Roosting in Italy with the Ferrari’s newest drop-top
What is it?
It looks like a work of modern art — emotional, poignant, purposeful. You can almost sense the mindset of the engineers who crafted it. It sounds like a classical piece of music. At low revs, a smooth baritone, then higher, like a tenor. It moves like a ballet dancer — confident, light and precise. It’s the Ferrari 488 Spider. Except for the (admittedly fantastic) seven-speed dual-clutch sequential manual, it’s also the purest open-top driving experience currently offered by the Italians. We think it had a radio, but we never turned it on.
A quick aside: Ten years ago, possibly to the day, your Sicilian-American writer was delivering a different sort of Italian specialty from a little boutique cookery called Jet’s Pizza. Today, we’re driving an Italian lightning bolt through the spaghetti-string mountainous country roads of Forli. Bellissima!
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In Italy the hierarchy is as follows: the Pope, Ferrari and then everybody else. Everywhere we go, we are treated like royalty. It starts in San Leo, a sleepy little town located just west of San Marino. We pull onto the narrow cobblestone streets and are instantly surrounded by villagers, reporters, tourists and even the mayor. Later, we stop in Cesenatico for lunch and are again accosted by local tifosi. This is what it must be like to own a Ferrari in the home of Ferrari. It’s everything we imagined.
The 488 Spider, like the 488 GTB coupe, houses a new turbocharged 3.9-liter dual-overhead cam V8, as the company tries to meet fuel-efficiency and carbon standards via boost and decreased displacement. Max power is rated at 661 hp, which peaks right at redline, while 560 lb-ft of twist is available at 3,000 rpm. A seven-speed dual-clutch transmission sends power through Ferrari’s third-generation electronic differential to Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires.
Ferrari’s SSC (side-slip control) system handles the traction control and E-Diff calibration, and for the first time on the 488, there are adjustable magnetorheological shocks. The company says the system works faster and keeps the car flatter and more stable than previous versions.
All of the important functions of the 488 can be controlled with switches and dials on the steering wheel.
What’s it like to drive?
It’s like watching baseball at Yankee Stadium, listening to jazz in New Orleans or delivering pizzas in a Ford Escort. It feels right.
After dropping into the carbon-fiber and leather seat, we lay our hands on the wheel and begin cataloging the controls. Windshield wipers, check. Turn signals, check. Traction control, manettino check. Massive paddles for shifting? Check, but they’re attached to the column and not as long as we’d like. This isn’t really a problem until you find yourself in the wrong gear on some super-tight switchback and you try to grab a gear with a pinky finger and whiff a few times.
A big yellow tach sits directly behind the wheel, flanked by digital screens on each side. That’s where most your focus is pulled. Each can be configured to show navigation, radio information, turbo-boost gauge and the like. Our favorite is the little picture of the car with the relevant temps of the tires, brakes and fluids. That function only works in certain drive modes, which are selected conveniently with the manettino dial on the steering wheel. With all of those functions right in front of the driver, the rest of the dash looks simple and clean.
Taking off in first, the 488 needs a few beats to fully engage the clutch, at least at low speed, and then rumbles off with surprisingly little sound. At about 3,200 rpm, phase one kicks in. That’s the baritone, a classic Ferrari growl. The 488 Spider has a power retractable back window — to go along with the power retractable hard top — which can be lowered to improve the sound coming from the back of the car. We suggest you leave it down, even if the top is up.
A little higher in the rev range, you start hearing the turbos spool up and … woosh! Ferrari says it paid special attention to how and when they come on and succeeded in nearly eliminating any lag. It’s a new sound, at least to those of us who haven’t driven the coupe — a mix of a low growl with a windstorm brewing underneath the engine lid. Rolling toward the redline, the baritone goes up a few octaves, the woosh gets louder and the red lights on the steering wheel start telling you to shift. A smile has already crept across your face.
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Acceleration is slingshot-like, going from 0 to maximum push linearly as the revs build to 8,000. There’s an amazing lack of turbo lag. We could drive around all day shifting at 5,000 and think this 488 is supercar-fast. Push it to redline, though, and it’s like a nitrous boost that keeps your head pinned to the headrest until you shift and then — BAM! — back in the throttle for another 50 mph. Passing, even on narrow roads, is a cinch after dropping into the right gear.
Ferrari noted that even though this isn’t its performance king — the drop tops are more about the visceral experience — the response time from input to output is close to nil. The foot goes down, the revs go up, no hesitation. The sprint to 62 mph takes 3.0 seconds, down from 3.4 in the 458 Italia; 124 mph passes in 8.7, while top speed is 203 mph.
Engine and steering response are as sharp as a katana. Where the 458’s acceleration curve goes up like a gently rolling hill, the 488’s shoots up like a mountain. Upshift and downshift times are down 30 and 40 percent, respectively, from the 458.
The seven-speed DCT is one of the high points of the Spider. Compared to the ISR (Independent Shift Rod) setup in the Lamborghini Aventador, this box feels buttery smooth. At low and medium speeds, it’s relatively soft; at high speeds, it’s like a firm kick in the pants. It gets quicker as you turn the manettino dial clockwise.
That kick can’t be too violent. With all of the weight suspended behind you, a sledgehammer to the back (as in the Aventador) threatens to send the tail out wide, making for a hairy ride. This 488, though, has just the right amount of kick to keep us from getting nervous when navigating the broken, narrow roads on a nameless mountain in Italian wine country. However, even if we were driving at 9/10ths, we’d trust the SSC system to save us.
The traction control in the 488 doesn’t come in like a power-cutting circuit breaker. It just pulls the reins enough to keep you pointed between the lines. In sport mode, we aren’t even sure it is coming on until we see the yellow light flicker out of the corner of our eye. Race mode lets you go a little further sideways, and CT off is, well, off.
The Ferrari 488 Spider features a back window that can be rolled down to hear the engine, even with the top up.
The electronic power-steering system has a medium amount of weight to it but an extreme amount of directness. Those narrow mountain roads are mostly two lanes, with a line in the middle, and when you can’t see around a corner you stay on your own side. Keeping the inside tire on that line is a breeze, even around the tightest hairpins. As with any electronic system, feel is reduced a bit, but the 488 still steers better than 95 percent of the cars on the market.
As good as the steering wheel function is, we might just choose a standard round job, or even D-shaped wheel, over this squircle. During changes of direction, it doesn’t always just slide through your hand, and sometimes when you go to grab it, it’s just not there. We’d keep the shift lights, round out the top and call it a day.
Body motions are kept in check with the adjustable suspension; sport mode — a separate button — tightens things up, but just a tad. The roads in that portion of Italy, though broken up, don’t feature any deep potholes. We’d be a little more careful in the friendly confines of Detroit or Chicago. There is no wheel hop to speak of and only a tiny amount of lift on acceleration and dive on braking.
Those brakes are carbon ceramic and feature six pistons, front and rear. When cold, they take a good bit of effort to haul the car down from higher speeds. As they heat up over the course of the day, they become firmer. Pedal stroke is sufficiently short.
So this Spider offers nearly everything that the coupe does but allows for the ultimate enjoyment of the outdoors — at least for a car guy — as opposed to the ultimate enjoyment of a racetrack. And as deep as our enthusiast preferences run, we might even choose this one over that. Ferrari says that in every market but China, the Spider is a bigger seller anyway, so really we’d just be joining the crowd.
Do I want it?
The 488 comes with a seven-year maintenance program covering oil, filters and brakes. It also has Apple CarPlay for ease of phone use. We did have a little problem with the navigation system, which sent us off into some industrial zone a handful of miles away from our destination, but we eventually found our way back.
There’s also one viewing angle that doesn’t make it look drop-dead gorgeous — that’s the rear three-quarter with the roof up. Something about that vertical back window throws off the lines. Otherwise, nothing to complain about.
Take delivery in Italy if possible. And when you’re cruising through those little villages, the ones where the old folks smile and wave, keep the revs up. The sound of an Italian-made V8 bouncing off the ancient brick walls makes them feel at home.
