How could a car so powerful as to give Clarkson the jitters not feature in our top 10? Reflecting Ferrari’s recent penchant for affected names, the F12berlinetta (we’ll call it the F12 for short) is home to Ferrari’s latest V12, a 6.3-litre effort now kicking out a startling 730bhp. Oh, and it sounds utterly, utterly bonkers. Power is a mindblowing 790bhp, 60mph comes up in 2.5 seconds, and top-in-top is 243mph. Want to use your FXX? You’ll have to wait till Ferrari say you can, at a specially-organised track day with other FXX owners, where Ferrari technicians will record your lap data and use it to help improve the FXX as well as future roadgoing Ferrari models. But they wouldn’t be able to keep it at home no, every FXX was, and still is kept at Ferrari’s HQ. With the FXX, the company offered people of unspeakable wealth the chance to own an experimental prototype. This really was Ferrari at its most idiosyncratic. The F40 was arguably prettier, but there’s no doubting the Enzo’s drama – or its insane turn of speed. With a 6.0-litre V12 running the show and 60mph coming up in around 3.4 seconds, we’ve no reason to disbelieve that that was the case at the time. Named, as you’ll have guessed, after Ferrari’s illustrious founder, the Enzo was, Ferrari said, about as close as it was possible to get to driving a Ferrari F1 car on the road. There’s more of this naming tomfoolery to come later, but for now put up with the marketing bollocks and enjoy one of Ferrari’s most successful hypercar efforts. Or ‘the Enzo Ferrari’, as Ferrari itself would have you say it. Here's Clarkson pitting one against an Aston Vanquish S. We always love a car that’s been honed to become the best it can be, and when that car happens to wear a prancing horse, it can only be a good thing. Engine size was enlarged to 5.75 litres - hence the name - with 515bhp on tap and thoroughly revised suspension and brakes. The 575M was the ultimate evolution of the 550 line, the ‘M’ standing for ‘Modificato’ which, somewhat unsurprisingly, translates to ‘modified’. We’re not entirely sure what they were complaining about, as today its shape looks rather fine to our eyes. When the 550 Maranello was introduced in 1996, people weren’t complimentary about its styling, some going as far as to compare it with the Toyota Supra. Under the skin, it was all standard 456 GT – no bad thing, as that meant 436bhp and a 0-62mph time of 5.2 seconds. Seven were built, six of which were purchased by the Sultan of Brunei’s brother, so much did he like them, and we can see why. But to do that would deprive you of the unutterably wonderful 456 GT Venice, arguably the most stunning-looking estate car ever to grace God’s green earth. Now, the standard Ferrari 456 GT was a lovely thing, and we could have included it here and been perfectly content. And of course, when Crockett and Tubbs came to replace their Daytona, it was just the thing. The outlandish styling – a riposte to Lamborghini’s mad, bad Countach – has earned it as many enemies as friends over the years, but no ’80s schoolboy’s bedroom wall was complete without a Testarossa poster, and for that reason, it’s a legend in our eyes. 385bhp came from a 4.9-litre powerplant, still based around the Colombo engine but this time with its cylinders laid horizonally to form a flat 12 (or, to be completely precise, a 180-degree V12). Excessively wide, excessively low, excessively styled – and excessively fast, too. In the ’80s, excess was king – and the Testarossa pandered to that in every which way. No wonder it became a legend in its own time – enough to guarantee it (or, more accurately, its GTS4 drop-top sibling) a place in one of the coolest bits of 1980s television you’ll ever see. 0-60 took just 5.4 seconds, which was blisteringly fast in 1968, when the GTB4 made its debut, and from the the menacing, barely-concealed pop-ups to the delectably sculpted tail it was drop-dead gorgeous. The unmistakeable shape of the 365 GTB4 – the ‘Daytona’ nickname is unofficial – clothed the latest evolution of the Colombo V12, this time a 352bhp 4.4-litre with six – that’s right, six – twin-choke Weber carbs.
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