Freak fires force Ferrari to recall the 458 Italia

by Steven Mostyn - Sep 2 2010, 10:46

Used to be that splashing out an insane amount of cash on an iconic Italian sports car all-but guaranteed the buyer access to the kind of performance engineering that’s so utterly far removed from the ‘ordinary’ vehicles us lowly paupers drive. Not anymore.

More pointedly, Ferrari has been forced to recall its entire fleet of luxury Ferrari 458 Italia supercars after five of the 170,000 GBP vehicles exploded.

As a result, bosses at Ferrari headquarters near Bologna, Italy, have issued a worldwide recall affecting more than 1,240 vehicles currently on the road – the total value of which is somewhere in the vicinity of 212 million GBP.

Rather than being a terminal fault related to the Ferrari 458’s tarmac-chewing 4.5-litre V8 engine, it is believed that a certain type of industrial adhesive used around the wheel arches can ignite on particularly hot days or when the car has been driven as speed for a prolonged period.

The five Ferrari 458s that have already been consumed by fire were located in China, the United States, France, Switzerland and another unnamed country. According to Ferrari’s parent company Fiat, only 458 Italia’s produced before July 2010 are affected by the recall.   

“Obviously work will be carried out free of charge,” commented a Ferrari spokesman regarding the potentially deadly problem, which should only take around half a day for engineers to correct by replacing the glue with special metal fasteners.

Any Ferrari 458 customer who’s had their car destroyed as a direct result of the fault will be offered a free vehicle as soon as possible at no extra cost, the spokesman added.

The Ferrari 458 Italia was only official launched in the spring of 2010, and was notably lauded by Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson as “one of the all-time greats”.

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