FERRARI 488

A FINELY TUNED INSTRUMENT

Idon’t think I’d ever had so many thwacks on the arm in such a short period before I drove this Ferrari 488 from Templeton to Christchurch with a friend aboard. Stone deaf, she couldn’t appreciate the glorious soundtrack, but she could most certainly see the speedo, for some idiot had thought to spec this car up with the Passenger Display option ($7021), and that meant that she had a screen in front of her eyeballs clearly telling her when the car strayed over the legal limit, and how rapidly it had got there.

Ferraris seem to be a bit like that. You pay an enormous amount to get eye-watering beauty and an equally eye-watering level of performance, but anything else, anything a humble Holden buyer might deem ‘normal’ in a car these days, you have to pay for — along with a number of possibilities that, frankly, are far from normal.

Overnighter

However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The 488 had arrived from the Australian distributor and taken part in a number of customer days down south — including a stint at Hampton Downs — ending with a weekend in Christchurch, including a dealership open day on the Saturday, and a Ferrari Owners’ Club run and lunch on the Sunday.

I was lucky enough to be invited to take the car out for the weekend — believe me, overnighters with supercars are rare — and join in with whatever I pleased.

I didn’t need asking twice … and so that was that. Hefting my compact bag stuffed to the brim with warm clothes — it’s a topless 488, in a Canterbury winter; anything could happen — I pulled up at the dealership,

to find it swarming with salivating petrolheads of both genders and all ages.

I tried to look confident, knowledgeable, and, above all, rich. Fortunately, in short order, my bag was dropped into the surprisingly roomy front-mounted boot, I ensconced myself in the passenger seat, and I was taken for a quick familiarization strop round the block.

Having driven this car’s 458 hard-top predecessor, I figured that I’d soon work it out but was nevertheless grateful that we pulled up behind the dealership, in case I accidentally selected reverse and embarrassed myself.

Hyper-powered

The first 488 was launched back in 2015. This Spider variant was released late the same year, so it isn’t a new model, but this was the first time that I’d had my hands on one. It’s as near as dammit the same size as the 458, a hyper-powered automotive Frisbee that no keen driver could hate and few casual passengers would love. Although the cabin has no shortage of comfort, what with the proverbial lashings of rich, tan leather and stitchery, it’s also clearly purposeful, with its beautifully shaped sports seats and a driver environment that wraps around one like a cockpit.

Most of the everyday controls are on the steering wheel, Formula 1–style, including the indicators on buttons in front; the wipers and headlights; the suspension adjustment; and, of course, the Manettino dial, which we initially set on the least extreme of the everyday settings, Sport, before heading sedately out of the dealership and rapidly discovering that this car is far easier to drive in ordinary everyday traffic than you’d expect. The fact that it’s an auto helps — you can change manually, but there’s no need around town, unless you want to show off by upping the noise factor. The ride was nothing like as harsh as expected, and even the view out was reasonable — if clearly not as good as that of the glasshouse environment of a conventional car.

Out onto the open road, the 488 seemed happy to stick to the limit. It wasn’t too noisy to bear at that pace, my kidneys and fillings weren’t rattling as they would be in any performance car built to a strict price, and there was really only one blot on the landscape — no, not other traffic, but the difficulty of passing other traffic without being arrested.

I was rapidly made aware of the fact that you can’t catch up with anyone wombling along at under the legal speed limit and simply blip the throttle to neatly pass. If you do, that blip is likely to send you into straight-to-jail territory. Overtaking becomes an exercise in pulling one’s punches, counter-intuitive to anyone who usually has to plan ahead to get past anything.

So, I was happy to finally see the turn-off I was seeking, on a rural tour of northern Canterbury’s nicer (bendier) back roads, via a route set by a petrolhead friend confident that she knew what I needed and aware of which roads have been properly sealed since the earthquakes that created so much havoc round here. Think Greta Valley, Leader Valley, and Greta Pass — if you haven’t tried them, it’s worth taking a bit longer heading to Christchurch from north.

This car’s been blessed with a 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8 engine that sits just behind the driver’s head. It delivers considerably more urge than the 458’s naturally aspirated donk, despite a slightly lower capacity — a capacity that, incidentally, leads to the model number, as each cylinder measures 488cc. Derived from the Ferrari F154 V8 clan, it features two parallel ball-bearing twin-scroll turbos with two air-to-air intercoolers, to deliver 492kw at 8000rpm — the redline — and 760Nm of torque at 3000rpm; apparently the 126.3kw and 194.8Nm per litre figures are both records for the Prancing Horse brand.

That grunt heads to the wheels via an automated manual dual-clutch seven-speed Getrag gearbox based on the 458’s, with the whole plot capable of zero to 100kph in three seconds, and to 200kph in 8.7 seconds. Top speed is more than 325kph, a whisker down on the standard car, perhaps due to the folding roof, which adds just 50kg to the weight — it’s actually lighter than the 458 version.

Reviewers have suggested that this motor lacks some of the drama of the 458’s. Sadly, I couldn’t comment — it’s been some time since I had the chance to drive a 458. However, I can tell you that this is an immensely engaging car, impressively agile, and incredibly rewarding to flick through a series of tight bends, helped in part by a slight rear bias.

There’s still plenty of drama to be had, especially if you drop the roof — or the rear window, a narrow slot that drops at the touch of a button to let you hear the engine without riffling your hair; and, if you select Race, and change manually; and, especially, if, to put this as delicately as possible, you are not overly attentive to the speedo.

The trouble is that this magnetorheological damping system is so capable, those tyres so grippy, that balance so finely tuned, with its whisker of rear bias, that you don’t feel as if you’re going fast. It’s tempting to push your right foot down a little more, carve through the next few bends a little more quickly. The car eats them up with such ease that you realize that you’re clearly still being too slow. You urge it on a little more — but again, surely small birds could overtake you with ease; you add extra vigour to your pressure on the throttle, and then you glance at the speedo and, oh hell, surely there must be some mistake?!

Finely tuned instrument

Perhaps fortunately, given our speed limits, this car is enjoyable on the sort of stupidly tight swervery on which even Michael Schumacher at his best might have struggled to break the law, and it remains enjoyable at legal speeds when you’re simply using the Dynamic settings and the paddle shift to change cogs and treat the engine like a finely tuned instrument.

That seemed to be what many of the delightful owners liked to do during the group run out through Little River and up into the hills. There was no point in treating it like a race — the road was too busy, and wet, and well policed. But along the tops and down into Duvauchelle, the tarmac’s undulating surface strewn with winter grit, one could lay down bursts of eye-watering acceleration between bends taken at a speed that should have been reckless but in this car somehow wasn’t.

One could do it in comfort, too — the seats supportive, the heater on, and all very much right with the world, ready to meet fellow enthusiasts for lunch. These folk really are enthusiasts. We met none who owned their car purely for the badge, and none with any trouble chatting to a cash-strapped writer whose budget would barely cover the fuel bill. Some piloted brand-new Italian thoroughbreds that cost more than my house; others were at the wheel of enduring classics. Some were clearly not short of a bob or two; one was a truck mechanic — albeit one who once owned a former Peter Brock Team BMW M3 Group A car.

But back to those option boxes. Tucking this 488 Spider car into your garage will set you back $499,888 if you tick not a single one of them. However, to get front and rear parking cameras, the suspension lifter, or the sports exhaust will set you back $9500, $8500, or $1236, respectively, while the beautiful carbon-fibre exterior pack is an eye-watering $46,800, and that passenger-side speedo adds $7021. This car comes with so many cost options that it would retail at a breathtaking $642,426 if all were added — as much as New Zealand’s average house — but I expect that if you had that kind of spare change hanging around, you wouldn’t regret it …