It was the short drive from the Maranello factory to the Fiorano test track that summed it up. As we were whisked through the circuit gates towards the helicopters waiting to fly us to the next stage of this Ferrari adventure, a young couple in a parked Nissan Skyline stared wistfully. The driver was wearing a Ferrari polo shirt; his girlfriend’s baseball cap was the Rosso Scuderia of Schumacher and Barrichello’s F1 cars. They were on a petrolhead pilgrimage.

And there is Ferrari’s quandary. They have probably the most evocative brand in the world, and not just the car world. The Ferrari name is exciting and glamorous and everyone wants a slice. That means keyrings,T-shirts, jackets, umbrellas and even teddy bears.

But owning a Ferrari should feel special and that’s what this trip is all about. UK buyers of new Ferraris will automatically become members of Fiorano Ferrari, entitling them to free track time and tuition, gifts, VIP invitations to private events and entry to the Fiorano website. Or they can upgrade to Corse level, for their own Fiorano racing overalls, helmet, boots and access to a fleet of F430 and 360 Challenge cars at circuits around the world. Current owners will be able to do the same; non-owners won’t. Crucially for customer satisfaction, it even counts while you’re on the year-long waiting list. If it’s successful, Fiorano Ferrari may be extended worldwide.

So for a couple of days I’m an honorary Ferrari owner. We’ll fast-forward past the bit where I drive a nasty little hire car around the M25, and move straight to the departure lounge of Farnborough airport. No packed buses from faraway car parks, no queues, no-one unsavoury.
The private jet has 24 seats and a stewardess named Simone Schumacher. By the time she’s ten seconds into the safety demonstration, 24 blokes have fallen in love.

Ninety minutes later we’re swooning through passport control at Bologna airport, straight into The Italian Job: six sharp-suited, shades-toting drivers standing by six black Lancia saloons. Tinted windows and all. We glide through the traffic and, when it’s all looking a little too Italian out there, the first Lancia blocks the junction and the others fly through without a break in the pace. No-one hoots.

First stop is Ristorante Montana, favoured eating spot of the Formula One team, where our table is overlooked by a larger-than-life photograph of Schumacher hugging the proprietress. Six courses later we hobble to the cars, to be ferried to the factory round the corner.

I think I’d subconsciously expected the place to ring with the sound of panelbeaters’ hammers, punctuated by the occasional roar of an open exhaust, because my first reaction is disappointment that the two production lines, one for V8s, one for V12s, are so clean and efficient-looking. Now and again a warning sounds as notice that a line is to move again – twice as often for the V8s as for the V12s, because twice as many V8s are built. The other difference is that the mid-engined V8s head front-first down the line, the front-engined V12s rear-first.

We head deeper into the factory. To our left are the men and women who assemble the doors. They look as bored as anyone doing a tedious job would. But there’s Latin temperament on display on the production lines to our right, with laughter, shouting and banter aplenty, and in the trim rooms a little further along the line, the women look up from their sewing machines and smile flirtatiously. Every item they sew is for a specific car, a specific customer, in his or her choice of leather, of piping, thread colour and even stitching style.

Behind them are the glueing bays, where bare door trim panels are sprayed with adhesive and skinned with leather, and just past the trim shop are the leather cutters. We stand fascinated as a guy casually throws a full hide onto the horizontal cutting bed, then leaves another artisan to mark the imperfections and plan the cutting of each trim section around them, using laser templates to make best use of the hide. After a minute or so of experimentation he steps back and lets the machine do its job, its laser cutter flying across the leather. Then the freshly cut pieces are peeled off the suction bed and carted to the trim shop, while the waste is rolled up and thrown away. I’m not the only one who starts to make an involuntary movement towards the bin, to rescue a piece of Ferrari hide.

And so we move on, past the start of the production lines, where painted shells from Modena begin their short journey to completion, and back along the side of the V12 line. To our left there are just large, blank panels. Suddenly our group is halted by Ferrari GB managing director Massimo Fedeli who, with great flourish, slides back one of the panels to reveal the low-volume production area and the previously unseen FXX model – in the crudest terms, a €1.5-million track-day Enzo. The two PR guys are either utterly shocked or very good actors, and one whispers to me in apparent dismay: ‘Car magazine have been phoning me everyday to ask if they could see this!’

Massimo is loving it. ‘We always show our customers something special!’ he proclaims (indeed, Fiorano Ferrari members will be invited to new model launches before journalists). We’re allowed to clamber all around it.

Then we’re off to the engine plant, via the testing bay and a tantalising glimpse of a pre-production version of the next 612. The engine plant was built in 2002 and is said to be state of the art, temperature- and humidity-monitored, with an indoor garden and flooded with natural light. It’s one of those places that apparently works with little in the way of human intervention, the polar opposite of the bustling production lines.

I stand alone for several minutes, fascinated, in front of a pedantically precise robot that dips tiny valve guides one at a time into liquid gas to shrink them before fitting them into the cylinder head. And then I join the rest of the group to gaze at the range of historic Ferraris lined up in a currently empty area of the plant.

Off again, this time out of the factory gates and through industrial areas where a Ferrari training college, social club and merchandise shops sit oddly alongside household goods manufacturers like AEG.

Through the gates of Fiorano circuit, past the Nissan Skyline, past Enzo’s old house, where his office is still intact but other rooms are given over to Schumacher and co’s gym equipment, and straight out to six helicopters. It’s an hour-and-a-half to the outskirts of Milan, where our helicopter, second in the MASH-style convoy, suddenly swoops up and around, banking tightly and down onto the lawns of one of the finest hotels I’ve ever seen.

This is Villa San Carlo Borromeo, built in the 14th century, ruined by the Nazis and finally restored during the 1980s and ’90s. The ceilings are 30 feet high and fresco painted, and one wing houses a fantastic art gallery. Great meal, great booze (top-quality spumante from the Ferrari vineyard, unrelated to Enzo’s bunch) and a long, deep sleep before we’re off again, this time to Monza. Yes, Monza, legendary Monza, frightening Monza, home of lethal banking, much steeper than Brooklands’, scene of great victories by Fangio, Ascari et al. Today, wet Monza.

We’re briefed by chief instructor Enrico Bertaggia, who tells us the usual stuff about safety plus a few handy driving tips, we kit out in race boots and overalls, and I find I’m in the first group out on the track.

There are ten cars waiting, equally split between the 360 Challenge and the F430 road cars. I’m in the F430 first and my instructor is an affable guy in his 60s who introduces himself through the intercom as Richard. Fine.

Despite the lairy livery, the 430 is standard spec. That means a 490bhp V8, six-speed paddle-shift transmission, e-differential, traction control, etc. It has a top speed of 196mph and a 0-60mph time of four seconds. I’m second onto the track, rain lashing down, Richard initially talking me through every gearchange, every braking point, every turn.

By circuit standards, Monza’s relatively easy to learn. The last time a grand prix was run on the banking was 1961, and there are just six corners on the GP circuit, not including the hideous chicane on the start/finish straight that Richard finds it impossible to keep quiet about (‘I just can’t believe it’s still here,’ he mutters on every other lap) and I find impossible to master.

As for the car, well, it feels remarkably civilised. The air-con’s on, the helmet is (sadly) muffling that zinging exhaust note, the controls are light and the paddle shift easy to master – the digital display on the dash means you can’t not know which gear you’re in. I actually feel a touch too relaxed, but then these are the opening laps and we’re not meant to be hoofing it. I hit about 120mph down the main straight – a good 40mph off our expected top speed, but rain is limiting the fun.

After about eight laps we head for the pits. We jump out, Richard takes off his crash helmet and I get a shock. It’s Richard Attwood! First man to win Le Mans for Porsche, survivor of the early days of the 917; a motorsport hero.

Off for refreshments and a chance to chat to those who have already been out too – those who were nervous are now much happier, and there’s no-one who isn’t excited at the prospect of further laps.

My next session is in the 360 Challenge, which is the track version of the now-obsolete 360, the predecessor to the F430. 400bhp, 183mph, 0-60mph in four seconds. Plus the Challenge has competition seats, harnesses, rollcage and much less in the way of electronic aids. Or air-con.

I prefer this car on the track. It feels more urgent, the louder exhaust, firmer suspension and even the warmer cabin adding to the adrenalin rush. I immediately put in smoother, faster laps in the 360, topping 140mph, and I know that it’s down to me concentrating harder.

Why am I concentrating harder? Because I have to! Where I now know that the 430 was keeping me in line with its incredibly subtle electronic intervention, the 360 will slither and scrabble for grip. It’s exciting but on such powerful cars it would be naίve to say that the 430’s electronics are a bad thing. My instructor talks of braking so delicately that the pedal is controlled simply by clenching my toes, and of easing off the accelerator during changes just enough that the change doesn’t bang in on the harsher set-up gearbox of the Challenge car. He insists on me backing off when crossing the streams of water that are now flooding the track; when I don’t, the car jumps sideways and my lesson is learnt.

The Fiorano 360s are kitted out with on-board cameras and telemetry, so after my second session I’m hauled into a pit garage full of laptop-tapping boffins to be shown my performance around the track, compared against Enrico’s laps in the dry. A bit unfair, methinks, but interesting all the same and, as should be expected from one of the only car journos on the trip, I was in the top three for lap times.

Maybe it went to my head, because my final session in the 430, back with Richard Attwood, was seriously ropey. We’d had a big lunch, got up at the crack of dawn two days in a row, concentrated hard in horrible conditions all day, but that’s not much of an excuse when you’re sat next to someone who’s driven through the night in the 240mph lethal weapon that is a Porsche 917.

‘Whoah, too fast, much too fast,’ cries Richard as I enter Parabolica a good 20mph quicker than I’d done at any other time of the day and for no good reason that I can think of. The front of the 430 begins to wash out, we’re heading for the gravel traps and I’m in full-on useless mode. But the car pulls out of it and, for a short, reality-defying moment, I think that I’m a little more skilled at handling a powerful supercar than I thought.

‘You wouldn’t have got round there without the electronics,’ says Richard, matter-of-factly. Oh.
We head for Bergamo airport soon afterwards and smile tiredly at Simone on the plane. I drive the horrible hire car back round the M25 on the rev-limiter and settle weary-eyed on my settee with a beer to watch my in-car footage video. It’s very good. I don’t even look too stupid (thank goodness it wasn’t in the 430). I go to bed a happy man.

Fiorano Ferrari is free to buyers of new Ferraris, £590 a year thereafter. To upgrade to Corse level costs £4400 for the first year, £1790 after that. See www.fioranoferrari.com.