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Ecclestone wonders if F1's upcoming turbo V6s should get augmented sound [w/videos]

While every team on the Formula One grid is worried about making a good showing in this year's championship at the same time as they develop a brand-new car for next year's championship, Bernie Ecclestone and F1 circuit promoters have a different concern: how next year's cars will sound. The current cars use 2.4-liter, naturally-aspirated V8s that can reach 18,000 revolutions per minute and employ dual exhaust, next year's engine formula calls for 1.4-liter turbocharged V6s that are capped at 15,000 rpm and are constrained to a single exhaust outlet. Ecclestone and promoters like Ron Walker believe the new engines sound like lawnmowers and that the less thrilling audio will keep people from coming to races. If Walker's Australian Grand Prix really is shelling out almost $57 million to hold the race, every ticket counts. As a fix, according to a report in Autoweek, Ecclestone "suggests that the only way to guarantee [a good sound] may be to artificially adjust the tone of the V6s."
However, neither the manufacturers nor the governing body of F1, the FIA, think there will be a problem. Ecclestone fears that if the manufacturers "don't get it right" they'll simply leave the sport, but the only three carmakers and engine builders left next year, Renault (its 2014 "power unit" is pictured), Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari are so embedded that it would stretch belief to think they'd leave the table over an audio hiccup - if said hiccup even occurs. And frankly, these issues always precede changes to engine formulas, as they did when the formula switched from V10 to V8; fans, though, are probably less focused on the engines and more on the mandated standardization of the sport and the spec-series overtones that have come with it.
No one knows yet what next year's engines will sound like, but we've assembled a few videos below to help us all start guessing. The first is an engine check on an Eighties-era John Player Special Renault with a 1.5-liter V6 turbo, after that is Ayrton Senna qualifying in 1986 in the Lotus 98T that also had a 1.5-liter V6 turbo, then you'll find a short with a manufactured range of potential V6 engine notes, and then the sound of turbocharged V6 Indycars testing last year at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Any, or none of them, could be Formula One's future.

Italian police foil plot to snatch Enzo Ferrari's body

Italian authorities on Tuesday said they had foiled a plot to steal the body of automotive legend Enzo Ferrari. That's Enzo Ferrari the man, not Ferrari Enzo Ferrari the supercar. Ferrari died in 1988 at age 90. He founded the company that produces some of the world's fastest and most expensive cars. Police in Nuoro on the island of Sardinia told a news conference that a gang had planned to snatch the body and demand a ransom from the Ferrari family or the company, Reuters and Italian news outlets reported. Authorities said the plot was discovered during an investigation into arms and drug trafficking. Helicopters and parachute regiment officers were used to execute 34 arrest warrants. Ferrari's body is interred above ground in a family mausoleum in Modena, near the Ferrari plant at Maranello in central Italy. Gang members had allegedly conducted several inspections of the burial site to plan the operation. The Ferrari founder has been in the news a lot recently. Two movie biopics are coming out, in which Robert De Niro and Hugh Jackman will each play the racing great.Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Auto News Government/Legal Weird Car News Ferrari enzo ferrari

Ferrari Roma platform to underpin Purosangue SUV, as product roadmap takes shape

To create the Roma, Ferrari started with the platform used for the Portofino convertible. Engineers strengthened and lightened the architecture and made it modular, so that it will support the company's range of front-engined vehicles included in CEO Louis Camilleri's near-term product roadmap of 15 new vehicles over the next three years. Auto Express reports one of those products will be the Purosangue SUV – or FUV, Ferrari Utility Vehicle if you heed the carmaker's marketers – expected to debut in 2021 before going on sale in 2022 or 2023. The breadth of possibility built into the platform means it can swallow Ferrari's range of V8 and V12 engines, as well as the coming V6, plus plug-in hybrid equipment and all-wheel drive mechanicals.  Although observers figure a V12 Purosangue will grace the lineup eventually, models with smaller engines braced with hybrid assistance are expected first. The V12, in fact, is unlikely to get a hybrid form if Ferrari can help it, the brand's marketing manager saying, "To be honest, electrifying a V12 means creating, very probably, a heavy and big car. So electrification ideally should be coupled with smaller engines." Absent Ferrari's righteous 6.5-liter V12, Ferrari's head of technology says there will be other ways the vehicle codenamed "175" distinguishes itself from V8-powered super-SUV competition, but wouldn't clarify what those ways are. We'll guess the people-hauler slots into the company's GT vehicle classification alongside the GTC4Lusso, Portofino, and Roma. In the next decade, the GT category grows with a new supercar that marks "the return of an elegant model" cued off classic, mid-20th-century Ferrari Gran Turismos, as well as a battery-electric car after 2025. The Sport Range includes the 812Superfast and 812 GTS, 488 and 488 Pista, and SF90 Stradale. The Icona line kicked off with the Monza SP1 and SP2, and will expand with "timeless design[s] of iconic Ferraris reinterpreted with innovative materials and state of the art technologies." One-offs like the F12 TRS, SP12 EC and SP38 form the Special Series. The carmaker's entire range will be split across two modular platforms, one for front-engined placement, one mid-engined. At the pointy end of the product roadmap, it's thought Ferrari's already begun development of its LaFerrari successor.