Hey Blenderartists reader! 
Longt ime ago (2010) i posted the clay version of that car here, and now i learned how to set up a nice studio! Here is the final result, i did not modify the mesh, so its still a bit off. rendered with Cycles 4000 samples in about 50 minutes on gpu. i reduces the grain a little bit on the carpaint with gimp. modeled with blender 2.54 in november 2010 DA image: http://linolafett.deviantart.com/#/d5feovi
Pretty cool, i love the overall light and the background, shaders are also pretty cool. The only crit is the big white reflection on the front and on the glass, it highlights the âwobblyâ surface (due to polygons), instead of being straight and clean like real cars should be. (or nurbs modelled cars)
Congrats. Cheers
You will find wobbly reflections on real cars as well, not really an issue IMO.
What stands out most about that reflection is that its equally bright throughout, unlike softboxes used to produce these reflections in photography which give you something like this.
The softboxes are less bright around the edges, which results in the gradient. Lights are carefully placed to manipulate the reflections on the car.
Now the best way in my experience to do this, assuming you want to, is to take the reflection pass,and paint it over with black, to create a similar gradient. If you havenât saved your passes, you can just render the reflection pass now, âSubtractâ it from your already rendered image and âAddâ the new, edited reflection pass. I also find that is you turn the black in the reflection pass to alpha, and use the soft light mode for the reflection layer instead of addition, the colour of the car bleeds through a lot better.
Hope that made sense.
Overall though itâs a nice render.
btw I googled images for âferrari 458 studioâ and this image came up on the first page!
EDIT: Wait. You rendered with cycles, so I guess most of what I said doesnât apply, because passes werenât supported the last time I checked. I should have read that. In cycles, you could texture your lights to achieve the look described, although I imagine placing the lights to get the reflections in the right places would be tougher than in real life 
well, i think its incredible. 
Absolutely not, thatâs totally wrong. Unless the car is reflecting something wavy (like your example) you wonât find that kind of reflection on cars. If the emitter light being reflected is straight, reflections will be too, wobbly reflections means wobbly surface, and trust me, cars arenât. (google âClass-A surfacingâ or aerodynamicsâŚ)
Cheers
Wow awesome model and render. great work!This is beautiful. I love the colors on the carpaint, nice shades of red following the curves of the metallic body, definitelly pleasing to the eyes
I uploaded a link with some suggestions highlighted:
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/37973
Great model, the rendering needs tweaking imo.
The model could do with checking before re-rendering though.
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This needs some sharpening up.
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May just be because of the light, but the bonnet where the edges meet, well the light reflections look false.
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The light reflections should properly align where the bonnet meets the front panel; theyâre close, but perhaps should be closer.
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Happens elsewhere, but is very noticeable here; your curved line wobbles. There is an especially obvious deviation close to the wheel arch.
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Light seems to gather there in a strange manner; maybe sharpen, or alignment issues.
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Sort of relates to 4, but it seems as though the amount of sharpness you used suddenly changes.
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Some slight unevenness and the way shadows are forming seems off.
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The way the mirror is âattachedâ to the car is very fake. It looks like what youâve done: pushed it into the surface.
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Iâve not circled this, but very close to directly below the headlight; the lowest piece of red bodywork, I suspect there are geometry issues where the shadows form.
There is lots of good about this, but youâre not showing it off properly. Too dark, and there are no highlights at the back of the car, or indeed anywhere where it meets the background.
The light you used, the reflection is very off-putting. It is a very hash contrast to everything else.
The vignette (well, it looks like you used one) is way too much.
Thank you very much for your detailed report! 
every point is correct, aside from 6, there is a drecrease in the sharpness in the real car as far as i observed that. i also prefere the vigniette stuff, is just toned down the background without changin the brightness on the car. its just something that i like at the moment, maybe i will change my mind at the future, you all experienced that too thanks alot!
Any chance we could see what your lighting and scene setup looks like? Either that or is there a tutorial that we can see to get this look? I love the look and canât figure out how you got it.
I agree with Ewilde, I would love to see how you setup the lighting, and some of the settings used.
I think thats one of, if not the best car rendering Iâve seen come out of Blender. The quality Iâd say is nearly on par with what Ferrari would put in their brochure.
On the subject hard light/soft light over the car, I think either is acceptable. Isnât it just up to what the artist envisions?
For example I remembered seeing renders of the Lamborghini Gallardo with hard lighting like in your render, 2 mins of Google searching revealed these:
http://newcarblitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lamborghini-gallardo-side-view.jpeg
IMO both ways can be used and both ways create just as good a result, again just depends on the look the artist wants.
Anyway again great render, keep up the good work
thanks for your replies, here is a screengrab out of the viewport for anyone who is interested in the studio setup, it should be self explainatrory(?).
http://www.blendpolis.de/download/file.php?id=80823&mode=view
also the carpaint node setup is here:
http://www.blendpolis.de/download/file.php?id=80824&mode=view