Auto Design

 

 

Part 1. The Dream. (See Part 2. The Reality)

  First written for Car Styling, Issue 175 (Tokyo, November 2006).

* Stories and cars from recent past you may like to read and see again.

This story is not about a new car, or a supercar.

This story is about a man and his passion for beautiful, powerful and extraordinary cars. Ferrari and just a few more.

I  confess I love him. Even though I have not met him so far, nor seen him person and despite the fact that he is actually threatening my job by telling everybody the entire story as it develops. It does it not for money but just for the pleasure of sharing his passion for Ferrari and Internet. He has done it long before I, as a professional journalist, got a clue of what is going.

Why do I love him? Simply because he is a generous and such a passionate man that he needs to share his passion with everybody else. His passion is simply too much for himself.

Sharing to me means joy, happiness, giving and taking, and I love this. Go to this web site: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92754&page=5 (after registering with FerrariChat.com) and you will see what I mean. His pen name is Napolis.

 

According to this “Thread”, the first of well more than internet 80 pages, on this story was published back on February 3rd. Indeed the first news appeared much earlier, but this is no longer relevant, here and today.

Join the party.

What matters today is that as we are going to press, his very exclusive car is going to Pebble Beach for a formal unveiling and every car enthusiast is very eager to be there for the first public appearance. Our man has invited virtually everybody who has been following his adventure to join the party celebrating the event.

Who is he? Ooooh yes, I forgot to tell you so far. His name is James. Not Bond but Glickenhaus, a real man, age 57 from New York. Obviously a wealthy gentleman who used to be movie writer, actor, director and producer, and happen to be a financial analyst and consultant as general partner of the renowned Glickenhaus & Co.

However his credentials as a genuine Ferrari enthusiast are simply said. He owns Ferrari since 1971, when at age 21 he bought from Chinetti his first 275 GTB with his own money. In his garage you will find pieces that deserve to be in leading museums, such as the Ferrari 159, better known as the 166 Spider Corsa, chassis 002, that Raymond Sommer drove to victory at the GP of Turin and that was sold by Ferrari after a long string of races. This car is reportedly the first Ferrari ever sold by the company.

Add the 7.0 litre Ford Mark IV raced by McLaren/Donohue to fourth place overall at Le Mans that year and the Lola T70 Penske raced by Mark Donohue.

The difference that tells a lot about him, is that they have all been registered, are street legal and Mr. Glickenhaus drive them to event and parties. Not every other day, of course. For the day-in, day-out driving he drive a comfortable Maserati Coupé or his wife’s Porsche Cayenne Turbo.

Now, if you suspect this gentleman is really enthusiastic about cars here is the confirmation that you are perfectly right. When Ferrari introduced their million dollars Enzo he was very intrigued by Ferrari statement. Their idea to celebrate Ferrari success in F1 with a sort of F1 for the road made a lot of sense and fitted perfectly with Ferrari tradition for ultimate Gt supercar. He did not buy one at launch time. “Absolutely nothing wrong with the car, it simply was not “my cup of tea”.

Than came the idea. The flash of fantasy and braveness: do what Enzo Ferrari was doing in his peak time: transfer F1 technology to Sport cars and onto street legal GT. Translated in today’s term it would be like creating a street legal Ferrari 333 P 4 by taking Ferrari’s F1 know-how as transferred into the Ferrari Enzo and build a romantic and yet contemporary, fully functional and street legal “Ferrari P4”.

Just like Enzo did in his times, JG went to Pininfarina, talked to Andrea about the project and asked if they would be prepared to design, develop and build a new car just for himself. How much time it would take and how much it would cost.

Doors at Pininfarina were wide open: this is what the company was established for, back in 1930, and never stopped doing. Sure the Pininfarina Group has grown dramatically and has kept expanding its services through the decades but, as Andrea Pininfarina stresses, they “never stopped building bespoke car, one-offs and dream cars”. Pininfarina made a very reasonable (still profitable) proposal and the adventure took off. Andrea Pininfarina promised JG that he and his team would make the dream come true.

DREAMS COME TRUE.

Jim Glickenhaus dreams as a child were all turning around, and focusing on, the Ferrari P 333 P4. In 1967 he was 17 old when the three Ferrari P 333 P4s finished first, second and third, in parade, at the 24 Hours of Daytona. Those cars, and the Ferrari P5 show car (not built from a Ferrari 333 P4 but still equipped with a Formula 1 V12 Ferrari engine) really marked his imagination. They had been his dream cars ever since.

So, all he has done in the past year is simply to make his dream come true.

Actually the project itself is a dream for every designer and engineer. They had to create a fully functional, fully street legal, Ferrari supercar just for one single patron: no committee, no briefing to design the car for the average Ferrari owner, no compromise, no concern for investments or production costs. Just please the one owner who tells you what he wants and listen to your suggestions and recommendation. Isn’t this a dream?

James, has been very pleased indeed. It has been like dreaming a new dream as he openly kept writing on the Ferrarichat.com forum focusing on his project. In answering to one of his pals on the Ferrari chat line, James Glickenhaus, “Jim”, as everybody seems to be calling him, sums up the fantastic experience with these words:

“We first met (with Pininfarina) in March of 05. We signed a contract in June. We locked exterior styling in December. Over the fall we did wind tunnel testing of my Enzo and then a full scale body attached to my Enzo of the evolving design.
We learned a lot in the wind tunnel and evolved the design further. I don’t think the average person realizes just how much engineering goes into a fully functioning car. Jesse (his 24 year old son) and I were scanned into a super computer so the designers could place us inside to see if we’d be comfortable and could reach the controls and see out.

We’re doing everything to all applicable motor vehicle regulations including outward vision, roll over, and crash testing. (by super computer). This will be a fully engineered car. Our concept for the passenger is 60ies rally nav/timing station. A tablet PC will have world wide GPS/timing/etc. We’ll be using a worldwide cell phone system and mp3 player. Jesse has been involved in all of that. Veronica (his 18 year old daughter)  has given me the courage to be more modern in the overall design and is working on fabrics for the seats. They’ve come up with something I think is really special.”

In a subsequent chat, few days later he added:

“To answer a few questions. This is a total team effort by Pininfarina and everyone at the company is very enthusiastic….Enormously talented people are working from the heart on this one and some how we all got lucky.

The person who designed the Pininfarina wind tunnel (Ing. Antonello Cogotti editor’s note) came down from the University and stood in the high speed flow with a pole tipped with a string of yarn and evaluated our design while his daughter and other engineers crunched mountains of data and modelers gently filled and sculpted changes and we tried again.

Andrea stood at the nose and conferred with his team as Sal (Salvatore Barone, editor’s note)  spoke with the engineers at the tail. Jesse and I read the print out and slowly we realized that we had a shape that had less drag, more down force and was more balanced than my Enzo and what a shape it was. The idea that an aero efficient design has to look a certain way or can’t be beautiful is simply not true.

Sal is spending a lot of time with the engineers re ordering the Enzo’s plumbing/wiring/etc. to make it simpler/easier to service/neater/ and lighter.

We’ll take a lot of weight off. The wheels are a unique design and we’ll be running different tires (Ultra High Speed Run Flat). The engine cooling and breathing are being studied and I am happy with the solutions. The front radiator will be horizontal as in the 333 which allows a very beautiful nose and better cooling. Every detail is being designed. The doors seals will have double the seals as the Enzo for example. There will be a lot of glass and it will be very special. Not yet sure about photo-voltaic.”

”I own the all rights to the design.”

Continues at Yesterday Series* – 2006 FERRARI P4/5 BY PININFARINA. Part 2.

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