Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa pose with their new Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8s

Formula One drivers aren’t like you and I. They live in nicer houses, have bigger bank accounts and sometimes have garages filled with lustworthy cars. Jenson Button, for example, used to own a Bugatti Veyron, and the McLaren Mercedes driver recently sold his classic Ferrari 512 BB. It’s not uncommon for automakers partnered with F1 teams to give drivers their wares, since it’s clearly good advertising for the brand. Current world champion Sebastian Vettel drives an FX50 crossover from team sponsor Infiniti, and we’d be willing to bet he didn’t pay list price for it.

Ferrari recently issued new company cars to team drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa. Instead of giving them Ferrari FFs (too long of a wait list for paying customers), or Ferrari 458 Italias (too impractical), the F1 stars each received a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee. If you’re puzzled by the tie-in, remember the family tree that Jeep is now part of. The brand falls under Chrysler, which falls under Fiat, and so does Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and a host of other industry brands.

If you’re guessing that they didn’t receive off-the-shelf Jeeps, you’d be correct. For starters, the Jeeps were SRT8 models, packing 470 horsepower and 465 pound feet of torque. The trucks were dropped an inch and a half for better handling, before being fitted with custom 20-inch wheel. To honor Ferrari, each was sprayed in Rosso Corsa before being trimmed with a matte black roof and gloss black body stripe.

Inside, the seats, door panels, center armrest and instrument surround are finished in red leather, appropriated from Ferrari’s own inventory. Instrument faces are finished in yellow, which links them back to the dials of Ferrari’s GT cars.

Alonso and Massa now have the first two Jeep Grand Cherokees in Europe, while other buyers in the EU will have to wait until summer to get one of their own

Years ago I rode with a sportbike club, until one ill-fated weekend ride where the group suffered three crashes and a member received a ticked for 100 miles per hour OVER the speed limit. After spending two days running from a certain Western state’s highway patrol, I realized that having a license, and not being dead, were more important than the occasional high-speed hoon weekend. Bad things happen in high speed groups, whether you’re talking about motorcycles or cars.

Take the incident below, which was found on Jalopnik. It seems that an exotic car club was en route from Kyushu to Hiroshima when the driver of a Ferrari lost control while overtaking in a curve. His car hit the median, creating a chain-reaction accident that ultimately totaled 14 cars. Included among the carnage were eight Ferraris, three Mercedes-Benzes, a Lamborghini, a Nissan Skyline and a Toyota Prius (which, if we had to guess, probably wasn’t driven by a club member.

The good news is that no one was seriously injured in the accident, which shut down the stretch of road in Yamaguchi Prefecture for some six hours. Wet roads likely played a part in the accident as well, which is no up to the police and insurance companies to sort out.

Francesco Baracca, the WW1 ace behind Ferrari's logo.

The Ferrari logo is among the most recognizable in the automotive world, featuring a prancing horse on a yellow background, topped by the colors of the Italian flag. As with most logos, it’s steeped in history, dating back to an Italian fighter ace from World War 1 named Francesco Baracca. Baracca, who racked up some 34 kills before being killed in action himself, chose a black prancing horse as the symbol of his airplane, originally a Nieuport 17. The horse was a tribute to the time Baracca spent in the cavalry, and Baracca believed it brought him good luck.

The video below, found on Left Lane News, explains the rest of the story, which Enzo Ferrari told just once. We’re not sure that the black prancing horse brought much luck to Baracca, but it certainly has helped Ferrari win races and customers over the past six decades.

Forty five years ago, Peter Kalikow purchased his first Ferrari. Back then, it was a used Ferrari 400 Superamerica convertible, but Kalikow’s latest addition to his Ferrari collection is neither used nor available at your local Ferrari dealer. Kalikow, who’s amassed a significant collection of Ferraris over the years, commissioned Ferrari to build him something unique: starting with a Ferrari 599, the company blended styling elements of the SA Aperta and the 575M Superamerica to create a one of a kind testament to Kalikow’s love for the brand.

The car’s most unique design feature may be its single piece, carbon fiber and glass roof assembly, which swivels and folds into a well covered by the carbon-fiber trunk lid. The finish is a color called Blu Antille, which matches the color of Kalikow’s original 1961 400 Superamerica cabriolet, and all carbon fiber components (such as the roof, front splitter, side skirts and rear diffuser) are finished in a contrasting dark blue. The cockpit also features carbon fiber panels in dark blue, offset by rich tan leather seats and trim.

Ferrari insists that the car will remain one of one produced, but the design of the stowable roof may makes its way to a limited production variant of the Ferrari 599. If you want to see the car up close and personal, it will be on display at this weekend’s Concorso d’Eleganza Villa D’Este, so hop on over to Italy’s Lake Como to have a look.

Source: Exotics and Luxury

To commemorate the 60 year partnership between Ferrari and Shell, the oil company spent a month filming vintage Ferrari F1 cars in locations including New York, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and Hong Kong. The resulting video is nearly two minutes of pure Ferrari F1 car porn, with just seventeen seconds of advertising added (at the very end of the video) to keep the marketing types happy. The soundtrack alone makes the video worth watching, so I suggest you turn up the speakers until your ears are bleeding. If the neighbors aren’t complaining yet, keep watching it until they do.

I’m not nearly enough of a Tifosi to name all the cars in the video, but I can identify the second car (blasting through the streets of New York) as a variant of the 312, raced by Ferrari from 1966 through 1969. The next one appears to be a 312B from the early 1970s, since the 312B was the first Ferrari F1 car to sport front and rear wings. I love the detail in the video, including the period-correct clothing worn by the driver of each car. If this is advertising, I say film more of it, please.

A 1984 4 valve 308. Image: Sfoskett

Some time back, a colleague of mine announced he was shopping for a used Ferrari 308. “Don’t do it,” was the advice I gave him, because “there’s no such thing as an affordable Ferrari.” He listened to me then, but succumbed to the affordable exotic fever a few years later. When I caught up with him last year, I asked how the Ferrari was. “Great,” he said, “it hasn’t cost me anything yet this year.” Which was his way of saying that he hadn’t been driving it lately, because the car needed some $5,000 worth of engine work. The timing belts, for example, were long passed their replacement intervals. Still, it was a Ferrari, it was paid for and it was in his garage, and that was good enough for my buddy.

So here’s the question: you can buy an early ‘80s Ferrari for right around the $30,000 mark, maybe even less if the car has had a hard life. Coincidentally, that’s just about the same price as a new Mustang GT, and a quick comparison shows:

- The 1980 Ferrari 308 GTB (with four Weber carburetors) produced 240 horsepower in US trim and weighed 2,648 pounds, giving it a power to weight ratio of 1:11. The 2011 Mustang GT makes 412 horsepower and pushes 3,605 pounds, for power to weight ratio of 1:8.54. Advantage, Mustang.

- Zero to sixty in a 1980 Ferrari 308 GTB came up in around 7 seconds, and the car had a top speed of 149 miles per hour. The Mustang hits sixty from a standing start in 4.8 seconds and tops out at 155 miles per hour. Advantage, Mustang.

- Care and feeding of a Mustang is relatively affordable, and short of money-shifting the engine I can’t think of many $5,000 repairs. Care and feeding of a Ferrari, on the other hand, is notoriously expensive. Mustang FTW.

- One is an Italian sports car, and one is not. Ferrari FTW

I’m not in the market for either car right now, but a eBay posting for a 1980 Ferrari 308 GTB is what got me thinking. There are no circumstances under which I’d buy a “cheap” Ferrari, but your mileage may vary. Would you roll the dice on a bargain basement prancing horse?

This is NOT a Ford pickup truck.

In the eyes of most consumers, Ford and Ferrari run in different automotive circles. The prancing horse brand from Maranello, Italy, is best know for building world class sports cars and dominating in F1 racing. The blue oval brand is best known for building sensible family cars, the Mustang and the best-selling F-150 line of full size pickup trucks. Ford has a lot riding on the F-150 name, which it’s been using since 1975 and trademarked in 1995. When Ferrari decided to name their 2011 F1 car the F150 (in honor of the 150th anniversary of Italy’s reunification), Ford requested that they pick another name. Ferrari initially ignored Ford’s request, but later agreed to change the car’s name to “F150 th Italia”; whether or not this will be acceptable to Ford has yet to be determined.

While no sane motorist could possibly confuse a full-size Ford pickup with a Formula 1 car, Ford has far too much riding on the F-150 brand to not enforce its trademark. If they don’t pursue action against Ferrari, it sets a precedent that could potentially allow other companies to pirate trademarked Ford names in the future. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want to see a Geely “Smiling Happy Face Mustang Electric Sports Roadster” on U.S. roads any time soon.

Source: Autoevolution

Bullet Motorsports, who specializes in the marketing of exotic vehicles, was on hand to capture the recent 2011 Ferrari Festival at Palm Beach International Raceway. My only questions are, “why didn’t I know about this” and “why wasn’t I there”? Palm Beach International Raceway, which used to be known as Moroso Motorsport Park, is only a few hours from where I live, and the chance to see cars like the F40 and the 333SP in action doesn’t come around all that often. I’ll be checking the calendar for next year’s event, and I promise to mooch dinner and a place to crash off my brother in law shoot lots of up close and personal pictures. In the mean time, enjoy this superb HD video after the jump.