The Ferrari 458 Flambé

The end of August is a quiet time for the mainstream news. Newspapers need to fill column inches and what better way than to report that Ferraris latest model has been recalled after a spate of fires now traced to the glue used to fix the inner wheel arch liners. All the mainstream press have run the story after five 458s went up in flames (I'm not sure if this includes the one which was destroyed in a warehouse fire at Heathrow airport), and CNN's Quest Means Business ran a feature on it.



Ferrari have reacted properly and recalled all 1200 458's made so to have the liners replaced with riveted rather than glued version, and agreed to replace the cars destroyed because of this fault.

The point is though is this story worthy of such media attention? Google Lamborghini Gallardo on fire and you will get a stack of photos of different Gallardo's going up in smoke, Top Gear even ran a joke piece on this in one of the news sections a while back. The same goes for the Audi R8, so the concept of high performance supercars catching fire is hardly new.

In actual fact the car many say is the original supercar the Lamborghini Miura is a serial fire starter. The triple choke carburettors used means that one of the floats is constantly full of fuel, which is occasionally spat onto the hot exhausts resulting in a fire. A friend of mine who is pretty familiar with Miuras reckons that it is wise to have someone ready with a fire extinguisher every time you start one up.  I was going to add a picture of a Miura which had caught fire in such a way but it's just too depressing to look at.

So does the fire episode for the 458 tarnish it's reputation, in my view no, if anything it adds to it a little as it adds that little hint of danger that today's traction and stability controlled and relatively easy to drive supercars lack