Ferrari 488 GTB: First Drive

In horse racing, good breeding doesn’t guarantee speed. Take American Pharoah, the horse that won the Triple Crown this weekend, ending a 37-year drought between champions. Had American Pharaoh run the Belmont Stakes against the last Triple Crown winner, Affirmed in 1978, he would have beaten him by about half a length. Had he run against Secretariat in 1973, he would have lost by 10 lengths.

Automotive thoroughbreds have to run against history and win, and maybe none so much as those that wear the Prancing Stallion. Nothing demonstrates that quite like this car, the Ferrari 488 GTB, a V-8 machine that with 661 hp and 560 ft-lbs of torque is faster than Ferrari’s previous generation of V-12 supercars. Yet within the Ferrari world — and let’s be clear, Ferrari isn’t a car maker so much as an exclusive speed appreciation club — this 488 GTB faces some pushback for how it makes its speed: using a smaller, twin-turbocharged V-8.

Before we drove the 488 GTB, Ferrari’s technical staff gave a dozen jet-lagged journalists a three-hour course in engine dynamics, chassis science and material development. We weren’t allowed to take photos of the mental treasures — like the equations that led to the new set of handling controls — but they were thorough and exhaustive, and I can now strike “nodding off at the Ferrari factory” from my bucket list.

Only later did I fully understand what we were hearing: Ferrari’s own statistical argument for turbocharging. At this level, more power has become a necessity, and getting the targeted increase over the 458 Italia would have required more engine than the car or tightening global fuel economy rules could sustain. Using twin turbos and more advanced software allowed Ferrari engineers to reduce power lag to almost — but not quite — zero, and the combination of cooling and aerodynamics determined the new 488’s shape, from the front-end splitter to the massive dual-level intakes that fill the rear-view mirrors.

The results: the jump to 62 mph takes 3 seconds flat, and 125 mph arrives in 8.3 seconds, appreciably faster than the 458 Italia. While top speed rises to 205 mph, Ferrari claims to have sharpened the 488’s reflexes at any speed; hit the pedal, and the car reacts in 0.06 seconds. Floor it from a standstill, and the 488’s seven-speed dual-clutch transmission will bounce off the rev limiter in fourth gear in 6 seconds.

Other high-end sports car builders face little pushback from their customers for turbocharging, but like I said, Ferrari runs a club, one built around the emotional connections between its owners and their machines. (When you only build 7,000 cars a year, or roughly what Ford pumps out in F-Series pickups in three days, you get to know every buyer personally.) In that frame, engine sounds matter more than on any other vehicle. Ferrari engineers will not say that something has been lost in the switch from the 458 Italia’s 4.5-liter motor, not after spending so much time honing the sonic signature of the 3.9-liter flat-plane-crank engine through tricks like equal-length exhaust headers. Compared to the 458, the volume has gone down, but other notes have been added, like a five-piece combo that plays softer than the guitar-drum duo.

I took the 488 onto Ferrari’s Fiorano circuit after a brief introduction by Raffaelo de Simone, the factory driver who, as he says, helps make “every Ferrari a Ferrari.” His cubicle on this day goes 150 mph and can drift through a tight corner while he checks his cellphone. This is my first time at Fiorano, and I’ve heard a dozen tales from other writers about their adventures in cutting grass and strewing gravel here. I’m no Alex Lloyd, so my goal is simple: Keep it shiny side up.

On track, the monster reveals itself as fierce as it is polite. After a couple of laps, I hit 150 mph on the front straight, and while acceleration has fallen off a bit, I can still feel the 488 GTB ready to pull further. I’m not so brave; I stomp the brakes, which are serving-plate-sized rings of carbon-ceramic metal from Brembo that debuted on the LaFerrari hypercar, and the 488 pulls back as if I’ve deployed a parachute. While I only get a handful of laps, each one reveals more depths; there’s greater brake and more power at every level than I can truly grasp, which rewards pedal stomping rather than tap dancing, and those moments when I start to slide, the car allows it for a moment and then finds more rubber to waste. I let the dual-clutch transmission manage the shifting, and while the 8,000-rpm redline is 1,000 spins shy of the Italia’s wailing V-8, there’s never an appreciable pause in power delivery.

I don’t write this to glorify myself. It was exciting, it was challenging, but I’ve had a harder time mastering the controls in a Xbox game. If you have a bare minimum of track experience, ridiculous forces come ridiculously easy in this car.

Several hours of driving though the hay-strewn hills surrounding Maranello only confirmed the 488’s tendencies. Mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive cars can’t help but want to turn more than their drivers can often manage, and much of supercar development over the past 20 years has been put toward how to keep the bridle on the monster over your shoulder. In the 488 GTB, Ferrari reaches a new summit; you can have all of your supercar power, and your braking, and never see your rear tires promenade past the fronts. If you want more oversteer, there’s several ways to progressively turn down the protections — from the electronic differential to the F1-level traction control to the Side Slip Control 2 that manages yaw forces in hard corners — and use the go pedal to eventually get the GTB wagging. Even then, at its limits, it’s a happy motion, not the angry response you’d expect when drivers act like toddlers slapping a tiger.

The magnetic-ride shocks set to “bumpy” take punches from the broken tarmac with the reserve of a Thai kickboxer. The combination means that the tires stay planted better than ever, and the driver doesn’t get fatigued simply from wrestling the controls. As we blast through mountain roads with passers-by waving at us to go faster, I come to think every Ferrari 488 GTB sold in America should have a 24-hour hotline of bail bondsmen and junkyard-dog traffic lawyers. (I’d call it ConStar.) In most U.S. states, it will be nigh impossible to drive a 488 GTB without quickly committing a slew of traffic felonies — not because of its drivers’ lawbreaking nature, but because it’s just so easy to hit 100 mph in a few seconds.

Ferrari says the 488 GTB will cost $242,737 here, a number that’s a sparking combination of specific and useless, like counting bubbles in prosecco. The majority of new Ferraris pass through the factory’s custom shop, where the range of available colors, fabrics and prices are essentially boundless. It does, however, set up a marker for the debate we enjoy in this country: Can this new Ferrari truly be worth three times as much as the 2015 Chevy Corvette Z06 — a car that also features a forced-induction V-8, 650 hp, a similar level of trick driving software and even the same magnetic-controlled shocks — and which probably matches its performance at all legal speeds?

Please debate it below, but the answer depends on your own measure of value. I gladly await our moment to put the pair together in real life, but my wager would be that on any track longer than a quarter-mile straight, the the 488 GTB pulls away. Yes, the Vette and its truck engine will likely be less fragile, but Ferrari has made a jump in interior quality with the 488 GTB that the Vette still struggles with; every surface is carbon fiber or leather, even the roof, and all the creature comforts like keyless ignition and entertainment systems work and work well. Just like the mountain Italian towns now sporting “McDrive”-thrus, there’s even a cupholder thanks to American customer lobbying. And while Vette owners have a club as well, it’s a far less exclusive enclave, with only a fraction of the social wattage that a Ferrari transmits. Chevy will gladly build as many Z06s as the Kentucky plant can muster; Ferrari will build only 7,000 copies of the 488 GTB over the next four years.

Yet in the the Ferrari club, there’s some murmuring about this newcomer, especially from the vecchios upset by its forced engine breathing and looks. Yes, the roof and the lights and the aluminum chassis carry over in part from the 458 Italia, and the design overseen by Ferrari stylist Flavio Manzoni doesn’t have some of the drama that Pininfarina often conjured, especially head-on. The 458 Italia was a Sophia Loren-quality bombshell, and in this jaded crowd, that makes the 488 GTB somewhat lesser, and perhaps inferior to the Italia or even the still naturally aspirated Lamborghini.

I am not a member of that club, and likely neither are you, but I can tell when emotions have let logic gallop away from people. Technically, the 488 GTB is 85 percent new parts; stylistically, it’s not the same leap as the 458 Italia, but it still moves Ferrari design forward. Mechanically, it’s better in all the dimensions that matter, and masterfully so in many. Not all road-going Ferraris of the past 40 years have weathered time and taste to turn into treasures, but the 488 GTB will. It’s an Italian-strength irony: an exclusive supercar that earns its honor by making the beauty of speed available to anyone — at least, anyone who has the resources for stabling a thoroughbred.