duPont REGISTRY February 2024

Recently, a close friend I’ll call Bob texted me with a very specific sort of problem. Bob and his wife were joining me and a few other friends for a four-day rally in the Hudson Valley. The foliage was in full bloom. We had chosen some of the most impeccable and overlooked driving roads in the world, and booked track time at Lime Rock Park. We had set the table for one of those epic sports car enthusiast experiences that money (mostly) can’t buy.

Bob and Amy live in Houston, and he was putting his car in a truck to ship to NY. Simple logistics. Except for his specific sort of problem. When he texted me, a couple of weeks before the rally, he was standing in his garage trying to decide which of his most recently acquired Ferraris to ship north: the 812 Superfast or the SF90 Spider.

“Am I going to want the top down?” he asked. “Is it yankee cold up there, or just a little chilly?”

Tough call, Bob. And one that you’re fortunate enough to get to make.

“The weather can go any direction this time of year,” I said. “Expect a sunburn, prepare for a hurricane.”

The moment I typed the word hurricane, I knew the answer: Bring the 812 Superfast. It’s more comfortable for the passenger than the SF90, arguably more appealing to look at, and it just so happens to be the fastest road car Ferrari has ever built. It has that endangered species of an F140 V-12, which, when Bob bought this car in 2019, was probably the most powerful air-breathing, unboosted production engine ever made.

“To hell with the SF90,” I said. “Make it Superfast.”

It’s a fun debate for a select few lucky enough to have skin in the game: engine in the middle or engine up front? 1,000-hp twin-tur- bo V8 hybrid or the monster of all V12s? But ultimately it comes down to the thinnest slices of the most delightful pie: there is no wrong answer.

And that’s why it feels wrong to call the SF90 an inferior Ferrari. It’s all relative. But the truth is, I’m not alone in never fully buying into this evolution of the 488 and F8 Tributo—there just didn’t seem to be enough of an evolution. Now that the mind-melting SF90XX has arrived, I feel vindicated.

We sent Basem Wasef to Italy, where he took this race-prepped (though street-legal) XX variant to the limit on Enzo Ferrari’s backyard race track, Fiorano, outside Maranello.

Under a looming threat of rain, Basem experienced a version of the SF90 we all wanted. You’ll have to turn to page 12 to read the details. Meanwhile, you should also dig into Roberta Naas’s round-up of watches made in partnership with carmakers—from Richard Mille’s extraordinary $1,295,000 RM UP-01 Ferrari to Jacob & Co.’s Bugatti Chiron. And speaking of Bugatti, just when you thought the Chiron was out of gas, Brett Berk reports on page 40 how the machers of Molsheim have made their sexiest ever one-off, modeled after the sublime Type 57.

There’s much more in this issue, but I’ll end with the warning I sent to my pal Bob, who didn’t regret choosing the Superfast. “When you come next year, bring an SF90 XX or don’t come at all.”