The historic Ferrari brand speaks of a storied racing heritage born from an intense desire to not just win, but dominate. If a Ferrari shows up to a racetrack, it is immediately considered a top contender. So, how embarrassing is it when a vehicle from a relatively new company, with no racing pedigree, shows up to challenge a Ferrari, and beats it repeatedly? That is exactly what happened when a Ferrari lost to an SUV. 

In this corner, the Ferrari F430

The Ferrari F430 is a racing thoroughbred. The model was offered by Ferrari from 2004 to 2009. It has the complete recipe for a supercar from its day, mid-engine, V8, six-speed manual, or an F1 automated manual transmission, and rear drive. It could push out 483 horsepower and lay down zero-to-sixty times in 3.6-seconds. Even by today’s supercar standards, The F430’s performance is still formidable. 

In the other corner, the contender

An SUV has long since been considered a family vehicle. It can pick up family members and haul all their gear and equipment from one place to another in relative comfort. SUVs are bigger than the Ferrari F430. 

The all-electric Tesla Model X

The Tesla Model X was born out of Elon Musk’s desire to bring electric cars, trucks, and SUVs to the masses. The Model X, specifically, is the SUV incarnation of Tesla’s electric philosophy. Like other SUVs, it is bigger, heavier, and can carry more passengers than the Ferrari F430. The Model X has no historic racing pedigree.

The Ferrari against the electric SUV

Both of these combatants arrived at a roadway to test each other. Twice they raced from a standing stop. Then, to make sure launch control was not giving benefit to one vehicle over the other, for the third time, the two cars were raced from a low-speed rolling start. The video is below.

As you can see in the video, the Tesla Model X quickly put the Ferrari behind and never looked back. One, two, three times, it was ahead of the Ferrari from the beginning. It was easily more than a car length each time. 

The Tesla Model X that was used for this video was equipped with the P90D trim and run in Ludicrous mode. Motor Trend tested one such example and said, “Tesla Model X P90D is the Quickest SUV We’ve Ever Tested. The all-electric SUV is unrivaled in acceleration.” Their stats put the zero-to-sixty time of the family hauler at 3.2-seconds and completed the quarter-mile in 11.7-seconds. Those are supercar worthy figures. Do not forget, this is a three-row SUV. 

Things are not what they used to be

Electric cars have come a long way from range deficient, anemically powered, odd-shaped, far-out, future concepts. Instead, today we have technology advancing so quickly that the range is finally starting to match that of regular gas tanks for vehicles that can move super fast. Additionally, electric vehicles today look just as normal as their internal combustion engine-driven counterparts. That is a huge progression. With regard to this video, we can now see them perform family duty and take down a Ferrari at the same time. What a fascinating age we live in.