FERRARI ROMA: IS IT AS GOOD AS IT LOOKS?
Maranello returns to the practical, front-engined, V8-powered, sporting grand tourer format with this gorgeous new coupé
It takes a brave soul to ask an obvious question. God bless whoever was brave enough to ask one at the end of that monthly ‘town hall’ meeting at Ferrari a couple of years ago, concerning exactly why it was that they didn’t make a car like the much-loved, big-selling
550 Maranello any more.
That, in my head at least, must have been how the new Ferrari Roma came into being – not that the company is letting on. There will have been a prevailing will from the management to make more of the modern front-engined V8 platform architecture shared with the Portofino convertible, of course. An enthusiasm, too, from Ferrari’s design team to seize the opportunity, once it was presented, to bring some classic, coupé-bodied elegance back into the showrooms.
But I reckon the bold armraiser at the back of the ‘big team get-together’ should get most of the credit here. Perhaps it was Giovanni from accounts. Since he doesn’t look great in red trousers, they don’t let him out of the office much, but he runs a mean Excel sheet, he makes a mean chicken cacciatore and he’s been puzzled by the 550 question for a while.
Haven’t we all? The 550 was one of Ferrari’s modern high water marks for front-engined GTS. Smart-looking, usable, soulful, fast, involving and, most of all, really well sorted for the road, it was followed up by increasingly wild and expensive front-engined, 12-cylinder successors that incrementally became less and less about everyday usability and accessible handling appeal and more and more about outright pace, grip, noise and lurid performance thrills.
The void that strategic shift left in the Ferrari model range has evidently taken some time to become apparent to the company’s product planners, but we’ll let them off on that one. It was a bit of a mental leap to invoke the spirit of a car like the 550, not to mention so many others of Maranello’s V12 grand touring greats of the 1950s and 1960s, with a reimagined fixed-head version of the turbov8-powered Portofino – itself not the most revered of modern Ferraris, after all.
And yet what the Roma proves is how much can be achieved through a handful of very well chosen technical changes. It has an impressive and quite rich and ritzy new-generation cockpit, too. Last but by no means least, it might be the most dazzling achievement yet of Ferrari’s own in-house Centro Stile design department.
To these eyes, the Roma is probably the best-looking new series-production Ferrari since the 458 of 2010 and possibly even since the F355 of 1994. It has sublime proportions, some beautifully uncluttered surfaces and just a hint of visual menace about it. Some lovely detailing, too. The way the carbonfibre skirts and front splitter echo the shape of
the bodywork above them, almost like a reflection in millpond-smooth water, is very clever indeed.
Under the skin, the Roma’s all-aluminium chassis and body-inwhite share a fair bit with those of the Portofino. Ferrari’s claim is that, in those two areas combined, the Roma is 70% new, although I suspect that’s 70% by individually itemised component, not by volume or weight.
Sure enough, if you compare the technical dimensions of the Roma with those of the Portofino, you’ll quickly see that the two wheelbases are identical. The Roma’s roof height is significantly lower, however, and its body and axles wider. At the same time, some of the new and repositioned mechanicals of the Roma’s driveline have helped deliver a centre of gravity some 20mm lower than that of the related convertible. It’s also nearly 100kg lighter.
The Roma is powered by much the same 3.9-litre twin-turbocharged V8 as that in the Portofino and GTC4 Lusso T, although some new cams and cleverer turbo controls allow it to make 20bhp more peak power than the Portofino, as well as a slightly broader spread of peak torque.
Downstream of that, there’s an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transaxle gearbox, derived from that in the SF90 Stradale plug-in hybrid supercar. It has a broader spread of ratios than the Portofino’s sevenspeeder and sits lower in the rear of the car. Downstream further still, the
Roma gets Ferrari’s torque-vectoring e-differential as standard, as well as its very latest Side Slip Control 6.0 and Ferrari Dynamic Enhancer electronic torque-vectoring systems.
Magnetorheological adaptive dampers are optional and were fitted to our test car but, even if you don’t have them, there clearly isn’t much in Maranello’s big box of technological tricks that this entrylevel model is missing out on.
Once you’re off and rolling at almost any speed, the Roma makes a much better first impression than either the Portofino or its California predecessor ever managed. Like all modern Ferraris, it has a direct steering ratio that picks up pace only just off-centre, and here, as in any of the firm’s models, that takes some getting used to.
But when you’re cornering quickly, the Roma rolls appreciably less than the Portofino and is quite a lot more naturally agile. It has chassis response much better matched to its quick steering, in other words, and its handling feels so much more natural, harmonious and keen as a result, allowing you to process and manage your influence on those front wheels more intuitively and to place the car with far greater confidence.
The Roma also rides more gently than the Portofino, yet with much better close body control. Ferrari’s engineers will tell you that it actually uses the same coil suspension springs at the front axle and 10% softer springs at the rear. Allowing for the Roma’s extra track width, however, that makes for drops in effective spring rate at both ends. And yet, because it’s also lower and lighter than its convertible cousin, the Roma’s roll rate (the speed at which it rotates into roll when cornering, not the angle it reaches) is actually 10% lower than the Portofino’s, so it’s suppler and better-handling.
It feels very much that way on a tight, occasionally bumpy, serpentine mountain pass like the one we sought
out for our testing and photos.
The Roma scythes into hairpins with an alacrity the Portofino always seems to feign. Although not quite supercar-like in its outright pace or alertness, it’s really brisk through the middle of the tachometer’s arc, and it has the building torque delivery and high-range flexibility that has distinguished so many Ferraris with this engine over the past few years.
It feels lighter and leaner than so many sporting GTS, both under power and on turn-in. And it sounds the part, too: not exactly sweet or woofling but as musical as you can imagine a turbocharged V8 with a flat-plane crank really getting and full of brassy, tremulous, likeably genuine audible character.
Ferrari’s manettino switch on the steering wheel lets you choose from five driving modes. These give you increasing freedom to explore the really impressive handling balance and rear-driven throttle-adjustability of the chassis with as much or as little electronic safety net as you please, just as you might in a 488 or the F8 Tributo. Just like those mid-engined dynamic exemplars, in fact, the Roma is so configurable, indulgent and forgiving that it really is a lot like a front-engined 458 or 488 at its limit of grip. I’m pretty sure nobody ever wrote that about the California.
There’s a clear sense of the modern entry-level V8 Ferrari finally hitting its potential, then, aesthetically and dynamically, and of it reaching down into high-end Porsche 911, Aston Martin, Audi and Mercedes-amg sports car territory with genuine purpose and threat for the first time.
Usable and rounded enough to enjoy on any day of the year, and on all sorts of occasions, this is a proper Ferrari GT of a likeably simple kind, the type of which we haven’t seen in a long time. Here’s hoping that it proves people still know a great Ferrari road car when they see one.
The Roma is so configurable, indulgent and forgiving that it really is a lot like a front-engined 488 at its limit of grip