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Why the Ferrari Enzo Ferrari debuted in Charlie’s Angels | The Car Stays in the Picture

The irregular series, The Car Stays in the Picture , covers the sometimes bizarre backstories of the real stars of movie favorites: the cars. In our last one, we covered the iconic Porsche 928 from Risky Business. This time, it's a homely hypercar's unusual footnote in history. The inelegantly named, and inelegantly styled, Ferrari Enzo Ferrari was, a technological triumph when it was unveiled in 2002 at the Paris Motor Show. The successor to the equally, but distinctly, unlovely F50, it was Maranello's latest ultra-exclusive supercar. It had a price tag and spec sheet to match: 6-liter V12, 6-speed Formula One-inspired electrohydraulic transmission, 660 hp, $650,000. It was also, at that fateful reveal in the City of Light, fresh off of a plane from Malibu, where it had just touched North American soil for the first time – or at least North American sand. It had been driven on a beach by a bikini-clad Demi Moore, in her star turn as a villain in the second filmic reboot of the 1970s Jigglevision TV show, Charlie's Angels, subtitled, appropriately enough Full Throttle. All of which begs the automotive question we love to ask at The Car Stays in the Picture: How the hell did something like this ever happen? "It was a combination between us having a very strong connection in Hollywood, and knowing the dealer, Giacomo Mattioli of Ferrari of Beverly Hills, that has always been quite prominent, used by a lot of movie directors," says Marco Mattiacci, the vice president of the Ferrari and Maserati brands in North America at the time. "But one of the things we were doing then was trying to find placements for Maserati. And we had to leverage that appeal of Ferrari." The Enzo was thus something of a Trojan Prancing Horse, with the re-launch of Maserati USA hiding inside – a carrot leading not a stick, but a trident, or maybe some slightly less familiar vegetable, like broccoli rabe. "In that movie, there was the Enzo. But there is also a 2002 Maserati Spyder. That was more of the key product placement. We had to place the Maserati," Mattiacci emphasizes.

Newlyweds crash rented Ferrari into a house

A newly married couple had a rough wedding day when they crashed their rented Ferrari into a house in Burnley, Lancashire. Lancashire Road Police tweeted a photo on April 17 of a white Ferrari 458 Spider that crashed into a row house. The crash folded the hood nearly in half and completely destroyed the car's front fascia but no one was injured, according to the Daily Mail. The car, worth a cool 240,000 pounds, or 342,500 dollars, is owned by a rental company called Platinum Executive Travel. The son of the company's owner, Aleem Iqbal, made a statement on Twitter after the crash, assuring his tens of thousands of followers that he was not at the wheel of the mangled Ferrari when it went into the wall. "Thanks for all the kind messages," Iqbal tweeted from his personal account. "I wasn't at the wheel and nobody was injured that's the main thing, have had a lot worse in business." In a follow up tweet he stated, "At least people in Burnley will have something to talk about for a few weeks." Iqbal's statement about worse things happening in his business is true, and this is not the first of PET's pricey supercars to be destroyed. Within a five-week period in 2014, arsonists destroyed four of PET's cars worth more than 500,000 pounds or 713,000 dollars. In one attack, a Lamborghini Aventador rented for a wedding was torched outside a house in Luton. Iqbal called that attack a "vile act of jealousy" targeting the family of the newlyweds. Weeks later, two Audi R8 Spyders and a Bentley Flying Spur were firebombed at the PET offices in Yardley. The Daily Mail has contacted Platinum Executive Travel for an official statement about the Ferrari crash, but has not received a response. The driver and passenger of the wrecked Ferrari were not identified. Related Video: News Source: The Daily Mail, The Mirror, TwitterImage Credit: Lancashire Road Police Weird Car News Ferrari Driving Performance Supercars rental car

2015 Spanish F1 Grand Prix makes its Deutsche mark

The first race of the European Formula One season inaugurates the second phase of the Championship. Teams overhaul their cars with the big updates they've been working on since Australia, and at the end of The Battle of Spain we find out how the positions on the field have changed. Mercedes-AMG Petronas driver Nico Rosberg brought a big update to his psychology, straight-up beating teammate Lewis Hamilton to take his first pole position of the season. Mercedes owns the front row and Ferrari maintains its status as primary challenger, Sebastian Vettel lining up in third. Williams proved it's been hitting the books to do better in class, though, Valtteri Bottas slotting into fourth. And Toro Rosso's visit to a track that rewards strong aero rewarded them with the best team grid position since the Italian Grand Prix in 2008: Carlos Sainz secured fifth, ahead of Max Verstappen in sixth. Kimi Raikkonen's bout of Saturday woes – it seems the Finn is always handicapped by lots of tiny issues – continued in Barcelona with one of his sets of prime tires getting cooked by malfunctioning tire warmers. He recovered well enough to take seventh on the grid, but he's got some strong competition ahead of him. He led three other drivers in the Continuous Issues department, Daniil Kvyat unable to wrestle his Infiniti Red Bull Racing higher than eighth, Williams driver Felipe Massa getting it wrong in Turn 3 to fall five places behind his teammate Bottas, and Daniel Ricciardo in the second Red Bull enduring another engine change and sloppy car behavior to get tenth. And while it turned out to be a steady race a little rough around the edges, the positions on the battlefield just might have changed. A little. Of the 66 laps in the race we might have seen Rosberg for three of them – maybe. The German got a smashing start, had a clear lead into Turn 1, and after that we checked in occasionally during his two pit stops and again at the checkered flag. He owned the entire weekend the way we're used to seeing his teammate do, and the cameras left him alone to run his race. No one got within seven seconds of him during the first third, and as the pit stop strategies played out that cushion grew. He finished seventeen seconds ahead of Hamilton, and 45 seconds ahead of third-placed Vettel. Hamilton, on the back foot all three days, stumbled out of the gate.