Ferrari 488GTB review

With its twin-turbo 3.9-liter V-8 located behind you, you’ll enjoy its sonorous wail, and ferocious acceleration, all the way to 8000 rpm, where it makes 661 hp. A dual-clutch seven-speed is the sole transmission; we estimate a 0–60 time of 3.0 seconds. Ferrari’s revised adaptive suspension provides a relatively compliant ride without sacrificing handling. For those who really want to hear that V-8 sing, the Spider offers a retractable hardtop that raises or lowers at speeds up to 25 mph.

It’s hard to maintain journalistic perspective on the launch of any new Ferrari, especially one that’s held at a luxury wine resort on the side of a mountain in Emilia Romagna, surrounded by the sort of scenery that causes the Italians to put “issimo” at the end of superlatives. Hell, we can even forgive the company’s controversial decision not to serve cocktails until after the press conference, meaning we had to listen to the rundown while entirely sober. It’s a tough job, but we bet you’re glad we’re here to do it.

Having our full attention provided Ferrari the chance to tell us plenty about the new 488 Spider and its turbocharged engine. The presentation covered pretty much everything, being detailed enough to include a slide entitled “How the Ediff3 with SSC and F-trac deals with the demands of power-on torque distribution.” If we tried to summarize the whole thing, we would probably bust our monthly allocation of pixels. But we don’t really need to, as pretty much everything bar the Spider’s roof is identical to the 488GTB we drove back in June.

It was fascinating nonetheless, especially when the talk turned to the strange business of marketing open-topped Ferraris. Maranello is on first-name terms with pretty much its entire customer base, and officials told us, with commendable exactness, that we can expect just over half of U.S.-bound 488s to be Spiders (the number for the 458 was 53 percent). While you’ll be unsurprised to learn that 60 percent of buyers have already owned at least one Ferrari, the revelation is that 90 percent of them will be what Ferrari terms “Spider-only” customers, unwilling to even consider a supercar with a fixed roof. There are, it transpires, two very different tribes of 488 owners. GTB buyers want to drive their car solo and are far more likely to take them on track, while Spider purchasers usually drive with the roof down and a partner in the passenger seat. They are, we were told, “open-car hedonists looking for driving emotions.” We’ll leave the mental image of that one up to you, but we’d be surprised if it didn’t include gold jewelry.

A Dichotomous Customer Base

This brings the paradox. Because while the 488’s customer base is seemingly split between these hard-driving Alpha males and leathery debauchees, there’s only really a single car, one that now has the option of a neat folding hardtop. It’s not long since buying an open-topped Ferrari meant making significant sacrifices beyond merely the increased risks of acquiring skin cancer and a much younger wife. Spiders were the dynamic inferiors to their metal-roofed sisters, trading the opportunity to work on your tan and to better appreciate their wailing soundtracks for less performance, less precision, and a noticeable reduction in structural rigidity.