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It doesn’t take the genius of Albert Einstein to determine that the best place to test a Ferrari California would be, well, California.
The only question is where in the Golden State would best capture all that encompasses Californication — the beach-bum lifestyle, the cheesy look-atme narcissism and, of course, because we’re still talking a car here, the most fantastic roads in the universe — in the one day you have been allotted.
I submit that there is no place that better encapsulates all that is California Dreamin’ than Santa Barbara, quaintly dubbed the American Riviera, and my vacation destination for pretty much every May these past 20 years. It’s the West Coast’s version of a sleepy New England hamlet, only without, you know, the dreary weather, the impossibly nosy neighbours and, well, cops that seriously inhibit the enjoyment of this, the new turbocharged version of the California (the T in California represents the addition of two turbochargers to Ferrari’s now 3.9-litre V8).
In one small coastal village and its immediate surroundings there’s the snootiness of Montecito, the beach cruise to evaluate the T’s hardtop convertible roof and a surprisingly twisty — and more importantly, constabulary deficient — Highway 33 to test whether some of Ferrari’s supercar bona fides survive what is, for Ferrari, bargain-basement pricing (Canadian California Ts start at $248,016).
So, bright and early on a Tuesday morning we head into the mountains high above the coast, first on Highway 154, a wandering little ribbon of road. Top now down and Ferrari’s Manettino mode selector firmly in Comfort — the suspension damping is a little squishier, the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission’s shifting just a little less abrupt — we head further down to what may be the strangest sight in California: Solvang. Imagine an entire community — everything from private homes to hotels, restaurants and public buildings — a perfect copy of turn-of-last-century Copenhagen.
The Solvang Motorcycle Museum is possibly the best small collection of antique bikes in the world. Owner Virgil Elings (the inventor of the first microscopes to see electrons) has Mike Hailwood’s personal Honda RC181 on display in what was once a strip mall’s shoe store. As entertaining as that is — and I spent more than a few hours ogling everything from Vincent Black Shadows to the only Megola I have ever seen in real life — the real reason for traipsing up Highway 154 is to get to the road I use to test all supercars, California’s rolling, rollicking and increasingly crevassed Highway 33. It flat-outs through the desert before scurrying through the hilltops of the Santa Ynez mountains. It’s bumpy enough to challenge dampers, twisty enough to exercise grip and steep enough to fry brakes. In other words, it’s the perfect place to determine whether the California is a real Ferrari, or just a tart’s handbag painted red.
I won’t tell you that the California is as handy as the 458. Ferrari’s second-last mid-engined coupe is the handiest fourwheeler on any twisty mountain road, regardless of brand, and no front-engined, rear-wheel-drive grand touring coupe is ever going to match its incredible ability to make motorcycles seem slow around a curvy road. But — and I am surely going to ruffle more than a few feathers with this contention — I had a lot more fun bending curves in the California than I did in the supposedly more pur sang F12 Berlinetta.
For one thing, the California’s motor is not nearly as outrageous as the F12’s. As much as I like the song of a Ferrari V12, mounting a huge lump of a motor up front in a supercar makes for hard work.
The California, by comparison, is as calm as a Quaalude, its turbocharged 3.9-L engine, while plenty motivational, not nearly as overwhelming as the Berlinetta’s V12. Ferrari may have chosen the California’s steering ratio to comfort those prowling Sunset Boulevard, but its calmer response is better oriented to a front-driver, even strafing the twistiest of Californian hairpins.
That said, there are limitations to the California’s abilities. The car is plenty willing and there are many supercars it will leave for dead, but it is still, after all, Ferrari’s version of a boulevardier.
That’s not to say it’s slow. Twin turbochargers — and the 557 pound-feet of torque they engender — mean throttle response is immediate. And forceful! Ferrari says that 100 km/h arrives in 3.6 seconds, a number that really doesn’t do the T justice, as it’s a little porky (1,733 kilograms) to dart off the line. Turbocharging may be fairly new to Ferrari, but it has learned it quickly.
However, the same two turbochargers that so augment the thrust also blunt the symphony. You would never call the California’s soundtrack boring, but imagine Meat Loaf’s Paradise by the Dashboard Light covered by Michael Bolton; the crescendos might be familiar but it would somehow lack the original’s urgency. More noticeable, however, was that the California T doesn’t always engender the celebrity status of the 458 or the newer 488. Perhaps it was because it was liveried in burgundy rather than classic Ferrari race-me-now Maranello Red. But compared with Montecito, where the locals are trained almost from birth to appreciate the trappings of wealth, at Ventucopa’s Santa Barbara Pistachio — who knew California was the largest producer of pistachios? — the T might as well be a Buick for all the attention it garnered. Ferrari was going for something more subtle with the California’s revised lines, but I don’t think the designers wanted it to disappear.
Sixty kilometres later, in Ojai, the natural order of things returns and the California’s head-turning bona fides are re-established. This is, after all, California, both car and state, and neither is bashful about selfpromotion.