In February, the European Auto Group went public in San Antonio, Texas, with our kind of wonder car: a Ferrari F430 Scuderia with a six-speed manual gearbox. The standard F430 did offer a manual six-speed gearbox from the factory; the hardcore Scuderia version did not. It took a lot of work, and EAG apparently did the job well; Matt Farah called the coupe "The best Ferrari in the world". CarBuzz spoke to EAG's owner, Art Bartosik, about what the future offers, and Bartosik has just thrown a little bit about the car he will soon be revealing: a Ferrari 458 with a gated six-speed manual.
While the 430 Scuderia did not offer a stick shift, the 458 Italia was not even designed with one thought. The 4.5-liter V8 with 562 hp and 398 pound-foot torque once swapped only with the Italian carmaker & # 39; s double-clutch F1 transmission. The 458 has a manageable 52 hp and 51 lb-ft more than the F430 Scuderia, but EAG had to process a gearbox to fit in the available space.
Bartosik did not reveal how he made that happen for the 458. The reworked F430 Scuderia used all OEM Ferrari parts because they were available; not so for the later car. The DuPont Registry said that EAG "built a transmission with improved synchros" to handle the extra power, had to find a suitable clutch and suggests that the company has gone through many prototypes, but does not identify the source of the gearbox. All Bartosik would say to CB that there is a limited supply and that he "can only build 10 or 11 of them".
It looks like there are already more customers than they are ready to buy funds for purchase, not surprising. Bartosik said, "People are screaming for manual 458 and 488. If the question wasn't there, we wouldn't do it."
A final development car is a few months away, with the customer scheduled for completion in January 2020. And what can EAG do after the run is complete? Perhaps a six-speed Lamborghini Huracán manual, which the owners have already asked about. "The Huracán must be simpler than Ferrari," said Bartosik, "because it contains hidden things that give us more flexibility." It seems that manual gearboxes, such as life in "Jurassic Park", always find a way.