[URL]http://www.worldcarfans.com/109072820746/ferrari-458-italia-revealed[/URL]
I wondered about that too, bearing in mind it's a V8. If you look at the high res images, the middle one looks slightly smaller. For 2 cylinders instead of 3 for the outside ones?
You can have any arbitrary number of tail pipes you like. Almost all car exhausts go through headers into a single catalytic converter, resonators and then may split into separate backboxes or split to separate tailpipes from a single backbox - or even both (eg quad exhausts with twin tailpipes out of each of two backboxes). It bears no relation to the engine configuration in the vast majority of cases.
You are right of course, but it is unusual. I guess I was just imagining (the good old days) the exhaust pipe running from the manifold on each bank of cylinders to the silencer box on the either side of the car. The length of each pipe on the manifold and of course the number of cylinders it was fed from being equal (always) and design/tuned to aid the gas flow. Even then the actual number pipes visible at the rear could be whatever the designer wanted, within reason.
Beautiful! And nice big rev counter at centre of the instruments - fond memories of my old 80's Alfa GTV. . . . .
