FERRARI BRINGS THE HORSES
Chased by the competition, the Italians get back to the top of the supercar segment
LOS ANGELES It’s not easy following an icon and, understand this clearly, Ferrari’s 458, for all its warts and shortcomings, was nothing if not iconic. It’s also easy to forget — mainly because we are talking Ferrari here — but such superiority wasn’t always part of the entry-level repertoire.
The original — the Pininfarinastyled 308 — will live long in our consciousness, immortalized by no less than The Moustache himself, Thomas Magnum. But subsequent iterations were sometimes, well, less than iconic. The 348 was made to look rather crude by Acura’s game-changing NSX. The 355’s paddle-shifting transmission’s gear changes were about as subtle as a telephone book to the back of the head. And the 360? Well, it was just plain underpowered.
Ferrari finally got its act together in 2005 with the F430, but really, it wasn’t until 2009’s 458 that the experience matched the legend, the Italia handling and comportment finally matching the high-revving V8’s sound and fury. In other words, Ferrari’s new 488 has a lot to live up to.
One thing you don’t have to worry about is speed. The 488, Spider or otherwise, is fast. Mondo fast. Blinding, in fact. The engine may have been downsized from the 458’s 4.5 litres to 3.9 L, but it has been twice turbocharged and the result is, as they say, prodigious — 670 horsepower of prodigious, as a matter of fact. The influx of horsepower is backed up by an equally inordinate 560 pound-feet of torque. That’s some 63 hp more than even the most steroidal of 458s, the final-year Speciale edition.
It’s a monstrous affair, good enough to accelerate the moderately priced Spider (compared with, say, a La Ferrari or an 812 Superfast) to 100 kilometres an hour in a very hypercar-like three seconds. And, unlike the 458, you don’t really have to fiddle with the paddle-shifting seven-speed all that much to liberate all its go juice; those twin turbos mean there’s plenty of jam from way down low. Where the 458 was merely responsive at four grand, the 488 — again, thanks to those turbochargers — is downright muscular.
It still sounds good. As long as you don’t compare it with the 458 that was, let’s be frank, the most melodious V8. Turbochargers will always stultify an otherwise sonorous exhaust track and the 488 is no exception. That said, the 488 still sports a flatplane crankshaft and still revs to the moon. No, it cannot match the 458’s 9,000 rpm Wagnerian wail. On the other hand, it is the Ride of the Valkyries compared with such dullards as McLaren’s 720S, Acura’s anemic NSX and Ford’s truck-like GT.
That’s especially so in the Spider, mainly, of course, because with the top down you get the full, unadulterated mid-engine trunk music piped directly into the cabin, sans insulation. Much better! Considering that there’s precious little structural integrity lost to the open-air 488, it seems like it should be the go-to model.
Of course, there’s more to the Spider than just the sound — enjoy it while you can! — of internal combustion. Fourteen seconds after you’ve toggled the button, you can be driving open topped in what was just a hardtop Ferrari. Like all such retractable hardtops — and this one is similar to that used in the 458 — it’s a balletic little minuet as levers fold, panels divide and then, like the finale of a perfect Swan Lake, all returns to normal, the lines so clean that one never suspected the Spider ever even had a top.
A 488 is gorgeous; a Spider with its top down is pretty much everyone’s fantasy of open-top motoring. Purists will make much of the Spider’s extra 50 kilograms — mostly in structural reinforcements to make up for the lack of a roof — but ignore them, they know not of what they speak. Wind in your hair and more soulful exhaust music? More than worth the avoirdupois.
The Spider’s cabin is quite — some might say surprisingly — modern. I say surprisingly because modernity hasn’t always been the calling card of the Ferrari interior. Indeed, some of the 488’s predecessors were seemingly always a generation behind the lesser cars it hoped to belittle. The controls, especially the Manetinno’s vehicle setting control on the steering wheel, fall readily to hand. Yes, the infotainment/navigation screen is small, but unlike previous Ferrari systems (this time I include the 458), they actually work. This is especially welcome in the navigation department, because previous systems (again, including the 458’s) were slow and dated.
This Ferrari is, well, surprisingly comfortable. More specifically, the suspension, thanks to the magnetorheological adjustable suspension, has a wide range of damping adjustability that — yes, I am saying this about a Ferrari — borders on the supple. Similar to technology General Motors uses in highend Cadillacs and Camaros, the suspension adjusts its stiffness by sending electric signals to the fluid used in its dampers. Said fluid contains microscopic magnetic particles that can either thicken the fluid (stiffen the damping) or render it thinner (softening the damping).
Because the electrical adjustment operates directly on the suspension’s fluid, rather than physically altering some mechanical valving in the dampers, the Ferrari system can react more quickly than lesser systems. The result is a halfway decent ride. There is even — shades of civility — a “bumpy road” mode, this civil comportment obviously important to Ferrari.
At least some of this newfound civility and speed is due to McLaren. The first supercar maker to seriously challenge Ferrari’s combination of sophistication and performance since the Acura NSX, McLaren’s products, such as the MP4-12C and the 650S, have forced Ferrari to dramatically up its game. The most notable differences are the company’s vastly improved interiors and, of course, that substantially more powerful turbocharged engine.
The one downside of all this new-found civility is that the 488 isn’t quite as unique as its predecessor. Yes, it is faster. As I said, it is also technically more sophisticated, substantially more ergonomic and dramatically better built than Ferraris of yore. In every quantifiable comparison, the new 488 is a superior product to its predecessor.
It is, in fact, most assuredly the best, fastest and most complete supercar in its segment. But it’s just not as “bad” as the 458.