure road handing and far better traction out of corners.
But the Ferrari's streamlined body needs strong support.
If you want to put a FormuIa-1 race car on the street,
you need a chassis that can take the stresses of high speed and high performance.
Made entirely of aluminum alloy,
the 599's chassis needs to be strong enough to do three things:
It has to be able to withstand high-speed impacts,
it has to anchor the 230kg V1 2 engine,
which produces a tremendous amount of torque and power,
and the chassis also has to provide a strong mount for the wheel assembly and suspension.
At high speeds, the wheels of a sports car go up and down Like a jackhammer,
so Ferrari has equipped the 599's chassis with super-tough suspension mounts.
High-strength adhesives and meticulous hand welding
make the joints in this chassis as strong as the original metal.
Regular cars' chassis are put together by machines,
but high performance sports cars Like the 599 are hand welded.
This means the chassis can be more exactly shaped,
and the body panels more precisely fitted.
With the 599's chassis now welded and the first of its body panels attached,
it's time for one of the factory's robots to take over.
It operates Like a gigantic stapler.
The robot is programmed to precisely drive 1 80 rivets at specific points on the chassis.
The rivets give the car the muscle
to hold itself together at 330-pIus kilometers an hour.
Each time these jaws snap,
they punch a high-strength rivet through up to three Layers of solid aluminum.
But the chassis can't move on down the Line until it's passed a rigorous test.
For this, another robot comes into play, one equipped with needle-like probes.
The probes test the chassis in 800 different places.
At each of these points, they touch the metal.
When they do this, they're measuring the body against a computer model,
searching for tiny cracks in the metal or any flaw in the chassis' overall shape.
If a flaw is detected, the chassis is sent back, but that only happens to one in every hundred.
There's an important reason for this insistence on perfection:
any flaw in a component of a high-performance sports car can create a ''ripple effect'',
and the flaw can magnify through all the other components dependent on it.
At high speeds, the stresses on the chassis could turn cracks into fissures,
and compromise the car's structural integrity.
After an exhaustive examination, the robot arms rise for the Last time.
The 599's metal skeleton is now ready to receive the rest of its sculpted body panels.
Back in the foundry, the engine casts are complete.
Seven minutes Later, they've cooled enough for the sand moulds to be removed.
There's nothing too high-tech about this process!
The compressed sand is simply shaken off the solidified metal.
The high-performance specs of the 599 require engine parts that are perfect,
so powerful X-rays scan the cast components,
Looking for any microscopic cracks or flaws in the metal.
The slightest vibration from a defect in the finished engine
would be magnified at high speed.
In the worst case scenario, the engine itself could fail.
Components that pass the X-ray test are hand finished,
Then, they're checked again.
It's no surprise that Ferrari foundry workers feel they're making more than just an engine.
We create the soul, and then someone else adds the organs to make it Live.
In the body shop, metal becomes art as the 599's sleek outer shell meets its chassis.
When anyone thinks of a Ferrari, you think of two things in particular:
one, the motor, immense power,
the sound, the growl of it,
and second, the external beauty of the Ferrari.
Like its chassis, the Ferrari's body panels are aluminum.
It may be the most powerful production car the company's ever made,
but its fully-aluminum construction means it's also one of the Lightest.
The 599 has more power propelling Less car.
Workers fix the doors, bonnet and boot to their precision hinges
and align them to a tenth of a millimeter.
From this point on, it's all about art,
creating a finished body that's as close to flawless as possible.
The body shop's specialists check for trouble spots, dents or flaws, no matter how small.
To the people at Ferrari, this is no Longer a car. It's a sculpture.
In a sealed Plexiglas room, where no speck of dust can interfere with its final inspection,
the 599 is given the thumbs up to move out of the body shop.
We have to guarantee the perfect shape,
the unique finishing, consequently the perfect paint job.
The unfinished Fiorano 599 then takes its next step towards the finish Line.
This is Ferrari's 21 st century paint shop,
one of the most advanced of its kind in any car factory in the world.
The environment is a high priority for this paint shop.
Most materials are water-based, and nearly all waste is captured and recycled.
FormuIa-1 racers don't have to worry about rust, but the 599 is built for the streets.
Before it can be painted, every 599 car body receives an anti-corrosion treatment Like this.
Ferrari claims it's the most advanced rust-proofing in the world:
a claim that's hard to test,
because the chemical process used here is a trade secret.
The one-tone bodies are plunged, tipped, and shaken.
Every one of these giant baths chemically alters the metal of the car's body,
creating a super-thin armour against the elements.
These anti-corrosion baths also give the 599's body a positive electrical charge,
something that's vital to the next stage of the painting process.
At the end of this tunnel Lies the heart of the paint shop.
It's a glass-walled, hermetically-sealed place,
populated by graceful robots and their human controllers.
The chambers are sealed to avoid any air draughts
that might cause the tiny particles of primer and paint to drift and create an uneven finish.
This first coat is a primer, a special compound that binds the actual paint to the body.
The primer is a dust, as fine as talcum powder,
which sticks to the body because of the electrical charge the metal was given earlier.
The robots are programmed
to spread the particles of primer into a Layer about as thick as a human hair.
The body then glides into a giant oven,
which bakes the primer, fusing it onto the metal,
and providing the foundation Layer for the final paint finish.
Every stage of a Ferrari's construction is about beauty and power.
The 599's power is its V1 2 engine, created in the engine works.
The engine blocks and cylinder heads cast in the foundry
are now fine-tuned to an almost microscopic degree.
Meanwhile, other workers turn out the rest of the engine's 800 parts.
Ferrari's engine works is an architectural triumph.
Natural Light floods in through a glass roof.
This is not only environmentally efficient, but it also provides better Light for the workers.
And in the centre of the engine works is a small forest of trees growing indoors.
These trees help maintain the ideal humidity and air quality levels for engine construction.
They're also here to ensure the workers' comfort.
This factory is rated as one of the best places to work in Italy.
Ferrari workers don't see themselves as part of a production Line,
rather as craftspeople, building a handmade product.
My passion is to make Ferraris.
I think I've made a part of the motor of every single vehicle that you see on the road,
and every time I see a Ferrari, I feel pride in my heart.
Inside that motor is a part of my heart.
At every step of a Ferrari's creation, they sign off on their work.
I am, and we all are, absolutely responsible for what we build.
We certify what we do so it can be traced back to us.
Throughout the engine works,
Ferrari's metal workers are machining the most detailed components of the V1 2 engine.
Italians have a reputation for being
some of the most skilled metal workers in the world.
This tiny valve is only one of the 599 engine's 800 components,
but it alone takes nearly an hour to make.
While the emphasis in the engine works is on hand crafting,
there are two very special robots here.
The first is a robot called Romeo and Juliet.
These two arms are Romeo, giving Juliet a ring,
but this is no ordinary ring.
It's actually the valve seat in the engine's cylinder.
It forms a seal through which the valve moves,
allowing air into the chamber, where it mixes with the fuel and explodes.
With the valve moving in and out thousands of times a second,
the valve seat has to be tight, immovable in fact.
If it came Loose, it could enter the engine and cause complete failure.
Romeo dips each valve ring into a bath of Liquid nitrogen,
freezing it to minus 1 80 degrees and shrinking it by a tiny amount.
Juliet holds the cylinder head while Romeo sets the valve ring in place.
The first is a practice run, to check the exact position of the two components.
Laser sensors make minute adjustments, then Romeo places the valve ring.
In the following few seconds, the frozen ring warms and expands.
It's now Locked in place.
The second of the engine works' two robots
has to fine-tune another critical component: the crankshaft.
The power generated by the 599's engine is transferred through the crankshaft,
to the transmission,
to the driveshaft,
to the wheels,
and then to the open road.
At top speed, the 599's crankshaft is spinning over 1 00 times a second.
If it failed,
the pistons attached to it would shoot through the engine block and destroy the engine.
The crankshaft is the heart of the motor,
therefore every tiny operation needs to be as precise as possible and as perfect as possible.
When it's spinning at over 8,000rpm,
any imperfections could cause the crankshaft to become unbalanced
and create potentially destructive vibrations throughout the entire engine.
The robot drills, shaves and grinds the crankshaft, until it's perfectly balanced.
Removing excess metal also improves the engine's performance.
The Less the crankshaft weighs, the easier it is to make it spin,
and the faster it spins, the more power the engine generates.
Eight hundred separate components have been made,
fine-tuned and checked in the engine works.
From its birth from molten metal in the foundry,
the 599's engine is about to be assembled into its final form.
While the engine works builds the power,
the paint shop adds the beauty for which Ferrari is famous.
The final coats of paint are applied.
Unlike the primer, the paint is Liquid.
Tiny droplets spin out from the tips of these robot arms.
Their movements have been precisely programmed using computer models.
The robots apply exactly the right amount of paint to achieve a perfectly even surface.
You just have to Look at the Lines of the car,
the effort we put in producing the best paint job that it's possible to produce.
After the paint comes an ultra-tough clear ceramic Layer.
The smoothness and the quality of the clear coat that we put on the car,
it's a ceramic clear coat, very hard, very shiny and it's very durable.
The clear ceramic coat provides extreme scratch resistance,
something you want when you're spending 200,000 Euros on your car.
Though 1 2 colors are standard,
599 owners can order the car in any color they choose.
The bodies are polished to a surface as smooth as window glass.
But before a Ferrari Leaves the paint shop, it has to pass a rigorous final quality check.
The slightest surface flaws in the paint work are polished and rechecked.
The paint depth is measured ultrasonically to within a thousandth of a millimeter
to achieve an evenness of finish and color.
If an imperfection can't be polished away,
the body is sent back down the Line to be repainted.
Robots finish the paint job, but a man will assemble the engine.
Each engine is built by one man, by hand.
Putting together the 800 precision components
is one of the most skilled jobs in the Ferrari factory.
The engine mechanic fits the massive engine block
with the pistons that will turn explosive energy into propulsive force.
Then he puts the most critical piece of all into the engine block, the crankshaft.
The remainder of the engine takes shape as the hours spin by.
A full day after work began, the engine is finished.
From fire and raw metal, this has been made.
The workers in Ferrari's paint shop and engine works have done their jobs.
Now, the beauty and the brute strength are about to come together.
Ferrari's Maranello factory has met two of its challenges.
The newly designed 599 has its powerful heart and its beautiful body,
but that power will have to be harnessed, and that body kept on the road,
if this heir to a FormuIa-1 racer is to perform on the street.
Meeting that challenge is the job of the final assembly Line.
On regular assembly Lines, the car being made never stops moving,
but a Ferrari stops 32 separate times during its final assembly.
At the top of the Line, the 599's biggest, heaviest, and most crucial component
finally meets the body it will propel at speeds of over 300kmh.
The V1 2 engine alone accounts for a fifth of the 599's total weight.
The engine has to be bolted to the chassis and wired up.
Fierce Italian pride drives the mechanics' work.
Of course we all feel proud of our work, because we have to give the best we have,
so that every vehicle is the same as the next, exactly the same.
The engine is in, but that's only half the job.
They've still got to fit the 599's transmission system,
made up of its gearbox and massive driveshaft, already bolted together.
The engine creates the power, 620 horsepower,
but all that power is transferred by the driveshaft
through the gearbox to the 599's axles and wheels.
The driveshaft is one of the only components encased in steel.
It has to be if it's to handle the power surging through it from the engine.
That power is controlled by the 599's racing-bred gear system.
Changing gears in the 599 is virtually instant.
In the space of a tenth of a second,
the power pumping from the engine can be shifted up or down a gear.
That's ten times faster than the gears in an average car.
And only a fraction more time than it takes in a FormuIa-1 car.
This extraordinary power management allows a Ferrari
to accelerate through all its gears and be moving at over 200kmh in just 1 1 seconds.
But only if the factory workers get it right.
On the assembly Line, they finish mounting the 599's engine and transmission system.
It's not enough for a sports car to go fast. It also has to stay on the road!
The suspension system in high-performance vehicles Like the 599
is far more important than it is in a normal car.
The 599's suspension uses revolutionary shock absorbers developed in the United States.
While conventional shock absorbers are oil-filled,
the shock absorbers used on the 599 contain a magnetically-charged fluid.
Like two opposing magnets, they read and react to every bump in the road
far more precisely and instantly than oil-filled shock absorbers.
Installing the shock absorbers is a critical and painstaking step in the 599's final assembly.
But Ferrari's mechanics mount this key component in under an hour.
The Maranello factory has now given the 599 speed, beauty and handing for the street,
but there's still one challenge Left to meet: Luxury.
That's the job of the coachworks,
where the 599 gets its Luxurious Leather interior, each piece individually handcrafted.
A highly-trained team of seamstresses
draws on a centuries-old Italian tradition of fine Leatherwork.
Specially-selected cow hides
are transformed into the Ferrari's upholstery, dashboard and trim.
This is the coachworks' concession to the 21 st century:
a computer-controlled marking system to avoid even minute defects in the Leather.
Ferrari's customers pay handsomely for perfection.
A Laser beam directed by the computer precisely cuts the sections of Leather.
But beyond this stage, it's all human skill with needle and thread,
that creates the unique interiors in all the colors of the rainbow.
If money's no object, Ferrari will dye the Leather of your 599 any color you want,
and the same with the stitching.
The Leather is the same as that used to make some of Europe's finest furniture.
Ferrari will even create matching Luggage in the same Leather.
Everything is sewn, stretched and applied with the same meticulous care,
from this roll bar to these dashboards.
It takes an average of 30 hours to cut, sew and assemble a single Ferrari's Leather interior.
It's pride, because I go out and I see a Ferrari,
and I always stop and Look and I say, ''Hey! Maybe I sewed the Leather in that one.''
Each time we finish a piece, the satisfaction is huge,
because it's a totally manual job that creates something from nothing,
and seeing as something is one of the most prestigious cars in the world,
it is a great satisfaction for everyone.
Back on the assembly Line,
the final pieces of this 200,000-Euro jigsaw puzzle are being put in place.
The computer-controlled instrumentation inside a 599
is almost identical to that in the cockpit of Ferrari's FormuIa-1 racing cars.
The car's computer monitors all its electronic systems,
everything from the heaters in the seats, to the all-important traction control system.
The traction control system processes data coming from sensors on the 599's wheels,
then modifies the car's handing to give the driver more control in any situation.
In wet conditions, for example, the system makes minute adjustments to avoid skidding.
The 599's wheels are made of aluminum alloy,
which means they're both incredibly Light and incredibly strong.
Thanks to its racing heritage, the 599's tyres have a footprint twice as wide as a regular car's,
and more rubber on the road means there's more grip for acceleration and cornering.
The 599's windshield is precision curved to maintain the car's aerodynamic profile.
Final checks are done on every part of the car.
And only when it's passed this inspection is the 599 declared ready
to receive its badge of honour: Ferrari's prancing horse.
But despite all the care and all the pride that have gone into its construction,
the finished 599 must still prove itself road-ready.
And in Ferrari terms, road-ready is as close as you can get to race-ready.
Ferrari's workers have done everything they can,
and taken the 599 from raw metal to finished sports car,
but it now has to pass a final test.
This is the racetrack at Maranello, where Ferrari tests its Legendary FormuIa-1 cars.
And it's also where new 599's are tested
to ensure their performance matches Ferrari's promise.
High on the List of critical checks is the traction control system.
The tiny sensors mounted behind the wheels feed data to the car's computer,
adjusting its handing from one split-second to the next.
On the racetrack, the test driver first checks the 599 with its traction control turned off.
Then he performs the same manoeuvres with the traction control system engaged.
For a normal driver,
this enhanced handing could be the difference between maintaining control and Losing the car.
But despite its FormuIa-1 pedigree, the 599 is not bred for the racetrack,
so, in the hills above the Ferrari factory, each one is put through a second road test.
The 599's suspension and handing are also tested in a real world environment.
So is its tenth-of-a-second gear shift system.
Each gear change means a virtually instant shift in the power reaching the wheels.
If the gear system is even a fraction of a second out,
the car could be sent into a high-speed slide,
something that could be deadly on the open road.
The test driver pushes the 599 to its Limits,
continually checking the computer instrumentation
and constantly matching the cars promised performance against its actual performance.
With its V1 2 heart pumping as it never has before,
and its aerodynamic body cutting the Italian air,
the new Ferrari is now free of the factory,
and on its way to an owner who's waited two years for their prize.
AII told, it's taken nearly two months to create this fusion of power and art.
Each section, and each worker,
has been part of the team that's brought the Fiorano 599 into existence.
Day by day, part by part,
and process by process, the Ferrari mega-factory has delivered perfection!