New car news

17 March 2010 - 14:00

Maranello’s new ride

Despite the fact that the money is haemorrhaging from the Arab Emirates faster than the oil it's built on, Ferrari is about to open its very own theme park in Abu Dhabi.

Two years in the making, Ferrari World will be a gigantic, tasteless altar to greed and consumption, a shrine to everything that's a bit sickly about having too much money and nowhere sensible to spend it.

Ferrari World is the largest indoor theme park on Planet Earth, with a 60 x 40m prancing horse on the roof, just in case you actually are navigating your way here from deep space.

Among the 20 rides on offer inside will be an F1 experience that claims to hit speeds of 201km/h and provide punters with the opportunity to feel the same sort of G-Forces that a driver endures at race speeds. This we like. On paper.

Less convincing is the F430-based rollercoaster in which cars that look a tiny little bit like F430s will go head-to-head in a race that obviously isn't really a race.

There will also be six restaurants on site, all of them selling different types of Italian cuisine. Restaurants and rollercoasters. That classic combination.