Ferrari 458 Speciale
The 458 Speciale, Enzo and F12TDF feature Ferrari’s last normally-aspirated engines. We drive them, and mark the end of an era
‘The Speciale is so good the pharmacy in Sant’agata must have had a run on Xanax’
It’s a moment crucial to the classic Ferrari driving experience. Press the throttle, and the engine responds immediately. Be it V6, V8, flat- or V12, that combination of seamless, relentless linear urge for the horizon, accompanied by an operatic scream that climbs higher as you press harder, is a part of the marque as essential as its Formula One team, or its relationship with the great Italian design houses. But in 2014, something changed. For the second time, the Formula One engine rules, from which Ferrari draws so much design inspiration, mandated the use of turbochargers. Boosting power and torque from small engines, saving fuel and reducing emissions, it became a vital part of every engine design from the racetrack to the supermarket car park.
Homologation-special 288GTO and F40 aside, Ferrari had only visited this territory once before, with the 208, and later GTB/S Turbos, which paired downsized 2.0-litre versions of Franco Rocchi’s V8 with turbochargers firstly from KKK, then IHI, to offer cheaper tax-break specials for the Italian market.
But in 2015, in the spirit of the new F1 regulations as well as adopting mechanical changes sweeping the automotive world, Ferrari unveiled its new 488GTB. The replacement for its mainstay 458 Italia. And its F154 engine was turbocharged regardless of what market it was sold in. Ferrari simply couldn’t meet its power and performance targets with a driveable naturally aspirated engine. But the 488 was missing something that the older cars had, an organic connection you only get when there is zero lag between the movement of your foot and the punch in the back.
So we’ve collected three of our recent favourites together – V12 Enzo, V8 458 Speciale, and V12 F12 Tour de France. Seventy years from now people will still be raving about the Speciale because it was the swansong for unfettered Maranello sports cars, a real out-with-a-bang machine that burned all too briefly (metaphorically speaking; infamously self-immolating 458s had been fixed by then). But also because it’s so good the pharmacy in Sant’agata must have had a run on Xanax the moment Lamborghini’s engineers got behind the wheel.
The 458 was a game-changer for Ferrari. The F430 had been impressive, but even Ferrari engineers admit that beyond the new engine and active differential, it was more of a 360 facelift than a new car. But the 458 was the first Ferrari to get the hyper-quick steering that corrected the marque’s odd age-old issue of a slightly pedestrian helm; the first to be made available without the option of manual transmission; the first junior Ferrari since the F355 to get you typing ‘kidney’ into ebay and selecting ‘completed listings’.
Then, right at the end of 458 production, Ferrari did the impossible. It made a car that was even better. That car was the Speciale. Not a more rounded, more usable variant, but one that followed a dynasty of track-ready post-f40 Ferrari V8 specials bred for GT championships – 348 Competizione, F355 Challenge, 360 Challenge Stradale and F430 Scuderia.
Even stationary, standing silent, it makes your heart race. Maybe it’s the gills either side of the headlights, menacing like the serratus anterior muscles on the ribcage of a really ripped athlete. Or the high-set separated exhausts that ape a Challenge racer’s. And definitely those expensive, optional, but surely essential stripes that run toe to tail, dipping down into the hole in the bonnet that looks like its been sucked through the boot space by the clever aerodynamic technology on board. Some of that is visible below the number plate, where flaps in the front grille open at speed to direct airflow underneath to balance the car. It’s paired with an electronically controlled diffuser to manage the way air exits the underbody – flat for low drag in a straight line; angled to generate high downforce in corners.
There’s nothing clever about the interior, other than the brain of any driver who can fathom how to operate either the VDA vehicle dynamics display on the left or the nav/radio one on the right. Fortunately, enjoying a Speciale requires you know nothing of either. It’s pared back in here. The dashboard gets handsome Alcantara details but the floors are bare for a set of metal mats, and the doors are cased with giant slabs of shiny carbonfibre.
It’s as if the car is trying to prepare you for the assault on your senses. It begins the moment you reach for that start button. No matter how many times you’ve driven a Ferrari, thumbing the starter is still enough of an event to make you pause for a moment and think about all that you’re about to unleash. And maybe, if you have had the pleasure, you also feel yourself tensing up a little, because there’s nothing relaxing about a flat-plane-crank Ferrari V8.
The sound is always hard, slightly strained, and the Speciale even more so. Building on the regular 458’s 4.5-litre motor – at 570bhp and 398lb ft, hardly a duffer – the Speciale employs a stratospheric 14:1 compression ratio courtesy of new pistons, high-lift camshafts, new intake runners and a free-breathing exhaust. Power is 597bhp; the 0-62mph sprint down two ticks to 3.0sec dead.
Whereas turbocharged cars often flatter with their easy lugability, the 458’s peachiest fruit is hanging on higher branches. Not that the low- and mid-range are pleasure-free zones: 90kg lighter than the Italia thanks to forged wheels and thinner glass, the Speciale feels constantly eager, its throttle response always immediate.
In some ways, it’s easy to drive quickly because you’re never in danger of unleashing a torrent of unwanted torque. And with the Side Slip Control system on hand to juggle ESP and differential lockup, you don’t have to be Sebastian Vettel to feel like you’re actually scratching below the surface. The Speciale laps Ferrari’s Fiorano test track in 1m 23.5sec – that’s 1.5sec quicker than the 458 Italia. Quicker than the Enzo too, by almost the same margin.
It’s testament to the pace of progress at Ferrari that the Speciale, a more focused version of Ferrari’s bread-and-butter car (organic sourdough, Duchy Originals butter, mind) could lap its home circuit faster than the definitive hypercar of only a decade previously.
I mean, just look at the Enzo. It’s outrageous, overblown and gloriously wide in the manner of the Testarossa, hardly beautiful with that huge F1-inpsired proboscis. But it’s got more stage presence than David Bowie at his most experimental, and if you want automotive theatre, you’ve come to the right place. This is hypercar with a side order of Group C racer, all bubble canopy and claustrophobic cockpit, massive rear deck and tyres like oil drums.
The Enzo was built around a carbon chassis. That’s proper racer-style labour-intensive hand-laid carbon, not the type found garnishing lesser performance cars at the behest of the marketing department. Those doors cut deep into the roof, and climbing
into the deep bucket seat requires a lunge across the broad sill. Even after the simplicity of the Speciale’s cabin, the Enzo’s lack of anything resembling soft-touch material is a shock. It’s like a moulded prison dinner tray with a steering wheel attached, the exposed carbon and rubber floor covering giving a hose-out feel.
The controls are an interesting reminder of an older Ferrari age. There’s no manettino drive mode dial, for instance, just a smattering of small buttons on the wheel, three simple rotary dials for the heating controls, and the starter located below them slap bang in the middle of the console. And this time you really do hesitate before flinchingly putting your weight behind it.
Finally prod it and 12 furious pistons start doing their damnedest to break free of their conrod tethers, filling the cabin with an incredible mechanical noise. It’s hard-edged, yes, but there’s a sweetness here too; a rich texture you just don’t get with a V8. But here’s time playing its unkind trick again. For all its swagger, the Enzo’s 6.0-litre V12 actually makes less power than the turbocharged 488GTB – 650bhp plays 661 – and doesn’t even wind as high. And though the 458 Speciale makes less power and torque, it pushes you deeper into the seat, hitting 124mph in 9.1sec, more than a second sooner.
And then there’s the gearbox. Dual-clutch transmissions have made two-pedal driving acceptable to snobs who thought an automatic was beneath them. They’ve given us something else hideously expensive to go disastrously wrong. And they give cars like the 458 that locked-on feel you don’t get with a traditional auto, but allied to the kind of sophistication and low-speed manners older sequential manuals could only dream of.
The Enzo is pre-dc. It doesn’t do slow. It doesn’t do traffic or manoeuvres. It doesn’t get out of bed for less than a two-thirds-effort blast of acceleration through the gears. But give it some beans and it clicks, everything from the satisfying engagement of the paddle to the thump in the back as the next cog slots home. Remember those pre-dc days when we were obsessed with shift speeds? Kiss the 8000rpm redline in the Enzo, summon the presence of mind to reach out, amid the cacophony, to tug the exquisite carbon shift paddle and it can swap cogs in 150 milliseconds. The Enzo might not do refinement but it’s got the important stuff licked. It’s shockingly violent, and pretty wonderful. It’s also the last of its type, because for its Laferrari successor, Maranello fused the V12 engine with a hybrid power pack with explosive results.
But the V12 lived on, and still lives on, in its purest form, in Ferrari’s front-engined GT cars. In fact, it’s a layout that has been a core part of Ferrari’s line-up for all of its seven decades, and though even the GTS aren’t immune to the creep of turbocharging and downsizing – witness the Lusso T, a rear-drive, V8-powered GTC4 Lusso introduced beneath the V12 version – the big hitter isn’t going anywhere just yet. I mean, just imagine how boring and fight-free schoolyard arguments would be if everyone’s favourite exotics cars had turbocharged V8s, or worse, were rated in kwh?
Gladly, the F12TDF still uses the equine standard, and by the time its champing as its 9000rpm limiter, it’s kicking out a stupendous 770bhp. You can forget any notion that just because the engine is up front that this is some sort of soft-touch GT. The TDF – named after the Tour de France race that front-engined Ferrari V12s dominated in the Fifties – is to the F12 what the Speciale is to the Italia. Carpets? Don’t care. Ride comfort? Who needs it? Taste and decorum? You could always get an Aston if you don’t have balls.
The wet-road handling of a standard F12 would make an early Chevy Corvair seem planted, but it’s a brilliantly rounded package. And maybe that’s a problem, because the one thing it lacks next to mid-engined supercar rivals is that Knightsbridge wow factor. Well, consider that problem solved, because the TDF – particularly in searing metallic yellow – is as arresting as a police interceptor.
The riot of scoops and swoops nod to Ferrari’s past masters, in particular the 275GTB/4 from the rear three-quarters, but the Tour de France is so much more than an F12 Berlinetta with a couple of extra spoilers. Ferrari even changed the rear bodywork to create an entirely different rear window line, improving downforce without the need to resort to a seperate rear wing.
Like our mid-engined pair it’s spartan inside, though the paucity of luxury feels more incongruous here. It’s a vast cabin because the F12 is vast. And so very, very fast. So fast, it’s unnerving the first time you fully open the taps, and still terrifies the next dozen times after that. Send all 770bhp to the four-wheel-steer-equipped rear tyres via the swift and slick dual-clutch transmission and you’ll hit 62mph in 2.9sec. For a two-wheel-drive, front-engined car, that’s incredible. As is that 9000rpm redline, which taunts you like a giant target. Getting anywhere near it demands huge commitment.
No bones about it, the 488GTB’S blown V8 is an incredible motor, but it’s got nothing on this. It has no answer to the V12’s immediacy of throttle response, which would shame an electric car. No answer to the richness of a soundtrack that delivers not just the bassy notes that turbo engines can manage, but the soaring mid- and high-rev frequencies they can’t, too. And no response to the way the character of the V12’s sound and feel evolves as you move through the rev range, past the strange resonance at 4000rpm, where you’re convinced it’s all going to get nasty and harsh. Instead it suddenly clears and screams for the sky instead, to a place a thousand rpm beyond where even the Enzo dares to tread.
Today, just one car in Ferrari’s model range – the 812 Superfast – retains a normally aspirated engine. It’s a 6.5-litre front-engined, rear-driven V12 grand tourer that owes almost all its substance to the F12, but looking at it, it’s hard to imagine its ilk surviving much longer. The rest of Ferrari’s range is now turbo V8-powered, as are its GT racers, and its F1 cars have had turbocharged 1.6-litre V6s for the past eight years now. Looking at these three gathered here today, while the 458 Speciale marked the end of a new beginning for Ferrari, there’s something wistful about the V12 pair. They were the beginning of the end.
‘The Tdf’s immediacy of throttle response would shame an electric car’