Cars of Coolhaven

The best way to spot a nice car? I always thought that you had to forget to bring your camera on a trip. Normally, that really helps But now I have an even better method of running into th most exotic sightings: I do bring my camera, but the battery is almost flat. And… before you leave your house, you forget to put the memory card in the camera, so that you can only shoot six or seven pictures. Works a charm, look what I spotted:

The Ferrari F430, arguably one of the best Ferrari’s even build… I had to delete some pictures of a BMW Z3 M Coupé which I saw earlier, but it is a small price to pay. Along with a restyled body, the F430 features a 4.3 L V8 petrol engine derived from a shared Ferrari/Maserati design. This car is equiped with the innovative electronic differential (E-diff) – first developed by the racing division for the Scuderia’s all-conquering F1 cars – which improves traction and roadholding under all conditions. The Spider also features the steering wheel-mounted rotary switch, known to the Scuderia’s drivers as the ‘manettino’, which allows the car’s set-up to be adjusted easily and quickly.

Formula 1 is again the inspiration for the development of the company’s road cars. Designed by Pininfarina, the F430 Spider’s sinuous lines, in fact, were fine-tuned using state-of-the-art computer aerodynamics simulation programmes usually employed exclusively by the F1 team.

Just like the berlinetta, the new Spider incorporates two elliptical air intakes that feed the front radiators. The shape of the intakes is inspired by Ferrari’s racing cars from the 1961 season, especially the 156 F1 which Phil Hill drove to that year’s F1 Championship title. The spoiler that joins the two intakes at their bottom edge is highly effective in directing the central air flow towards the flat underbody.

The F430 Spider boasts a compact, fully automatic electric hood that allows the engine to be seen in all its glory at all times and which, once lowered, takes up relatively little space, despite the uncompromising central-rear engine layout.

On the BBC Top Gear TV show, shown on the 17 July 2005, the Stig achieved a Power Lap time of 1.22.9. While the laptime was 0.9 seconds less than a Lamborghini Murciélago, the F430 was slower than the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale at 1.22.3. The slower lap was blamed on the F430′s Bridgestone tires supposedly having less grip than the Challenge Stradale’s Pirellis. Jeremy Clarkson has commented on the F430′s handling being absolutely brilliant, a marked improvement over the 360; he claimed that Ferrari holds that “even the most butter-fingered, incapable driver could drive the F430 around a track only one second slower than the most skilled test driver”. He has in fact proclaimed, on more than one occasion, that the Ferrari 430 is “just about the best car I’ve ever driven”, a status he previously attributed to the F355.

Borrowed the facts from Wikipedia and the like