Special FXX: Sampling the Outrageously Fast, Shockingly Expensive "Super Enzo"

Motor Trend

11-07-2025

[This story first appeared in the January 2006 issue of MotorTrend] The windshield is curved like a fishbowl. And we are the fish. Outside, hundreds of fans lining the pit wall of Italy's Mugello racetrack are elbowing for a better view of the car we're sitting in, the brand-new FXX, a supercar so rock-star excessive it makes the almighty Enzo look like a teacher's pet. I'm in the passenger seat, lungs clamped tight by a five-point racing harness, all-too aware that every onlooker is asking in Italian, "Chi? Who the hell is that?"
In 2006, Ferrari unveiled the FXX, a 789-hp, track-only supercar. Piero Lardi Ferrari drove it at Mugello, nearly crashing during its debut. Priced at $1.92 million, all 29 units were sold, offering buyers training and track sessions, contributing data for future Ferraris.
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The man on my left, though, is recognized by all: Belted into the driver's seat is Piero Lardi Ferrari, the 61-year-old son of Enzo Ferrari and current vice chairman (and 10-percent owner) of the automaker his father founded in 1947. Ferrari's fingers tap the steering wheel; he's clearly feeling the pressure of giving his company's 789-horsepower, street-illegal "Super Enzo" its first public workout. "I'm sorry you have to ride with me," he says with a shy smile, his face a haunting likeness of his father's iconic profile. "I think I am not so fast."
Whether Ferrari is fast or not, the tifosi are here. Some 30,000 of them have come to Mugello to attend the final day of the annual Ferrari World Finals weekend, a racing-red orgy of speed and wealth that includes the championship runoffs of the Ferrari Challenge race series, gala dinners for the company's best customers, lots of European playboys arm in arm with skinny ladies in Chanel sunglasses, celebrity guests, laps by vintage Ferrari race cars, an F1 demonstration by Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, and--everywhere you look--Ferraris of every shape and description.
Suddenly, a mechanic in red Ferrari overalls is signaling us with a furious twirl of his fingers. Time to go. With the press of a button, Ferrari starts Ferrari and the FXX explodes to life, the shattering exhaust note of its unfiltered, 6.3-liter V-12 causing everyone to step back and clamp their hands against their ears. Another aide in a red Ferrari racing jacket waves us out of the garage. The pit-exit light is green. The track is ours.
The schedule calls for a series of gentle parade laps. But Piero Ferrari is an Italian--and driving a spectacular new Ferrari in front of a wildly enthusiastic home crowd.
He stands on the gas.
The FXX charges like an angry rhino onto the circuit, my view blurring into a funnel of waving spectators and onrushing asphalt as Ferrari flicks the right shift paddle again and again, the transmission hammering up through the gears, the untrimmed carbon-fiber cockpit an echo chamber with a 789-horsepower monster screaming inside it. We charge down the front straight, Ferrari leaning into the steering wheel, his right foot mashing the throttle. Ahead, approaching fast, lie the first tight turns of the tricky Mugello circuit...
"The FXX isn't a car," says Amedeo Felisa, Ferrari's soft-spoken vice general manager and the man largely responsible for the last decade's worth of Ferrari road cars. "It's a concept." What a concept: 29 of Ferrari's richest, luckiest customers will become, in effect, drivers for Team Ferrari. After buying an FXX, they'll be trained at Fiorano by Ferrari's top drivers, test the car over the next two years during at least 12 company-supported track sessions (four each in Europe, Japan, and the United States), and share their downloaded track data with Ferrari technicians.
"The FXX will not be raced," says Felisa. "It's a test car only. Just as Schumacher helped us develop the Enzo, we intend to use the data we obtain from our 29 FXX clients to help us produce future Ferraris of extreme performance. We want to build supercars that are tuned not just for professional racing drivers." The price for this ultimate Walter Mitty fantasy: 1.6 million Euros--nearly two million U.S. dollars (that sum does include a custom driving suit and helmet, though). And, yes, all 29 FXXs are already sold.
Ferrari's code name for the Enzo was FX, so adding an extra "X" seemed appropriate for a follow-up car with something extra--and then some. The FXX is a track-only car; it has no turn signals or other "civilian" gear, and it's designed to run on specially made 19-inch Bridgestone slicks. Behind the FXX's cockpit, the V-12 has been enlarged from 5998 to 6262 cc and features redesigned combustion chambers, a new crankcase, a low-backpressure exhaust, and revised cam profiles--all of which increase output from the Enzo's 651 horsepower to 800 (which converts to 789 SAE net) at 8500 rpm. Partnering the engine is an updated version of Ferrari's paddle-shift F1 gearbox, with shift time reduced to less than 100 milliseconds, nearly as quick as Ferrari's F1 cars.
A new active aerodynamics system uses six computer-controlled actuators that, above 150 mph or so, open to redirect underbody airflow--lowering the car's drag while also increasing downforce by roughly 40 percent compared with the Enzo. Other enhancements include specially developed Brembo composite-ceramic brakes and a claimed 220-pound weight reduction (to just 2700 pounds). The result? "Although we don't have an official acceleration number yet," says project leader Giuseppe Petrotta, "the FXX can reach 60 mph in about 2.8 seconds--nearly as quick as a Ferrari F1." Then Petrotta grins. "Around Fiorano, it is six seconds per lap faster than the Enzo."
Piero Lardi Ferrari is going for it. He brakes hard for Mugello's 180-degree Turn One, bangs off three rifle-shot downshifts, then powers through the apex and up a sharp incline. This is no parade lap. We fly into the left-hand Luco turn, and Ferrari is back on the power.
We're out of control! Quicker than you can say arrivederci, the back end of the FXX lurches around, and we're spinning off the track and onto the grass. For one long, sickening, sliding second, the question hangs silently but thickly in the air: Will we very publicly, very humiliatingly write off this brand-new Ferrari ultracar against the Armco, or won't we?
We don't. The FXX twirls to a stop without breaking anything other than our adrenal glands. Ferrari turns us around, powers through the gravel at the edge of the track, and heads toward the next corner. "Cold tires," I offer.
"Si," Ferrari nods quietly. "Very cold." He accelerates again, but he's lost the fire; we're moving much more circumspectly now. Which is a shame: Slight over-exuberance aside, Ferrari clearly knows how to drive on a racetrack. He's smooth on the controls and knows his way into an apex. "My father would not let me go racing," he remarks when I comment on his educated line around the circuit. "But I am not afraid of the power. I have never driven an F1, but I test every new Ferrari road car."
We stop briefly on the main straight, as Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello climb into their F1 cars directly in front of us. Then we're all waved off on another series of laps. I have to pinch myself: I'm not just watching Schumacher and Barrichello drive their Formula 1 Ferraris--I'm following them around a racetrack. It's a particularly poignant moment: These are Rubens Barrichello's last laps in a Formula 1 Ferrari.
We pull into the pits so the F1 boys can cut loose. After they scream by on the front straight, I shake Piero Lardi Ferrari's hand and thank him for the drive. "Good," he says quietly before being surrounded by a throng of Ferrari executives and fans.
I take a moment to catch my breath. This ocean of racing red, these fanatical fans, those earsplitting F1 torpedoes, this sublime FXX parked next to me, engine off but still radiating heat and passion and speed. Call Ferrari an automaker if you wish. Personally, I think it's an opera company.