Ferrari Enzo

Enzo at a glance

How Ferrari developed the Enzo

The Enzo continued the line of limited Ferrari flagships that began with the 288 GTO and continued with the F40 and the F50. This time the brief was explicit: put as much Formula One technology on the road as the rules and the customers would allow. Ferrari's F1 team was then winning world titles with Michael Schumacher, and the road car took its gearbox logic, its carbon structure and its ceramic-composite brakes from that programme.

Engineers tested the components in three development mules, called M1, M2 and M3, which wore bodies based on the Ferrari 348. The finished car was presented by Luca di Montezemolo in 2002 and named after Enzo Ferrari, who had died in 1988. The Enzo has active aerodynamics, something Formula One does not allow: flaps at the front and a rear spoiler adjust to keep the balance as speed rises.

Design by Ken Okuyama

Pininfarina styled the car under Ken Okuyama, a Japanese designer who led the studio at the time. The nose is shaped like a single-seater's: a raised centre section between two large intakes, so the front looks like an F1 car's nose and front wing. The doors open upwards and forwards, and the engine sits under a glass cover in the tail.

The design divided opinion. Sports Car International ranked the Enzo third among the top sports cars of the 2000s, while Bloomberg Businessweek later put it on a list of the 50 ugliest cars of the previous half-century. Ferrari offered five standard colours (Giallo Modena, Nero, Bianco Fuji, Argento Nürburgring and Grigio Titanio) besides the classic red. According to German sources, 20 cars were painted in other, special-order colours.

F140B V12, F1 gearbox and brakes

The F140B was a new 65-degree V12 with four valves per cylinder, variable valve timing and Bosch Motronic ME7 injection. It reaches peak power at 7,800 rpm and peak torque at 5,500 rpm. By our calculation that is about 81 kW per litre from an engine without turbochargers. The F140 family later powered the 599, the F12 and the LaFerrari.

Power goes to the rear wheels through a six-speed automated manual gearbox built by Graziano. Shifts take 150 milliseconds; there is no clutch pedal, and the driver changes gear with paddles behind the wheel. Owners have described the shifts as abrupt by later standards, because this was a first-generation single-clutch system from the late 1990s.

The Enzo was one of the first road cars with carbon-ceramic (C/SiC) brake discs, made by Brembo and 15 inches in diameter. It runs on 19-inch wheels with Bridgestone Potenza RE050A Scuderia tyres developed for it.

Ferrari Enzo key specifications

Downforce is highest at around 300 km/h and lower at top speed, where Ferrari's figure is 585 kg. On the Nürburgring Nordschleife, evo magazine timed an Enzo at 7:25.21 even with a faulty electronic damper. At Ferrari's Fiorano test track the Enzo lapped in 1:22.3, about five seconds quicker than the F50.

400 cars: who could buy one

Ferrari announced the run of 399 cars at the 2002 launch and offered them first to its most loyal customers, starting with owners of the F40 and F50. Demand exceeded supply, and Ferrari chose the buyers. German sources describe the run as 349 cars plus a further 50 that were added after the launch.

In 2004 Ferrari built a 400th Enzo and gave it to Pope John Paul II for charity. Sotheby's auctioned it on 28 June 2005 for €1,055,000, and the money went to survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The third development mule was sold in the same auction for €195,500.

German price lists put the Enzo at about €662,000 before options and about €700,000 with typical extras. Since then values have risen far above that. In March 2020 a US-delivered Enzo with under 1,700 miles sold at RM Sotheby's Amelia Island auction for 2,782,500 US dollars, about €2.5 million at that time.

FXX, MC12 and the cars built on the Enzo

The Enzo's chassis and drivetrain became the base for several other cars:

On the Top Gear test track, Michael Schumacher lapped an FXX in 1:10.7. The track-only client programme continued with the FXX K, built on the LaFerrari.

Rivals: Carrera GT, SLR and MC12

The Enzo's direct rival was the Porsche Carrera GT, also a naturally aspirated carbon-chassis supercar, but with a V10 and a manual gearbox. Our published comparison Ferrari Enzo vs Porsche Carrera GT goes through both cars in detail.

The Enzo was the most powerful and the rarest of the three. By our calculation it carried 2.6 kg of dry weight per kW, against 3.1 kg per kW of kerb weight for the Carrera GT; our power-to-weight calculator runs the same sum for any car.