Drive to Impress

I don’t know if life imitates art or art imitates life. What I do know is that my new girlfriend was adamant that I go to Connecticut to meet her family. She wanted to make a big impression about the “rich boy” she had found at Billy Bob’s in Ft. Worth, Texas. As we planned the trip I was reminded of those movies I have seen where someone want to impress someone so they get a car to drive that may make the “impressor” look incredible to the “impressee.”

While I drive a Hummer here in Texas, I thought some high dollar car might be just the trick. So I rented a 2008 Ferrari F430 Spider. Whoa! Now, not only are the future in-laws (maybe) thinking their little girl has got her a super rich Texan, I have found the car of a man’s dreams.

The F430 Spider has one powerful V8 providing an impressive 483 hp at 8500 rpm. The guy at the rental car company told me that ”peak torque is 343 pound-feet at 5200 rpm, 80 percent of which is available below 3500 rpm.” In other words, it’s fast! Very fast! Some testers, I understand, have managed a zero to 60 mph time of just 3.5 seconds. That will get you to second base quicker than anything I know.

Now that I am back home, I started checking out some facts. I found out this mid-engine supercar goes head-to-head with Lamborghini's Gallardo Spyder, which is more powerful, but generally regarded as less nimble on the road. The F430 uses a 4.3-liter V8, while the Gallardo uses a 5.0-liter V10. Either one is smaller than the powerplant in the Hummer, but nimble and quick are not words associated with my behemoth.

You can get the F430 with either the classic Ferrari open-gate manual gearbox or with the F1 paddle shift (at least the rental car company I used had both) that Ferrari has continuously developed and refined over recent years. The literature says “Ferrari's F1 gearbox for the F430 has been tuned by engineers on the Gestione Sportiva racing side. It incorporates a new control strategy which improves gear change speed and smoothness under hard use. Changing gear takes just 150 milliseconds.”

I don’t know about all that, but I do know it’s a head turner, a beauty that will impress a girl’s mom and dad, and score big with the girl (or girls, as the case may be). I am kind glad I learned something from all those movies about how to impress someone. Even me!