Novitec 599 bi-compressor

**GrnMachine** · #1 10-01-2009, 02:09 PM

Novitec 599 bi-compressor

The Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano is pretty much the ultimate GT car. Comfortable, refined and beautiful, it also houses a near nuclear weapon under the hood, a mildly detuned version of the Ferrari Enzo’s V12 engine. That made it bullet train quick, and nobody needs it to go any faster. But necessity and desire are two different things.
Step forward Wolfgang Hagedorn, the head of German tuner Novitec, based in Stetten, who decided what the fastest GT on the market really needed was a pair of superchargers and a simply epic 800bhp to play with. And as I hit the throttle on a deserted Swabian country road, the car explodes down the road and necessity goes out the window in an orgy of noise, speed and pure violence. The Novitec 599 is near ludicrous, but to drive it is to love it.At the slightest semblance of a straight the 599 just rockets down the road, the road evaporates as the world rushes back through the windscreen and the next corner simply arrives. This is a car that simply eats straight lines and there is virtually nothing on the road that could stay with it.
The 599 comes with the F1 Superfast gearbox, so it’s just a matter of selecting first, planting the gas and clicking through the 100millisecond gearchanges as the car reels in the horizon at a cartoon rate and tries to post my head through the seat back. It doesn't take any skill, just self control as this car slams through the 100kph mark in 3.5s and there’s just no let-up in the torque curve, it just never stops, until the 599 runs into the top end speed of 340kph. It racks up speed almost too fast, and takes constant lifts to stay within sane limits, forget about the legal ones.
And all the time there’s the haunting note of the 6-liter V12 amplified through the Fuchs exhaust system that Novitec decided to use.
Novitec started out tuning Fiats in 1989 before slowly moving up the tree to Alfa Romeos, but he wasn’t done there. And as soon as Ferrari produced a base car that he felt could withstand tuning, the 360, he set about creating a twin supercharged masterpiece. It’s a niche industry, but Novitec soon established a reputation amongst the hard-to-please Ferrari crowd for simply making a faster version of the cars the Tifosi loved so dear.
And this, the 599 is his most powerful creation to date, and it is full-bore window-licking mental. I drive it on the quiet roads in the Swabian countryside, and With 800bhp, 648lb/ft of torque, 30 per cent more than the base Ferrari, and a 3726lb kerbweight, the Novitec boasts a Bugatti Veyron-style power to weight ratio. That takes it in to a whole new stratosphere of competition and the only relevant benchmarks come in the form of the Koenigsegg CCX, the Enzo, the Porsche Carrera GT and more, yet this is a 2+2 GT car with comfy seats.
A Ferrari 599 is no shrinking violet and you can’t call it a sleeper car with a straight face, but the Novitec is at least a lion in wolf’s clothing, nobody would truly believe the power under the hood until they’ve been blown off the road or felt the roar of the V12 combined with the whistling whine of the superchargers. And you could hardly call it cheap, but in the rarefied company it now keeps the Novitec 599 is a performance bargain, too, with the whole kit costing slightly more than $60,000.
One belt-driven Rotrex supercharger is attached to each bank of cylinders, which could be seen as overkill. But Novitec is well practiced in the art of supercharging and two running at a relatively low pressure helps keep the character of the original V12 intact. Ferrari buyers tend to be amongst the most demanding on Earth and a simple dollop of extra power could destroy the smooth power delivery and possibly the drivetrain itself. Novitec insists on keeping the torque curve of the engine the same, but a few notches higher.
Of course power is nothing without control, and Novitec decided that even Ferrari’s expensive Magne-Ride suspension wasn’t enough, so ditchjed it in favour of a more conventional racing set-up with adjustable height and compression. That drops it up to 40mm lower than the standard car, and the 599 was hardly an SUV to start with.
So the ride is firm, but again Ferrari owners simply wouldn’t accept a board-stiff set-up so Novitec has dropped the car on to a specifically tuned KW kit that still soaks up the bumps yet hunkers down even harder than Ferrari’s own in the corners. The 599 was always a ballistic car, but it was an iron fist in a velvet glove thanks to its long distance touring aspirations. Now it is more of a missile, and the iron fist has the gloves to match.
And crucially that lowers the centre of gravity, bringing the weight further between the axles, which along with Novitec’s lightweight wheels and Pirelli PZero tyres sharpens the handling to a razor’s edge. One of the downsides of mass market success is that Ferrari must build cars for the mass market, the savage sting in the tail of the F40 would have summarily thrown most modern drivers off the road, so they soften the handling and produce a car that, eventually, understeers.
The Novitec is sharper, keener, crisper, but even with Ferrari’s mind-bogglingly advanced traction control system that reads the road surface, this is a car that will slide on demand and ask that little bit more of the driver. It’s a magically balanced machine, but unlike the ready made safety catch that leaves the factory it will step out if you push too hard.
Novitec saw fit to upgrade the steel brakes that were fitted to this car. Ferrari has adopted ceramic brakes across the range now, rendering the upgrade redundant, but owners of older 599s might want to check out this 16” rotor set from racing giant Brembo, which is enough to contain this monster and drag off triple digit speeds as the hairpin arrives that touch too fast. There’s no drama, no squealing, it just feels like the car digs its heels into the tarmac.
Of course there is a downside to dropping the car 40mm and the expensive sound of grinding carbon-fiber splitter would soon become a painful reminder of the modifications. So Novitec has fitted a hydraulic lifter that raises the front end back to factory height at the touch of a button to clear kerbs and other obstacles.
And there’s another concession to everyday life, too. Because on the backroads you want the full-bore insanity of Ferrari’s V12 cranked up to 11 with the help of superchargers and a big bore exhaust. But in the city that makes you look like a fool, so Novitec has linked the Manettino switch and bypass valves. In the lowest settings on the wheel-mounted traction control switch, the valves stay closed and the Novitec creeps through town as stealthily as a Ferrari 599 with black smoked tail lights and a carbon-fiber bodykit ever could.
But those valves will stay closed only through town, it’s one of those adrenaline-fuelled machines that just demands to be driven at ten tenths with the noise cranked right up to 11. Nobody needs it, the Ferrari is more than fast enough, but driving the Novitec 599 is like tasting Champagne after a lifetime sipping a good white wine. At that point, the desire it took to build this ultimate Ferrari is the easiest thing in the world to comprehend.

2009 Novitec 599 bi-compressor
Base price: $65,000 conversion + Base 599 GTB Fiorano
Type of vehicle: RWD 2+2 GT
Engine: 6L V12, twin supercharged
Power/Torque: 800bhp/648lb/ft
Transmission: Six-speed F1 Superfast semi-auto
0-100kph: 3.5s
Top speed: 340kph
Fuel economy: 23l/100km

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