Purity rather than theatrics for onlookers
INTERNATIONAL LAUNCH/ It looks exactly like the V12 but Ferrari insists the rear-drive V8 Lusso T is an entirely new model, writes Michael Taylor
If you’ve watched Ferrari carefully over the past couple of years, you’d have seen more or less every piece of design and technology in the GTC4Lusso T before. You’ve just never seen them all together in one car.
The front-mounted, V8 twinturbo 3.9l engine and its transaxle, with the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission and the E.diff inside, are closely related to the California T’s powertrain. The bodyshell and aluminium architecture, interior and suspension layout are all obviously aligned with the V12powered GTC4Lusso.
Ferrari, protected from conventional rules by its Maranello bubble, is so insistent that the GTC4Lusso T is an all-new model (and definitely not an entry GTC4Lusso model) that it repeated this eight times in one 10-minute presentation, then four times more over dinner.
Someone should have told the people in charge of badges, because just sticking a “T” on the end of the GTC4Lusso’s badge doesn’t convincingly send a message it’s an all-new car.
Ferrari is keen to push this “all-new” business because the car is aimed at different people from the ones wooed by the V12’s warbles. Oh, they can still afford the V12, but they’re up to 15 years younger, more likely to be urban dwellers and after a generation of performance turbo cars, they’re used to more lowend punch than the V12 has.
One Ferrari mantra is that it’s rear-wheel drive, not all-wheel drive. Second, it’s got big dollops of torque at low revs where the big-capacity V12 needs to be spun to nearly 6,000 revs before it hits its peak. Third, it’s cheaper, although that’s relative.
ALL TORQUE
It delivers 449kW of power at 7,500r/min and 760Nm of torque from 3,000 to 5,250r/min. Quirky fact: the T (let’s just call it the T, for the sake of simplicity) has an extended torque peak that starts tapering away 500r/min before the V12 model’s torque peak arrives.
That doesn’t tell the full story, though, because like the 488 and the California T before it, the T doesn’t give the driver all that torque until seventh gear. The second reason is that Ferrari believes it’s too much torque for the rear wheels alone to cope with. Instead, the torque curve gradually rises to 700Nm at about 5,000r/min (the curves are different in every gear), except in sixth gear, where it jumps there at 2,500.
At 1,865kg, the T is about 55kg lighter than the V12, largely through discarding four cylinders and the V12’s astonishingly complex all-wheel-drive system (because its target customers live in high-grip areas). The decision to go rear-drive was forced on Ferrari because the V8 was never engineered to power the front diff directly off the crank, like the V12. It was either engineer an all-new allwheel-drive system or just forget about it.
The removal of the all-wheel drive and swapping to a lighter engine has shifted 54% of that mass to the rear axle, making the 4.9m four-seater feel more like a mid-engined car than a front-engined one.
So when you look at the data and realise the T rips to 100km/h just a 10th of a second behind the V12’s 3.4-second burst, you start to wonder at the extra money required for the allwheel-drive version. Especially if you don’t live where it snows. 11.6l/100km 265g/km
There is no known method to make a V12 diehard consider a V8 if there’s a V12 in the same body style. It’s not that they deride the smaller engines; they just won’t acknowledge they exist unless they’re forced to. (It’s not unique to Ferrari, as Mercedes-AMG, BMW and Bentley can attest.)
The shame of it is they’d be missing out on a pretty good car here, though parts of it feel slightly disjointed, like the engineers couldn’t quite shake off their innate obsessions with sports cars for long enough to allow themselves to deliver a comprehensively comfortable, balanced grand tourer.
Any time it comes to a choice between comfortable or fast, the T’s default position is to go harder and that doesn’t always feel in sync with its stated aims or its list of market rivals.
That doesn’t make it a poor car. It’s very, very far from a poor car. It’s a superbly fast car, capable of astonishing feats of cornering and direction changes, but it doesn’t unlock that potential immediately.
Then there are the things that confuse us about this car. Its ability to soak up bumps (on roads selected by Ferrari) was hampered by a spring rate that felt overly firm, especially at the rear end. Sure, none of its rivals are quite this focused on speed, but they’re all more comfortable on a long highway drive.
Not only that, but the suspension makes a disquieting amount of noise as it crashes over square-edged bumps and broken ground, again mostly from the rear. As a combined effect, it’s disappointing in isolation and unsatisfactory against the competition.
There are other quirks that leave an impression, too. The steering-wheel-mounted indicator buttons seem like complication for the sake of it and the luggage area is adequate, rather than class-leading.
Other than that, it’s all pretty good and gets better the harder you drive it.
The engine fires up without the theatrics so many German performance motors favour these days. There are no blips, lumps, burbles or pops as it fires up and it doesn’t throw them out between gearshifts or on downshifts, either.
For a company that built a formidable reputation for audible theatrics, it seems there’s been a conscious effort to stay away from them. It goes about its work cleanly and enthusiastically, almost goading the others by suggesting that if you drive a Ferrari, you don’t need to audibly tap people on the shoulder to make them look at you. afternoon, even after 250km in the morning. Part of this is Ferrari’s preference for steering assistance that refuses to increase the weight on the steering as the cornering loads rise. That can be disconcerting for those who aren’t used to it and can lead to initial overcorrections, but there is plenty of road feel coming through the wheel to help you trust it.
And you need to trust it and feel it, because just as it doesn’t load up as you corner harder, neither does it unload the weighting when it starts to slide at the front or the rear. You can still feel the slides and still feel their approach, but you have to listen in a different way than in a fast Porsche or Bentley.
You have to be going some to get it to that point, though, because the T is capable of truly astonishing feats of cornering and it has a special appetite for quick direction changes, flicking through winding fast bends and up and over road crowns without ever giving an inkling of concern or discomfort.
The fixed spring rates are clearly geared for this kind of work, rather than cossetting people on broken highways, and you can feel the entire machine rising to the battle as you put more energy into its springs. Ironically, it rides better when you start throwing it about.
Of course, throwing about a car that’s 1.98m wide takes some faith and confidence, and it’s here that the T shows it’s a true Ferrari, delivering its very best when you do.
It feels awesome on smooth winding roads, but the Sport button means it also flows and oozes over the most broken Italian passes and B-roads, pushing the tyres so consistently onto the road that there is rarely a need to correct sudden slides, even with the skid-control software turned off. There is little point in turning it off, though, because the car is just so good with it on. Few drivers will be faster without it and most will be faster and safer. It’s not intrusive and it’s one of the best out there.
TRICK
The trick to the handling package, aside from monster carbonceramic brakes, is the rearwheel steering, which is a key reason why nothing unexpected ever bites from down below.
It’s a blisteringly fast fourseater that will see off most proper sports cars in the mountains, becoming more serene in its work with the extra effort you ask it to exert.
Of course, the mid-sized folks in the rear seats might not always prefer it that way. While they’ve not been forgotten, Ferrari has not exactly gone out of its way to make them feel at home, either.
From the driver’s seat, the range of adjustments in the seat feel like they’ll suit most people, the drilled aluminium pedals feel awesome underfoot and there are two surprisingly spacious cubby holes in the centre console. The multimedia screen is big enough now and even the glovebox is a useful size.
For now, this is a very good car most of the time and an utterly brilliant one some of the time. For Ferrari to broaden that so it’s utterly brilliant all the time, it’s going to have to forsake sports car ideas of fixed spring rates for a suspension that can smooth out the car’s ride in a mode even softer than the current Comfort setup. Because, apart from having four doors, that’s really all the rest of this terrific car is waiting for.
Price: On sale date: Max power: Max torque: Top speed: 0-100km/h: Combined consumption: CO2 emissions: Star rating: