A racing car softened for the road, the Enzo is pulsating to drive, writes NICK HALL
THE FERRARI FXX Evolution is the ultimate track car. But the problem is Ferrari keeps them on the circuit, under lock and key. So even paying €1.5 million and joining this most exclusive club doesn’t mean you can take it home to impress your friends.
Unless you take a base Enzo and build your own, which is precisely what Edo Karabegovic has done for partner and Canadian importer Zahir Rana. As Christmas presents go, it’s right up there with the best of them.
The Edo Competition Enzo XX Evolution waits inside his Ahlen firm, the end result of months of work and glorious in the less familiar yellow finish. This is the Enzo taken to the absolute limit and it should soon become the fastest road-going Ferrari in the world when it goes beyond 390km/h with the timing gear attached. Considering the speeds Edo himself has achieved on the Autobahn late at night, it could be even faster than that and don’t be too surprised if this joins the Bugatti Veyron in the 400km/h-plus club before too long.
As Edo fires up the now 6.3-litre V12, the explosion of noise is so utterly, ear-splitting obscene that the police stop by to take a look and somewhere a kid starts to cry. And that’s at idle. When I roll on to the industrial estate’s outer road the car barks with every touch of the throttle and pulsates with racing tech and latent power.
The Enzo is a racing car softened for the road, that’s how Ferrari built it, the Maserati MC12 was built on the same platform and that was a ground-up racer, but the Enzo was carefully considered, the edges were filed down, the spikes capped with cork. Edo, though, has thrown all that moderation in the bin and gone back to raw, race car brutality.
I flatten the throttle for the few seconds it takes for the first straight to disappear, it is an epiphany. There is a jolt, a shimmy from the rear as the tyres find traction on the cold, wet tarmac and then the car bolts forward like the lever in the rifle and just arrives at the braking zone. It demolishes straights with the same verve as the Bugatti Veyron and will rev all the way to a window smashing 9,600rpm.
The new Enzo XX comes with 840bhp and 779Nm of torque to play with, and a new triple plate clutch that Edo designed himself and can take full bore starts all day long.
It breaks 100km/h in 3.2 seconds, 200km/h in nine seconds and 300km/h in 19 seconds, on a dry day and an open road. Even here, in this windswept and wet corner of Germany, the sheer insanity of the acceleration leaves an indelible impression as cars and buildings turn into instant blurs with a squeeze of the right pedal. This car has Veyron pace, although it will be a little trickier on the limit.
He upped the displacement to 6.3-litres, fitted new camshafts, new titanium valve spring retainers and connecting rods, modified cylinder hears while exhaust headers, high flow catalytic converters, mufflers and air filters are all part of the supporting cast. The main trick here are the solid lifters that lets Edo rev the engine to 9,600rpm – like the FXX. A monstrous Capristo rear silencer box sits on the rear and it features butterfly valves that open to give the full bore noise effect. With a touch of a button on a keyfob the noise quietens just enough, although it’s still right on the limit of the law even in mute mode. Without the muffler, incidentally, Edo reckons the car is good for 860bhp and will match the FXX step for step.
He stripped 90kgs from the kerbweight with lightweight components and fitted the same KW horizontal dampers that go on to the FIA GT MC12 Corse. So the car can be as hard and as sharp as the most demanding driver could ever want, but thankfully it comes with Ferrari’s front-end hydraulic lifter system to get over high kerbs. With the nose airborne we roll into the broken, rutted-to-hell carparks of the old colliery with almost no fear of scraping the expensive paint, which means it can handle anything the city streets could throw at it. If you could handle the power and the outrageous fuel consumption it could really be a daily driver.
That new back end is an exact recreation of the FXX’s created from photos and measurements, you can’t just ring up and order one from Ferrari. There are no moulds, it took three months to make and Edo swears he won’t make another. But then the extra downforce of the huge diffuser and small wings transform the car and plant the rear to the deck at outrageous speed.
There’s a custom set of SportMaxx tyres on the car and Dunlop is working hard with Edo on a set of tyres that will support the new top end speed in all conditions. It’s a big commitment, but they kind of like the idea of this road-going FXX and have given their full support for these high-performance tyres.
So on the road it feels scalpel sharp, the steering is synapse direct, the suspension rock steady and the standard Ferrari ceramic brakes are more than enough to hold 2,800lbs of pin-sharp supercar.
All we can do here is marvel at an apex predator on the public road and drink in the experience, but it feels confined by these limits. It’s like a great white shark swimming in a paddling pool.
It would take a track and no small shortage of nerve to find the limit of this machine, even pressing on a public road is barely tickling the surface of its amplified skills. And therein lies the quandary. The Enzo is more than enough car for the public road and this car’s true talents will only shine at a speed that will put you in prison. So nobody needs the €1.5 million Edo Enzo XX Evolution, but the fact that it is as hard, fast and outrageous as a car that Ferrari insisted would only ever see action on the track means people will want it.
They live in a different stratosphere to the rest of us, but there are people who have tired of the impact of their Enzo. Think of it as a long term smoker that is suddenly offered a super cigarette that gives them that rush of the first puff.
It’s just as politically incorrect and yet equally just as addictive. The lucky few that can afford the kind of headrush that goes with the fastest Ferrari in the world will emerge from their first drive sweating, giddy and unable to speak thanks to the sheer brutal speed of this thing.
And, having driven it, it’s an addiction I wish I could afford to share.
Power:840bhp @ 9,600rpm
Torque:779Nm @ 5,800rpm
Performance:0-60mph: 3.2secs
Top speed:390km/h
Price:€1.5 million (before taxes)