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When the shark bites ...

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A decade ago, visitors to the Ferrari factory announced themselves in a small showroom inside an unassuming complex of low brick buildings -- hip-roofed and painted burnt orange, sturdy and traditional, like Ferrari itself.

Today, the Ferrari campus looks more like Starfleet Academy than the house that Enzo built. The new wind tunnel is by architect Renzo Piano. The Luigi Sturchio-designed F1 logistics building looks like a zeppelin that has crash-landed outside the Fiorano test track. The Product Development Center, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas, is like a 3D Mondrian painting, its externally framed colored glass boxes stacked weightlessly, roofed with reflecting pools and connected with glass tunnels. It’s part water garden, part gerbil habitrail.

What has happened in the past decade? Luca Cordero di Montezemolo happened. The chairman and chief executive officer, who succeeded founder Enzo Ferrari four years after his death in 1988, brought the company back from near collapse and engineered its transformation into one of the world’s most profitable car companies and the dominant force in Formula 1 racing, in whose employ is seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher. Montezemolo, 56, who managed the F1 team in the 1970s, was recently appointed chairman of Fiat Group -- parent company of Ferrari -- after the death of Umberto Agnelli. He has resisted -- so far -- entreaties to run for the Italian presidency, which polls show he would win in a walk.

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We’ve got the Donald. Italy has Luca Maximus.

Yet pared to its essence, Ferrari’s business model hasn’t changed much since Enzo ran the company: Win at Formula 1 racing and amortize that investment, when and where possible, in the technical development of the road cars.

For the tifosi -- the Ferrari fans -- there is a holy purity to this philosophy; to Montezemolo, it’s just good business sense. “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” works as well in any language.

I would love to be cynical about Ferrari. One of the few places where photography is not allowed is the factory assembly line -- such images would dull the legend of the cars being hand-built by white-haired Gepettos.

Yet the degree to which Ferrari has integrated its street car and racing divisions is extraordinary. For example, Jean Todt, the director of the all-conquering racing team, has recently been named managing director of the Ferrari Maserati Group -- a position for which he has no credentials beyond kicking butt in Formula 1. The same aerodynamics team that dials in Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello’s F1 cars also develops the road cars. The new machining facility builds parts for both the Gestione Sportiva and the GT car division. In fact, the very architecture of the campus, with its multivectored staircases and connecting tunnels, reflects the osmosis between racing and passenger car operations.

And then there is the brand new F430, the mid-engine, V8-powered berlinetta replacement to the 360 Modena. Like the Modena, which sold about 10,000 units between 1999 and 2004, the F430 will be Ferrari’s bread-and-butter coupe, and like the Modena, the F430 is reasonably civilized, not a carbon-fiber crucifix like the Enzo hypercar, of which only 399 copies were made.

But the F430 simply reeks of F1 racing technology, including the first-ever use in a production vehicle of a race-bred electronic differential transaxle -- Ferrari calls it “E-Diff.” All cars have differentials, which allow the driven wheels to rotate at different speeds, as required when cars go around a corner; the outside wheels travel farther than the inside wheels. Ferrari’s E-Diff system comprises an electro-hydraulic actuator that shifts torque between two friction discs, maximizing traction according to the data coming in from the steering angle and accelerator pedal angle sensors, the yaw sensors and individual wheel sensors.

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Other race-derived hardware includes optional carbon-ceramic brakes; a “launch control” program (not available in the North American market) for maximum acceleration from a standing start; and the vehicle dynamics manettino, a five-position switch that adjusts the thresholds of the traction, stability and antilock systems, the suspension stiffness, the E-Diff and the gearbox shifting action, all integrated according to the car’s constellation of sensors. Just like the one on Schumacher’s steering wheel. Dial L for lap time.

On the “Ice” setting, for example, the adaptive suspension is soft, even plush; the F1-style gearbox switches to automatic mode and takes a leisurely 0.8 second to change gears; the antilock, stability and traction control systems all intervene at the slightest indication of wheel slip; and the throttle response is relaxed so that an overeager right foot won’t spin the car.

At the other end of the spectrum, the “Race” setting puts the car in “seek and destroy” mode. The gear changes crack off at 0.15 second; the suspension goes rock hard; and the dynamics system -- ABS, stability and traction -- takes its invisible hands away so that a skilled driver -- or even I -- can slide the car around a track. In race mode, the E-Diff allows maximum usable power to be transferred to each rear wheel.

When the car hooks around the hairpin at the Fiorano test track, you can lay the power on and the car powers out with the most beautiful, progressive oversteer you could imagine.

According to Ferrari, the F430 laps Fiorano three seconds faster than the Modena.

Does any of this sound familiar? A similar sort of system, employed for very different purposes, can be found in the new Land Rover LR3. Its five-position switch (rock, sand, mud, etc.) adjusts the concerted behavior of systems from throttle response to shock valving. We are seeing the first generation of digitally animated automobiles.

Like the Modena, the F430 uses an aluminum space-frame design built by Scaglietti. The weight of the car (3,196 pounds in European trim) is up 10% over the Modena.

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The body design, a shared credit between coach builder Pininfarina and Ferrari head of design Frank Stephenson, sends the Modena to the gym. It’s intensely muscular, particularly around the rear flanks, which include engine intake scoops on the fenders reminiscent of the ‘60s-era 250LM endurance car. The quad taillights are the same parts as on the Enzo, and both cars’ quad exhausts subtly echo the taillight array. Also like the Enzo, the F430’s rear end is dominated by a vaned aerodynamic diffuser curling up from the car’s underbody. The car’s ground effects are excellent. At 124 miles per hour, the car generates 50% more road-gripping down force than the Modena.

The F430’s front bumper intakes are a visual analog to the “shark nose” design of Ferrari’s 1961 world championship car driven by Phil Hill and other cars of the era. This is the one false note in the car’s styling: The actual intake duct, covered in black mesh, is quite a bit smaller than the painted-black oval surround. It’s plausible, I suppose, that the gaping vent holes create Venturi effects that move air more efficiently through the twin radiators, but these intakes look phony up close.

The F430 has a monster under glass -- the all-new 4.3-liter, 32-valve V8. Its flat-crank design punches out 490 hp (25% more than the Modena) and 343 pound-feet of torque (23% more). Despite the increase in displacement, the engine is nearly the same size and weight as the previous motor. One vital statistic: The centerline of the crankshaft is only about 5 inches from the bottom of the engine, thanks to the use of external oil sumps and a smaller twin-disc clutch array just over 8 inches in diameter. This means the engine’s center of gravity is lower than the Modena’s, which benefits overall handling.

With its variable-valve timing on intake and exhaust sides (using a very racy hydraulic tappet actuation), variable-intake plumbing inside the gorgeous red intake plenums, and beautiful polished intake trumpets jutting from the cylinder heads, the 4.3-liter motor looks, and sounds, the part. The wild noise this thing produces at full honk will make you whimper with tearful, lugubrious joy.

How is the drive? Perfect. Just perfect. Thanks to a slimmer central tunnel, the cabin is roomier than the Modena’s, and the stitched-leather interior, while lean and purposeful, is quite comfortable -- you can even get a navigation system (take that, purists!). The paddles for the F1 shifter have been revised so that they fall to hand more easily.

Stereo? Don’t know. Never turned it on.

On the unwound roads of Emilia-Romagna’s hill country, the F430 commands utterly. The front-end grip is amazing. The car will refuse no order given it; turn the wheel and it goes where pointed, ready or not. Lay on the carbon-ceramic brakes and the landscape freezes as if you had yelled, “Simon says ‘Stop!’ ” If you happen to be wearing the optional four-point racing belts, the sensation is distinctly like being hung up by your underwear.

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Romp the throttle and a year’s migration of monarch butterflies alights in your stomach. Ferrari quotes a 0-to-60 mph time of 3.9 seconds, but I have it on good authority -- Car and Driver magazine’s intrepid tester Aaron Robinson -- that the car is a couple of tenths quicker than that.

Top speed is rated at 195 mph, which I suspect is a similarly conservative estimate. Nail the throttle and upshift three times. The car rolls its eyes back in its head and takes a bite of time and space. Very like a shark.

The balance, the grip, the steering -- it’s all so effortless. I’ve never felt anything like it. The only thing I could think of: It’s like beating up a bar full of rednecks with the world’s most perfectly balanced set of nunchaku. Whap! Whap! Down they go. Oh, that feels good!

It’s funny to think that if you pointed Enzo Ferrari at this car and told him to adjust the timing, he wouldn’t know where to start. Despite the nearly 500 horses amidships, what makes this car go is less hardware than software -- a reflection of the hypertech world of Formula 1 racing that Ferrari currently owns.

True, compared with the forbidding technological heights of F1, the F430 is only at base camp. And yet the view is awfully good from there.

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2005 Ferrari F430

Estimated base price: $190,000

Powertrain: 4.3-liter, 32-valve, dual-overhead-cam V8, hydraulically actuated variable valve timing, variable intake geometry, flat crank, dry sump lubrication, twin Bosch electronic engine controls, by-wire throttle; six-speed electro-hydraulically actuated rear transaxle, paddle shifted with auto mode (six-speed manual available).

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Horsepower: 490 at 8,500 rpm

Torque: 343 pound-feet at 5,250 rpm

Curb weight: 3,196 pounds

0-60 mph: 3.9 seconds

0-124 mph: 17.3 seconds

Top speed: 195 mph

Overall length: 177.6 inches

Wheelbase: 102.4 inches

Wheels and tires: 19-inch alloys; 225/35R19 (front), 285/35R19 (rear)

Brakes: 12-inch cast-iron cross-drilled and ventilated discs, four-pot calipers

Final thoughts: Montezemolo’s revenge

Automotive critic Dan Neil can be reached at dan.neil@latimes.com.

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