Vodafone - Ferrari Owners' Club

It tends to be a bit thin for Ferrari news at this time of year, so we thought we'd report that Vodafone have agreed to back Ferrari for another two years. The announcement from the Factory was surprisingly terse.

"Maranello, 16th december (sic) - Ferrari announces that it has extended its sponsorship agreement with Vodafone. The agreement now runs to the end of the 2006 racing season."

Not exactly an effusive welcome, especially when you consider that sources have speculated the value of the deal could be around $100m. Last year Jordan GP were ordered to pay £1m in legal costs to Vodafone after losing a court case in which they claimed that the communications giant had reneged on a sponsorship agreement with them, so that must have gone a bit of the way to paying the Ferrari sponsorship.

All this talk of mobile phones reminded us that the Editor recently found his first mobi when clearing out a filing cabinet. The Mobira Cityman measured 186mm x 44mm x 79mm and weighed nearly 1kg! It also cost £2,400 - and this was in 1987! Only top businessmen, rock stars and hairdressers could afford them (bit like Lambos really). The weight never bothered the Ed. though - he made his secretary carry it.

Anyway, his latest Nokia measures up at 102mm x 44mm x 17mm and weighs just 79 grams, less than one-tenth of the original and it was free! Of course, everyone's got one now and even the Ed. manages to carry his own.

The miracle of graphics software also allows us compare fones then and now and F1 cars if they had followed the same path.

Ho hum, if anybody's got any good Fazza stories...