Category: Exotic Sports 
Price Range: £197,673 to £197,673
Hugely fast with sensational acceleration; enormous grip with foolproof, friendly handling and fine feedback; looks terrific and sounds even better; good ride and great usability
Handbrake needs a hefty tug; some early build-quality glitches on test car; will be very expensive
Here's the ultimate front-engined supercar, a car that makes a Mercedes SLR McLaren feel aloof and clumsy. Quicker than an F40 yet a hundredth as frightening, the 599 GTB is a towering achievement, a new benchmark and the fastest-accelerating car we have ever driven on the road
Approx £170,000. On sale in UK October
Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa says his company's cars are being driven more and more by the customers. So, he says, the 599 had to be a car to use, not just to be put away.
Its pace is greater even than that of the mighty F40 of 1987, but it's very easy to drive. Too easy? No, because to get the best out of it calls for tidiness and commitment, but anyone could get into a 599 and drive it competently.
There will be a manual gearbox version, but Felisa expects the great majority of 599s to have the electro-hydraulic manual auto F1-Superfast shift (Superfast is an old Ferrari model name, incidentally). Only with that system can you make the most of the car's potential, he says.
You sit low, behind that long, power-bulging bonnet and, at first, both the steering wheel and the accelerator pedal seem too vertical. These feelings soon fade once you're moving, though. Low-speed manoeuvring is easy, thanks to the unexpectedly glassy cabin and a fine view out, and in the unlikely event you want to use the six-speed gearbox in automatic mode it works pretty smoothly. The increased computer power that has helped hone the Superfast part of the shift is also used to smooth out the jerks and surges that used to plague these gearboxes in auto mode.
Really, though, you want to use manual mode with its two steering-column-mounted shift paddles - right up, left down. How quickly they shift the gears depends mainly on where you've set the 'manettino' knob on the steering wheel. As in the F430, this lets you select ice mode (gentle shifts, no first gear, restricted revs), low-grip mode (soft damping, quicker but still-soft shifts), sport mode (the normal one), race mode (faster shifts, firmer damping, much more tail-sliding freedom but still a safety net) and a final position with everything bar the ABS and brake-force distribution switched off. Each mode triggers a different set of data on the LCD panel to the left of the giant rev-counter, but a button on the back of the steering wheel lets you change to a different data screen.
Of course it gets five stars. Not only is the pace sensational, it's fabulously accessible.
You can select a 'launch control' mode for the perfect getaway, which lets the engine rev to its peak torque level (448lb-ft at 5,600rpm) before engaging the clutch for an ultimate getaway, but you don't have to rev the engine to anything like its 7,600rpm peak power speed to hurl the 599 along at an awe some pace. The engine revs with huge glee and total smoothness, lighting a sequence of steering-wheel LEDs and emitting a fabulous, multi-layered V12 howl as it does so (it's a lot to do with the third and sixth harmonics, apparently), but it pulls hard from surprisingly low revs and idles perfectly.
It's the sort of performance that, when you're planning an overtake, alters the art of the possible. Those figures again: 0-62mph in 3.7 seconds, 0-124mph in 11 seconds, over 205mph all-out if you can find somewhere to do it. And the 599 feels rock-stable at big speeds, nailed to the road with never a missed heartbeat as you load yet more asphalt in an endless mountain autostrada bend. Sometimes, though, you can't resist a downshift with a high-speed auto-blip of the two throttles, and then full throttle to another part of the space-time continuum.
And if something gets in your way, big brakes will haul you down to real-world speeds without worry. Our test car had the optional carbon-ceramic brakes - the lighter discs reduce unsprung weight and improve the ride, too - and although far from quiet, with obvious friction-rubbing sounds, they proved extremely effective. The pedal action proved a touch soft when going for broke around Ferrari's Fiorano test track (from which the 599 gains the rest of its name), but the brakes never faded.
By the way, although Enzo-based, the 65-degree V12 engine has some modifications for its new role. The cylinder heads have a different water feed, mainly because the engine is front- rather than mid-mounted, and the connecting rods are steel rather than titanium. Also, the variable valve timing is fed from the normal oil pump instead of having its own, separate, high-pressure supply.
