2007 Ferrari 599 Gtb Fiorano Silverstone 9,077 Miles / California Car / Must See on 2040-cars

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Ferrari testing 458 successor in the snow?

It may not seem so long ago that Ferrari introduced the 458 Italia. But it's been on the market a solid 5 years since its launch in 2009, which makes it not only the oldest model in the company's lineup, but one of the oldest in its segment, the Lamborghini Huracan and McLaren 650S just having been launched in the past couple of months. So while a solitary Ferrari playing in the snow might otherwise seem like little more than an unlikely place for it to be, its chronology suggests the crew from Maranello could be up to something more.
The white 458 captured by our spy photographers in Northern Sweden appears to have something going on around its wheel arches. Aside from the panel gap that's taped up between the quarter panel and rear fender in front of the rear wheel arch, there appear to be some modifications around the front wheel arch. Just what they're for, we don't know, but their presence suggests something's up.
The test mule pictured here could be simply testing some new components, for whatever application, but if this is indeed a prototype for the 458's replacement, we'll probably start seeing more of these from here on in before the finished product comes around within the next couple of years - by which time the 458 will be a good seven years old, longer than the F430 or 360 Modena before it were on the market.

Father's ultra-rare Ferrari to leave family for a good cause

It isn't every day that the rarest of Ferrari models change hands. In fact, you can count your fingers to get the number of 275 GTB/4*S N.A.R.T. Spyders that ever existed. The 1967 Ferrari you see here is one of those ten Spyders, and it has stayed in the same family since it was bought new.
The car was bought through Luigi Chinetti, Ferrari's US importer at the time, by the late Eddie Smith Sr., a Ferrari collector and businessman from North Carolina. Smith kept it - and kept driving it - until the day he died six years ago. Since then, this remarkable machine has been collecting dust. Smith's son, Eddie Smith Jr., spent some time with Petrolicious to give a history of the car and explain why he and his family are going to do the one thing his father never could: sell it. The catch? All of the money it earns on the auction block will be donated to charity.
"It'll be a bittersweet thing, because we know the fact that all the money is going to charities that he would approve of," Smith Jr. said about his father, and it "will really make him smile, because he loved to give back."

Race Recap: 2013 Italian Grand Prix is mistakes, gremlins and metronomes [spoilers]

The low-downforce, 5.793-kilometer circuit in Monza, Italy is known as the Temple of Speed, but only a few of the qualifying performances would have clued you into it. Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber in the Infiniti Red Bull Racing chassis' lined up first and second, and it didn't seem like Vettel had to work too hard to do so. Nico Hülkenberg truly lived up to his nickname, The Hulk, and put his Sauber third on the grid, a massive drive and turn-of-speed that even he didn't expect, especially with his teammate Esteban Gutiérrez down in 13th.
The rest of the top ten was what you might expect. Shenanigans at Ferrari ended up with Felipe Massa out-qualifying Fernando Alonso for fourth and fifth, a situation that led to Alonso calling his team either "stupid" or "genius," depending on how you translate his Italian, his sarcasm and his honesty. They were followed by Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas, the soon-to-be Infiniti Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo in the Toro Rosso, the McLaren duo of Sergio Perez and Jenson Button and the second Toro Rosso of Jean-Eric Vergne.
Why wasn't Kimi Räikkönen at Lotus in that group? Because his car only had the pace to make 11th on the grid, so he said. And behind him, Lewis Hamilton - who "drove like an idiot," in his words - in the second Mercedes.