Ferrari FF/Lusso/Lusso T

Ferrari. I don’t care if you like cars or not, I can almost guarantee you've at least heard that name at some point in your life. However, if you are the type of person who has been living in caves their who life and has just discovered fire, allow me to briefly fill you in on what you have missed.

Ferrari is an automotive company founded in 1939 in Italy by a man named Enzo Ferrari. If the name Enzo Ferrari sounds familiar in recent years, it is probably because Ferrari made a car named after him in 2002. Anyway, starting with the sleek Ferrari 125 S in 1947, Ferrari quickly became known for beautiful car designs and very fast top speeds. The road cars were sleek masterpieces of Italian craftsmanship, and the race cars won basically every raced they entered… until a little car called the Ford GT-40 MKII absolutely destroyed them at Lemans in 1966, but that is a story for another day. So Ferrari began a rise in popularity, a rise that, despite a few rough patches, has never really slowed down.

That isn't to say that Ferrari hasn’t made bad cars though. Some, such as the bland and disgusting 2002 Ferrari Maranello, can be marked as products of their time because, as any car lover worth anything will quickly inform you, almost no cars looked good in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But Ferrari, once again, began to rise in popularity, to the point where the company was voted most powerful brand by Brand Finance, in June of 2018. During this time it seemed like Ferrari could do no wrong, turning out masterpiece after masterpiece. However, for every beautiful car like the 458 Italia (shown on top) we had to get abominations like the 2011 Ferrari FF (shown on bottom)

2012 Ferrari 458 Italia

2016 Ferrari FF

In 2011, someone on Ferrari’s design team probably went home, picked up his shoe and said “I’m drunk.” and apparently the rest of the design team were all drunk as well because, later that year, we got this horrific disaster on wheels.

Not only did the FF look like a deformed shoe, but it handled about as well. The awkward rear-wheel drive system was never perfectly balanced, making the ride as bumpy as a wooden roller coaster. Although an all-wheel drivetrain was eventually made available, this didn’t stop the vehicle from fishtailing around, even in perfect weather conditions. The fuel economy wasn't horrible, averaging 18.3 mpg, but since when does anyone buy a Ferrari for good gas mileage.  The car did boast a fast top speed of 208.5 mph, presumably so that people behind it wouldn’t have to look at its oversized ass for that long. All this added up to a price tag of $295,000 during its six-year run that finally ended in 2016.

The world had several months of celebrations, until a chilling announcement at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. Word had leaked that Ferrari would be announcing a new car. People all around the world were excited to find out what beautiful Italian car would soon be put into production. But then Ferrari announced that it would be the successor to the FF and hopes took a sharp drop. expected something that was even worse than the FF. Instead, Ferrari unveiled the GTC4 Lusso Concept, a beautiful and sleek wagon-style Ferrari that was enjoyed by almost everyone who saw it. However, there was one keyword that nobody seemed to notice until it was too late–”Concept.”

In the four months between the unveiling and it’s first sale, probably to someone as vision impaired as Mr. Magoo, Ferrari changed everything that people liked about the car. They brought back the lumpy rear end from the FF. The gas mileage dropped down to 13.4mpg. And the interior was scaled back as well. While the material on the inside of the vehicle was definitely beautiful and added a sense of luxury to the car, there were certain drawbacks. The basic model of the car only came with a single phone charging port, and the car was known to short-out any plug-splitter attachments. But don’t worry, Ferrari was willing to install up to four more charging ports in the car–but only if you wanted to pay $150 for each one.

Speaking of money, you might be wondering how much one of these cars actually costs. Well first off, if you are actually considering purchasing one of these cars you might just want to check yourself into the closest mental institution first. But, as this is a proper car review, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t tell you the price. So, you can purchase a Ferrari Lusso for around $310,000. Or you can buy the slightly nicer Lusso T for $350,000. But there is also a third, much more expensive, option. If you are someone with cash to burn, go over to Ferrari’s website and customize your own Lusso or Lusso T. The custom car creator on the official Ferrari website lets you customize almost every single detail of the vehicle. When you are done, your bill should be around $1.2 million dollars. And to put into perspective how much of a waste of money this is, if you are looking for luxury cars, you can buy a 2014 Rolls-Royce Phantom for just $167,000. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to look at pictures of a Honda Civic hatchback to remind myself what a good hatchback actually looks like.

2019 Ferrari Lusso T

2019 Honda Civic Type R Hatchback

2019 Hennessy Heritage Ford Musstang

The Ford Mustang. Arguably America's most iconic, beloved, and well-known muscle car. If you asked someone in another country what the most iconic American car ever made was, they would probably respond with "The Mustang of course!" Or something to that effect. But that raises questions. Why is it the most well-known muscle car? It certainly isn't the base speed. When it comes to speed, the 2019 Mustang GT  tops out at around 175 mph. This is the slowest of any top model muscle cars from the big three brands, Ford, Dodge, or Chevy. Chevy's new Camaro LE can reach speeds of up to 194mph and the latest version of Dodge's Challenger Hellcat, the Red Eye, can break the 200 mark with a blazing top speed of 203mph. It isn't the 0-60 time either. The 2019 Mustang GT posts a highly respectable 0-60 time, coming in at four seconds flat. But that is once again smashed by both Chevy and Dodge, with the 2019 Camaro LE boasting a 0-60 time of 3.7 seconds and Dodge blowing everyone else away with a 3.3 second mark.

Now you could easily argue that it all comes down to how the car actually looks. In my opinion, a muscle car has to look sleek while still looking menacing and powerful. Dodge certainly has the menacing and powerful part down but is about as sleek as a brick covered in razor blades. Chevy on the other hand... I don't really even want to get into the absolute mess that is the Camaro’s design.

But when you look past all of these specs and statistics, you find what makes the Ford Mustang such a truly special car. That’s right, I’m talking about the numerous companies, both large and small, that have made customized versions of the car over the years. Shelby, Roche, and Saleen, to name just a few of the heavy hitters. And there is Hennessy. Hennessy, a name synonymous with speed and style. If you have been living inside a camper van at the bottom of a lake for the last twenty-eight years, allow me to fill you in.

Hennessey Performance Engineering is a car building and tuning company based in Texas. They are known for taking already powerful vehicles and turning them into rockets on wheels. Some of their most notable cars include the 1,244bhp monster known as the Hennessey Venom GT, the VelociRaptor Truck, the Hennessey Venom V5, and of course, the Hennessy Heritage Ford Mustang GT. Point being, they are some of the best tuners on the planet for making fast cars go even faster.

Now, let’s get to what you have all been waiting for, the 2019 Hennessy Heritage Ford Mustang GT.

First of all, if you have any dreams of obtaining this glorious tarmac-melting machine, you’ll need to be ready to pay anywhere between $90,000 to $100,000. Now I will wait while you wipe that “Ooooh shit! A $100,000 Mustang?” look off your face. Surprise over? Good, let’s move on.

Let’s talk about the Mustang’s fuel consumption. There isn’t an easy way to say this. It’s a thirsty car. Average highway mpg is a whopping 6 miles per gallon. Hey, what did you expect from an over-the-top muscle car? If you wanted fuel efficiency you would have joined the people of San Francisco and bought a Prius now, wouldn’t you? Anyway, now I’ve gotten rid of the Ecoboost Mustang loving morons, we can get to the real fun.

Every car lover loves a great big engine, and this car certainly has one, a tuned up 5.0 liter Coyote V8 to be exact, with a 3.0-liter supercharger thrown in for good measure. All this produces a jaw-dropping 808 horsepower and 677 pound-feet of torque, still nowhere near the amount produced by Hennessy’s other muscle car, the Camaro Exorcist, but it doesn’t need to be. That is because, in the Camaro Exorcist, all Hennessy did was tune up the already powerful engine. The Mustang however, got the full Hennessy treatment.

They added an option for an All-Wheel-Drive setup instead of the standard two-wheel drivetrain. This allows the powerful beast of a car to actually corner, something Mustangs are notoriously bad at.

Hennessey also details, both in and outside the car, to help its performance. A specialized air-to-water intercooler and big injectors were added to help out the V8. All these modifications allow the car to put out more overall power than Dodge’s top off the line Hellcat, the Challenger Redeye. For ease of access to all forms of Mustang lovers, two different gearbox setups are available, either a six-speed manual gearbox or a 10-speed automatic, no paddle-shifters in sight. The 2019 version is also the quickest road-legal Mustang ever made, hitting the magic number of 60 miles per hour in just 3.2 seconds.

Unlike what Hennessy did with the Camaro Exorcist, the Heritage Mustang has new brakes that are meant to handle the explosive power of the Coyote V8. The new braking systems in the Mustang, just like all of Hennessey’s parts, were built entirely in-house. This is because having the same people who built the thing that makes the car go also make the thing that makes the car stop leaves a much smaller risk of error.  Special tires have also been made for the car, making sure it can maintain good grip at high speeds.

Speaking of high speeds, I haven't even mentioned how fast this beast really is. That’s because, as of right now, it is the fastest muscle car on the planet. Just as a little reference point, both of Dodge’s fastest vehicles, the Challenger Hellcat Redeye and the Demon, top out somewhere between 203 and 205mph. Now, those are fast cars, but the 2019 Hennessey Mustang leaves them in the dust by topping out around 220mph. That is faster than most Lamborghinis and Ferraris.

Earlier on I mentioned that this Mustang is priced at around $100,000. That’s a surprisingly low amount of cash for a car that is this fast. But there is a catch, and it comes in the form of the number being made. Hennessey has never made more than 60 units of any of there vehicles. So it should come as no surprise to anybody that, on Hennessey’s official web page they have announced that only 19 units of the 2019 Mustang will ever be made.

With that being said however, this isn’t just another fast car. Unlike what they did
with the Camaro Exorcist, Hennessey has completely reworked the car’s body as well. The generation six Ford Mustang has always been criticized for looking safe and boring, so the people over at Hennessey decided to change that.

The result is one of the greatest looking modern Mustangs ever created
. They kept many of the normal Mustang’s smooth curves but added flared wheel arches to make the car a few inches wider. They increased the ride height in the rear end of the car, giving it the look of a powerful animal, poised to strike. Hennessey also saw the chance to add a small spoiler to the back of the car, along with a new defuser to match. And then of course, you have the retro style paint job. The 1980’s racing paint job shown above is the only one you can get as standard when you buy the vehicle. Sure, you could always respray it later, but why would you? The paint job is a call back to the racing heritage of the ford mustang, an attempt to capture the years of racing history in just a single paint job, and they did it perfectly. All these design choices combine to give the car the aggressive but refined look it was once known for.

So keep your Challengers and Demons, your Corvettes and Camaros, because the king of all muscle cars is back, and ready to kick some serious muscle car ass.