Pininfarina hands over New Stratos

Turin. Monday, November 8th, 2010. Draped in black cloth, the New Stratos stands waiting in a Pininfarina production hall for its new owner. Work on the details – painting, polishing, etc. – has been underway up until the final hour. Now, at handover time, the automobile is near perfect.

So reads the text on the Handover page of the New Stratos website. The New Stratos will be presented to international media at the Paul Ricard Circuit in just under two weeks from now. During that time the owners will be finalising the performance numbers for the car.

Since our last update some technical info has also been published. Notably, the chassis New Stratos is some 200mm shorter than the Ferrari F430 on which it is based, while the body work has been reduced by 330mm. A 40mm thick steel roll cage helps give the car its high rigidity.

A beautiful looking Capristo exhaust has been mated to the 4.3 litre V8, which also has a retuned ECU. Suspension components have been sourced from ZF Sachs and Eibach, while 19″ alloys are wrapped around six-pot Brembo brakes at the front and four-piston at the rear. Rotor sizes are 398/350mm front to rear. A staggered wheel set-up has been chosen, with 9″ wheels on the front axle and 11″ at the back. These are shod with 265/30/19 and 315/30/19 Dunlop Sport Maxx rubber.

Engineers have also fiddled with the transmission components from the F430, including a revised mechanical differential and improved gearbox electronics, enabling shifts in less than 60 milliseconds.

A super light 4.2kg battery makes a small contribution to reducing the weight of the New Stratos by up to 80kg against the F430, despite the 55kg roll cage and 28kg air conditioning system.

I’m sure all readers are waiting with a high degree of anticipation for the official reveal at Paul Ricard. As soon as more info is available you’ll read it here.