Judgment Day: Ferrari F40 Meets Lamborghini Diablo

Judgment Day: Ferrari F40 Meets Lamborghini Diablo Judgment Day: Ferrari F40 Meets Lamborghini Diablo
Archived Comparison From the April 1992 Issue of Car and Driver

"It's like a train speeding up your spinal cord and coming out your ear." —Minnesota Vikings safety Joey Browner describing a full-force collision in the NFL

Which is pretty much how it feels to stomp the throttle of a Ferrari F40 or a Lamborghini Diablo on Interstate 95 at 11:30 in the morning. It gives you a brain full of buzzing horseflies.

From the logbook: "Just lit off both F40's turbos, in second gear. Was actually bending steering wheel, trying to hold on, as if atop a tasered bull or a rocket-propelled grenade. Shift at 7000, head-snapping jolt, seismic shudder as wastegate thwacks after each upshift, big breath, eyes up, too easy to misjudge overtaking speeds."

And we have them both, the Diablo and the F40. Same place, same time. The two current megastars of momentum, mass times speed as calculated in Maranello and Sant'Agata Bolognese. The two automobiles that most feel like a Scud balanced on the head of a pin. What we want to determine is what our readers keep asking in letters:

1. Which works better on the street?

2. Which is faster on the track?

Tim Murphy is the service manager of Shelton Sports Cars in Fort Lauderdale. He looks like a college professor and speaks like one, too, weighing each word carefully before issuing it. During the three days we drive the Ferrari F40 and the Lamborghini Diablo, he accompanies us as riding mechanic and two-legged encyclopedia of all matters Italian, failing to answer only one of our many questions: Where does Donna Rice live?

Murphy personally oversees the maintenance of both Italexotics pictured here. Both belong to the same man, a customer of Shelton's who has logged fewer than 400 miles in either. That owner, who is at his West Coast home for the nonce and doesn't care to tag along for our tests, purchased both automobiles during the initial feeding frenzies. He reportedly paid $775,000 for the F40 and $480,000 for the Diablo.

Murphy finds the cars and their $1.25 million cost neither intimidating nor particularly intriguing. He opens hoods and trapdoors and demonstrates switchgear deftly but matter-of-factly, like a salesman handling a $3000 Holland & Holland shotgun. "You will not find mechanical or engineering breakthroughs here," he observes dryly. "Most people treat these cars as driveway jewelry. I don't. You will learn that they are fast."

We do.

What's more, in their tractive ability to peel chunks of asphalt off the earth's crust, the F40 and Diablo are surprisingly evenly matched. Both produce almost identical power and torque: 485 horsepower for the Diablo, 478 for the F40; 428 pound-feet of torque for the Diablo, 424 for the Ferrari. Both attain 60 mph in less than 4.5 seconds. Both catapult the quarter-mile in the twelves, at a velocity close to 120 mph. Both circulate the skidpad as if they were attached on stainless-steel tethers: 0.95 g for the Diablo, a neck-crimping 1.01 g for the F40. Both slurp fuel so voraciously that their combined guzzler tax is $10,100, and their combined luxury tax is $62,210—a sum sufficient to insert a new Cadillac Allanté in your garage. And both deliver top speeds that more than triple this country's highest legal maximum.

Driving a Ferrari F40 and a Lamborghini Diablo nose to tail in downtown Fort Lauderdale renders us as conspicuous as Ted Kennedy at a car wreck. Curiously enough, it is also a passport to gentility. Motorists unanimously afford us unprecedented courtesy. Drivers let us merge. No one honks when we perform traffic-blocking three-point turns. No homeless persons at red lights attempt to wash our windscreens.

All of which is fortunate, because driving these cars in city traffic requires immense concentration. What should be excruciatingly enjoyable becomes a worry-fest: Is that Fairmont going to run the stop sign? Does the hardhat in the Bigfoot Bronco see my brake lights down here six inches above the pavement?

Maybe not. Open the F40's doors and you have to watch whether they smack the curb. Not so the Diablo; its jackknife doors swing up and out of harm's way, leaving a wide sill that doubles as an observation perch—which you need to sit atop, craning your neck over your shoulder when it comes to the frightening business of moving this car in reverse. What you see rearward out of both cars is more or less what you see through plywood peepholes around construction sites.

Stand on the Diablo's throttle and you are rewarded with aural trauma. There is first a great whoosh of ingested atmosphere, followed by a booming, basso-profundo bellow that—inside, at least—sounds more like a big-block Chevy than an Italian V-12. The boom works out to 91 dBA, enough to annihilate the sweet Alpine stereo and CD player. The Ferrari's interior seems tomblike by comparison—but, at 95 dBA, clearly isn't. What's missing is engine noise: the little V-8 's howl is stifled by twin IHI turbos. What's added is road noise: the F40's hard-edged carbon-fiber cockpit is an excellent amplifier. Freeway expansion strips sound like .30-30 rifle shots.

We buy lunch from a man who introduces himself as "Don, of Don's Carts Incorporated, owner and operator of mobile hot-dog vending units." We park $1.25 million worth of cars in front of Don's weiner trolley. He blurts: "Is this cash? If not, your credit may be good."

As usual, crowds materialize from nowhere, clumping around both cars. As usual, onlookers are both fascinated and cowed. One teenager next to the Ferrari asks shyly, "May I touch it?" The gawkers often won't speak until we tell them, "These cars don't belong to us." That somehow redefines us as envious gawkers too. Then, like clockwork, there follows a rush of questions. The first is always, "Which is faster?"