Prelude
Any Australian can tell you where the Outback is. It's out there, somewhere beyond the coastal fringe of the country where most of the population lives, beyond the chic café society of sophisticated cities like Sydney and Melbourne and Perth, beyond the green halo of productive farmland that surrounds them. But the Outback is more than just a place. It's a state of mind.


The first Europeans didn't settle in Australia until 1788, and their exploration of Australia's dry, desolate heartland produced heroic tales of hope and courage, triumph and tragedy. I saw for myself how remote and challenging the outback was in the fuzzy black-and-white photos and faded Kodachromes my parents took when they drove a 1937 Dodge Coupe right across the country, from Adelaide on the south coast to Darwin in the north, in 1955.

Amedeo Felisa, Ferrari's chief executive and veteran engineer, says his all-new Ferrari FF four-seater is as fast around a track as a 599. "Not the GTO," he adds hastily, "but the regular 599." For the FF to be as fast as the shattering (and shatteringly hard-to-drive) GTO would be impossible. For it to be as quick as the regular 599 is merely miraculous.
Ferrari people are suspiciously keen to stress the Ferrari-ness of their new car. Could this be because the last time they strayed from their supersports heartland with the California, they suffered a squall of criticism for going soft and selling out?