By Simon Hucknall Features | 17 Sep 2024 
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It was the sound of that flat-plane-crank V8 that really stuck with me.
At maximum attack – 8000rpm-plus – it bounced off the rocky walls of the autostrada tunnels and savaged your ears’ tympanic cavities.
It didn’t help that we were in convoy with a Porsche 911 GT3, Noble M12 and Caterham R500, but the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale’s brutal report was the most painful to bear.
Painful physically, but bloody infectious, too.
The Ferrari 360 Modena set a supercar benchmark when new, and today it’s hot property again as the best-value used Prancing Horse you can buy right now
We’d been based at Pirelli’s Vizzola Ticino test track near Milan for Autocar’s Performance Car of the Year test, and a late-night thrash on near-deserted roads had been the perfect tonic for cars and drivers after the relative confines of Vizzola during the day.
This being 2003, the Challenge Stradale was box-fresh and only recently launched, but it won outright against the cream of the supercar crop.
It was everything you wanted a Ferrari to be, and producing 94dB at 70mph – just 1dB shy of the savage R500 – explains why to this day I can still recall that mesmeric, megawatt soundtrack.
The Ferrari 360 Modena is raucous and agile at speed, but retains a supple daily usability
