Cynics looking for evidence of Ferraris being bought by people who care far more about the image associated with ownership than the pleasure of driving them need look no further than the cubby in the right hand side of the boot of a 599. For here lies the battery cut-off switch. Every series production Ferrari has one, and has done for decades - even my 1994 512 TR was fitted with one.
Battery cut-off indicative of intended usage
It could be interpreted as the saddest reflection of the brand that Ferrari makes the easiest supercars to plonk into storage for any length of time. But the reality is even committed people like me have to press the pause button when it snows, so a battery cut-off is a welcome addition.
Handily, my car has been fitted with a top-up charger adaptor which allows me to plug in a widget safe in the knowledge that it will keep the battery in tip-top condition as the countryside turns white. So I was a little miffed to find that it wouldn't start last week: partly with Ferrari for supplying me with what I thought was a duff charger, partly with myself for not noticing that the two terminal clips didn't quite fit each other.
When something similar happened in a 575 I had a few years ago, I phoned the dealer and asked what to do. They became agitated. "Don't under any circumstances jump start it, you'll blow ECUs and it'll cost thousands."
Flat as a pancake but OK after a trickle charge
Worried that the same advice would apply, I phoned Dick Lovett again but this time they were far more relaxed. "You can jump it of you want, but we'd just recommend using a normal trickle charger." So I did, and it worked fine.
Rooting around in the gizzards of a 599 is educational, especially if you have also carried out the same investigations in the 575. The more of the old car's innards you revealed, the less convinced of its provenance you became: it was basically a tubular steel chassis with vast control units bolted anywhere the space could be found. It was a TVR in posh Italian clothes. It was crude.
The 599 is neat and beautifully assembled: the terminal boxes on the battery look like they're from an expensive race car, the inside of the aluminium body panels have a matt, quasi-military finish: everything is ordered, relatively petite and all the fixings are metal meaning they can be re-torqued without fear of them breaking. Take note Porsche.
Even the toolkit is a thing of beauty
One of the great joys of owning a once very expensive car which has depreciated like warm ice-cream is that the trinkets supplied with it from new, and designed to appeal to the type of customer who expected the best, remain very beautiful objects indeed. The leather case for the various instructions books is rather special, as is the exhaustive main manual itself (excepting the hilariously vague diagram for locating the towing eye) and the tool kit under the boot floor is probably worth a few quid on eBay.
The only let-down is the god-awful red plastic key which looks way too squalid a thingy to start a car as majestic as this. Oh, and the fact that the wheel nuts have gone rusty over the winter.
After the recharge, the car started first time. The dashboard went nuts and told me that outside of a general warning of the world ending very soon, the airbags had lost all interest in coming along for the ride. The first rule of Ferrari ownership is of course never to trust a warning message until you've shut the car down, locked it for a few minutes and restarted it (unless it's an oil pressure warning). Sure enough, it hasn't re-appeared since.
Rusty nuts are not befitting a car like this
The next day I managed 320 miles on A-roads and right now I don't want
that new Cayman
anything like as much as I did a few weeks ago. The 599 remains the best £80-£90k sportscar by a country mile.
FACT SHEET
Car: 2007 Ferrari 599 GTB
Run by: Chris Harris
Bought: July 2012
Mileage: 21,950
Purchase price: Move along...
Last month at a glance: Flat battery, rusty wheel nuts - gotta love winter