In a deal that seems to have been years in the making, Ferrari has finally made an official announcement: Fernando Alonso will be driving for the Prancing Horse in 2010. Rumors of Alonso going to the team from Maranello started back during the Spaniard’s first stint with Renault, but circumstances with driver lineups didn’t allow for it. Instead, Alonso went to McLaren for one very unhappy season before returning to France.

Since then, Alonso’s fortunes have been mixed and stories of the Italian job have persisted. According to official statements from Ferrari today, an agreement had been reached earlier in the summer for Alonso to move to the Italian team in 2011. However, recent circumstances with the so-called Crashgate fiasco and the departure of team boss Flavio Briatore and sponsor ING have caused the date to be moved ahead a year. Alonso’s Ferrari deal runs for three years.

As expected, current driver Kimi Raikkonen will be departing a year before the end of his contract, although his future remains uncertain. Recent rumors have had him returning to McLaren, although earlier this year it was thought he might switch to the World Rally Championship.

Few lines are as fluid as those between the Italian and German automobile industries. Executives seem to move back and forth between the two faster than the exotic supercars for which they’re responsible, and all the more so when it comes to designers.

Frank Stephenson moved to Ferrari and on to the Fiat group after 11 years at BMW. Italian designer Walter de Silva cut his proverbial teeth at Fiat and Alfa Romeo before moving to Audi, where he also oversaw Lamborghini’s design department - and he has since been promoted to head of design for the entire Volkswagen group. German-born, Italian-schooled Wolfgang Egger has similarly bounced back and forth between Alfa Romeo, VW and Lancia before succeeding de Silva as head of Audi and Lamborghini design. The list goes on and on, and if the latest reports from Italy are to be believed, you can now add to them one Flavio Manzoni.

As director of creative design in Wolfsburg, Manzoni was known as de Silva’s right-hand man. But now he’s said to be moving back to Italy to head up Ferrari’s design department. If these reports are accurate, Manzoni will be replacing current Ferrari design director Donato Coco (who in turn replaced the aforementioned Stephenson), report directly to managing director Amedeo Felisa and work to establish a Ferrari style center to bring more of the design work, currently handled by Pininfarina, in-house.

Watch the video by Polyphony Digital Inc., creators of the “Gran-Turismo” videogame a tribute to the new 458 Italia, Ferraris 8-cylinder Berlinetta presented at the IAA Frankfurt. The virtual clip shows the car in action on the road and on the track.

Hamann’s take on the Ferrari California sports a pretty heavily modified body, including a carbon fibre bonnet, redesigned front spoiler, aerodynamic side skirts and an integrated three-part rear diffuser. Lowered suspension also drops the car right down onto its bespoke lightweight forged alloys.

The Hamann website boasts that the considerable increase in downforce and stability and decrease in unsprung mass from all this gubbins allows them to give the Cali significantly more power - ‘up to 20 per cent’, according to the press release - but don’t ask them how they’ve done it because, so far, they haven’t. Apparently an ECU remap is ‘in preparation’, and a modified exhaust system is planned but yet to be designed. So this launch isn’t really that ‘launchy’ after all.

The whole thing bears more than a passing resemblance to the Mansory 599 GTB, with its black and white colour signature and bulging stance, but perhaps that’s just the fashion at the minute.

Hamann has mucked about with Ferraris before. It once offered a package for the 360 Spider, and in 2006 it had a go at an F430 Spider, with a package bizarrely titled the ‘Black Miracle’. Among the other weird creations that Hamann currently produces are an extensively revised Bentley Continental known as the ‘Imprerator’ (we had to read that twice), and the ‘Tycoon’, a car that manages to make the BMW X6 even odder.

Ferrari is showing off the 562 horsepower car with improvements to fuel consumption and CO2 emissions that, they say, sets “the benchmark in this segment.” Using a mid-rear mounted 4.5-liter V8 engine, the 458 goes from 0-100 km/h in under 3.4 seconds on its way to a top speed of 325 km/h.