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Ferrari 488 GTB among the best car designs of 2016 [UPDATE]

Can't decide whether the Ferrari 488 GTB looks better than the 458 Italia it replaces? A design jury has make up its mind. The 2016 Red Dot design awards are being announced today, and Maranello's latest eight-cylinder, mid-engined supercar won top honors. The Red Dot Awards for Product Design recognize the best new products on the market across an array of categories and industries, including automobiles. This year's panel of 41 experts, including Chris Bangle and Ken Okuyama, evaluated some 5,200 designs. From those, they selected 1,304 for a Red Dot award, and only 79 as the "Best of the Best" – among them the new Ferrari. This is the second year in a row the Prancing Horse marque has been awarded the honor, having been earned an award for the FXX K last year. A full list of this year's honorees isn't yet available, and it's uncertain that other automakers will earn awards. Last year's list also included the Mazda MX-5, Mercedes-AMG GT, and Volvo XC90. The Peugeot 308 SW, if you can believe it, was the only car awarded Best of the Best in 2014, the Audi R8 in 2013, and the Renault Twizy in 2012. UPDATE: The Red Dot organization has released the full list of this year's product design honorees, with the McLaren 570S and Kia Optima also awarded among the Best of the Best. Red Dots were also awarded to the Audi A4, R8, and Q7, BMW 7 Series, M2, and X1, Fiat Toro, Hyundai Ioniq, Kia Sportage, Mercedes C-Class, Skoda Superb Estate, and Volvo S90. The jurists also gave Honorable Mentions to the Borgward BX 7, Genesis G90, Mini Clubman, Qoros 3 City SUV, and Smart Fortwo Cabriolet. The 488 GTB wins the Red Dot award The V8 sports car named "Best of the Best" Maranello, 30 March 2016 – The 488 GTB has won the Red Dot Best of the Best award for its design and innovative lines. This is the latest in string of plaudits garnered by the Ferrari Style Centre which also picked up several IF Design Awards in Munich, Germany, at the start of the month. On the latter occasion, the big winner was the FXX K (Red Dot Best of the Best 2015) which took home the Gold Award, the Hannover institute's top prize. However, the 488 GTB and 488 Spider also scored a double whammy at the same event with a Design Excellence Award apiece.

Heads continue to roll at Scuderia Ferrari

It's a year of restructuring at Ferrari – especially when it comes to the Formula One department. Dissatisfied with the team's performance of late, parent company Fiat fired Ferrari's chairman, replaced its team principal twice and brought in another multiple world champion to replace the one it already had. But that's not the end of it. Under the direction of new chairman Sergio Marchionne and team principal Maurizio Arrivabene, the Maranello-based outfit is undergoing a purge in its ranks. Ferrari has fired its veteran engineering director Pat Fry (pictured above at left), its chief designer Nicolas Tombazis (center) and its tire guru Hirohide Hamashima (whom the team picked up shortly after Bridgestone left the sport, not pictured). In their places, Ferrari has named appropriate replacements, and has shuffled some additional staff around. F1 journalist Alberto Antonini, for example, has taken over the press office from Renato Bisignani who will now run the Scuderia's new commercial department. More vital, however, is James Allison, a longtime F1 engineer who previously worked for Ferrari for five years and returned from Lotus last year to take up position as the team's new technical director – too late to influence last season's chassis but now charged with developing next year's. Whether the radical reshuffling of its staff will be enough to reverse the team's fortunes, nobody can say for certain at this point. But without a single grand prix victory this past season, things can hardly get any worse for what historically has been the most victorious team in all of motorsport. The Scuderia Ferrari has been reorganized Maranello, 16 December – Within a few days from his arrival Maurizio Arrivabene, Managing Director of Ferrari's Gestione Sportiva and Team Principal of Scuderia Ferrari, has restructured his team with a flatter structure and clear assignment of responsibilities. James Allison is the Technical Director with two Italian engineers and home grown Scuderia talent reporting to him: Chief Designer Simone Resta and Power Unit Director Mattia Binotto, the latter will be supported by Chief Designer Power Unit Lorenzo Sassi, among others. Furthermore James Allison will direct track engineering activities ad interim.

Ferrari 458 M spotted, is there a turbo under there?

While it's still absolutely beautiful and a performance marvel (especially in Speciale trim), the Ferrari 458 Italia has to keep up with the rapidly evolving world in supercars if it wants to continue its success. Ferrari seems to know that it can't sit back and relax, because we're now seeing a disguised 458 testing for the second time.
Since we first saw it, rumor has emerged that it updated 458, reportedly called 458 M, may follow the lead of the recently revised California by using its turbocharged 3.9-liter V8 engine. The mill makes 553 horsepower and 557 pound-feet in that application, but those numbers clearly won't be enough for the Prancing Horse, because the standard 458 already makes more. Instead, Ferrari is expected to turn things up significantly to produce around 670hp, even more than the already gutsy Speciale.
Of course, to make the big change work, the 458 M must be able to ingest huge quantities of cool air to feed those turbos, and the camouflage on this test car is likely hiding the body changes to make that possible. Ferrari does a great job here of disguising things up front on this prototype, making it frustratingly hard to spot any changes.