It’s a painful thought that the Ferrari Enzo is now 21 years old.
The Enzo is the most enigmatic of all the Ferrari halo cars having lived somewhat of a strange life between being considered brilliant and then also being – perhaps it is unfair to say – forgettable.
What the Enzo lacks is that sort of sparkle that every other Ferrari halo car has possessed. The F40 was the last car signed off by Enzo Ferrari himself; the F50 used the engine from an actual Formula One car; and the LaFerrari was a modern classic upon its reveal, although that may be due to the car world’s collective reverence for the LaFerrari playing its part as a member of the ‘holy trinity’ of mid-2000s supercars alongside the Porsche 918 and McLaren P1.
It’s not fair to say the Enzo was a damp squib. It itself was a member of it’s own little holy-trinity (but a holy-trinity that people can never seem to agree on) of either the Enzo, Porsche Carrera GT and the Mercedes-McLaren SLR or the Enzo, Carrera GT and Ford GT or do you include the Pagani Zonda, Maserati MC12 and Lamborghini Murcielago?
Anyway, of the many top-of-the-line supercars that were available at the time (weren’t we lucky?) the Enzo was the technologically-advanced one. This was a time when Scuderia Ferrari and Michael Schumacher were at the height of their powers in Formula One, and the Enzo is brainchild of this.
The Ferrari Enzo had Formula One technology coming out of its ears, and the design itself was heavily influenced by the sport. In 2002, the world wasn’t ready for the Enzo and the design was often declared ugly or too busy and detached from the preconception that all Ferraris ought to be classically beautiful.
Looking at the Enzo today, you can sort of see where concerns might have arisen from. The front end of the Enzo is very full-on with a pronounced raised nose that seeks to emulate the nose-cone and splitter design of a Formula One car, but the extra flesh required for a closed-body road car somewhat lessens the effect, although the wraparound cooling ducts that rise from the lowest point of the splitter and meet the nose back at its centre do create an image of a stylised interpretation of a front splitter. The small section of black lower body trim beneath the raised central nosecone section also helps to create a weightlessness almost as if the car is floating in space.
The Enzo’s downward sloping front headlights are also quite iconic and the simplicity of the headlights themselves helps to bring a sense of direction to the design of the front of the car.
The rest of the design is very busy, with plenty of cut-outs at the front and down the sides of the car, the most pronounced of which are the massive cutouts along the side of the car leading to the rear cooling ducts at the rear haunches. The cut-out is so large it actually looks as if a venturi tunnel has been rotated ninety degrees and mounted sideways to the car.
Fortunately, the rear of the Enzo is a far simpler affair, with a much cleaner design and a neat squared-off tail. The rear corners of the car are squared off too for aerodynamic efficiency and the rear diffuser is purely functional.
The side skirts and bumper feature a black ‘skirt’ which really helps to give the lower sections of the Enzo a defined finishing point, and really help to keep the design visually light with few overhangs.
The wheels of the Enzo are almost quaint, too. 19 inch wheels front and rear are tiny compared to most modern performance cars, and their spindly, centre lock design has aged very well. The fact the wheels were only available in silver also helps to clean up their design and the design of the Enzo on the whole.
That being said, the Enzo does have some awkward parts, such as the naff rear view mirrors that really look as if they’ve been stolen from an entirely different car, and the rear exhausts exiting from the rear bumper itself does age the car significantly.
I don’t think there are many cars that are as angle-dependent as the Enzo is. That is to say, the angle at which you look at an Enzo can decide whether the car looks smart and contemporary or hideously out of proportion. For example, a decent quarter angle is probably the best for the Enzo. Whether its from the front or the rear, the quarter angle allows the design to breath. However if you are to look at the Enzo from the side at say a 3/8s angle the length of the front nosecone makes it look like its been tacked-on and the headlights make the car look like some awful Peugeot 406-based replica.
The same thing occurs with the cabin: view the car from the rear and it all looks okay, but from a less complimentary angle and the cabin looks huge, bulbous and out of place. None of this is helped by a classically crap Ferrari stance, with the wheels tucked far too far inwards and a ride height that is genuinely painful to look at.
The Enzo is also very dependent colour. Red and Yellow both work, but apart from those any other light colours just make the car look cheap with some of the panel gaps looking less that premium. A dark colour like black or dark blue helps to offset this and give the car a more classical appearance.
Despite this, I think the Enzo is having somewhat of a resurgence. People are copping on that it is a brilliant, if representative of the era, Ferrari and that its looks are part of its identity.
Kerbside 