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Let's get one thing very clear. The Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano - and that's the last time I'll be using its full name - is fast. Spectacularly, shatteringly, addictively, hilariously, heroically fast. Ferrari's own figures put it on the fast side of an F50, and I still shudder to recall how an F50 physically shocked me as I pushed it through the gears.

It was at night, with the roof off in a desert, and the completely isolating strangeness of it made things even more intense. Even though the 599 doesn't quite have the legs of an Enzo or today's other limited-run, quasi-racing hypercars, there's no shame in that.

You'll be needing a very wide open space indeed before you see an Enzo open up any kind of gap ahead of a flat-out 599. But what makes the 599 so special isn't how fast it is, but how easy the speed is. It's so comfortable with this performance.

Here I don't mean comfortable as in armchair-and-slippers comfy - though it's not too shabby in that department, either - but as in making you feel comfortable with it and with what it can do.

It's easy to control. You always know how it'll react, and that those reactions will be helpful, because it's always on your side, even when the going gets difficult. Yet it doesn't divorce you from the action. It draws you in. It asks so little and gives so much.

So much, in so many dimensions - not just speed but sensations. That's what makes the 599 such a landmark car. A quick example. On the centre console, there's an LC button. For launch control. Cue a drastic, head-imploding V12 howl, a stomach-rending jolt forward, a scream of tyres, enough smoke to mask the entire car.

And a pair of neat, black lines running 100 feet up the road. It's a total cinch. Mind you, I immediately have to stop again. I'm corpsing at the wheel with hysterical laughter. A much better example. Getting into the rhythm on a tight, bumpy, undulating road. Not exactly an easy place to dispense 620 horsepower.

But the 599 just engages the tarmac and rockets along. Engine, transmission, brakes, steering, damping - all of them get along like an absolute house on fire; with each other, with you and with the road. You'll be on fire at the end of it, too.

The V12 is a masterwork, capable of pouring out a trickle or a torrent exactly as you ask. It's not like the old 360 Modena engine, nor is it like the one in a Murciélago - they are several engines in one, depending on the revs and throttle.