2003 Ferrari 575 MARANELLO

Seller: bentleygc
Price: $133,100
Listed: July 25th, 2006
Location: Chicago, IL

"The 575M now joins the true heavy hitters of the 200mph+ club."

When it comes to cars, one mans vision has often provided hugely entertaining copy for motoring journalists. However, when that man is Luca di Montezemolo, boss of Ferrari, we tend to sit up and pay attention.

The Ferrari 550 Maranello was his baby, his concept, his personal indulgence from start to finish. Its successor, the 575M Maranello, also bears Lucas touch. Which means that its as good as modern supercars get.

One of the key differences between 550 and 575M is the option of a paddle-change sequential manual gearbox. Two fixed position alloy paddles sit behind the steering wheel, left for down changes and right for upshifts. Its about as good as such a system gets, which means lightning quick upshifts and peachy throttle-blipping downchanges, all marshalled by some clever software that prevents the driver from selecting a potentially inadvisable gear.

Of course, the excellent manual gearbox continues, but given that the F1 sequential box can swap cogs in a mere .22 of a second around half the time of a Ferrari test driver armed with a manual stick Ferrari quote two separate 0-60 times for the 575M, 4.0 seconds for the F1 and 4.25 seconds for the manual car.... READ MORE and SEE OVER TWENTY ADDITIONAL PHOTOS

More Ferrari Maranello information courtesy of WikipediaThe Ferrari 575M Maranello is a two seat, three door, grand tourer sports car built by Ferrari. Launched in 2002, it is essentially an updated Ferrari 550 featuring minor styling changes from Pininfarina. The 575M will be replaced by the 599 GTB for the 2007 model year.

Updates from the 550 include a renewed interior, but with substantial improvements inside, including bigger brake discs, a larger and more powerful engine, a different weight distribution, refined aerodynamics and fluid-dynamics and an adaptive suspension set-up (the four independent suspensions are also controlled by the gearbox, to minimize pitch throughout the 200-milliseconds gear shift). Two six-speed transmissions are available, a conventional manual gearbox and, for the first time on a Ferrari V12, Magneti Marelli's semi-automatic (sequential) 'F1' gearbox. The model number refers to the engine's capacity in litres, whilst the 'M' is an abbreviation of 'modificato' or 'modified'.