The 458’s naturally aspirated engine provided all the power you’d ever need, and – as it wound its way up to 9000rpm and you lost yourself in its howl – you’d never want for more. All very well, but what about the drive? Is it a floppy mess or just as sharp as the 488 GTB?įirst impressions are that the 488 Spider is, well, just too fast.
With the windows up and the rear screen in its highest position, all is calm drive something like the new R8 Spyder, and you realise just how much buffeting those buttresses on the Ferrari protect you from. Lower the roof (done in 14 seconds, and quietly too) and with the B-pillars and the buttresses remaining in place, you get enough of an aperture to enjoy the delights of top-down motoring, but not so much that you spend every mile of every journey being blown about like a dog that’s stuck its head of out a car window. Ferrari claims the system is 25kg lighter than a fabric cap, and if you let it play at being a coupe it provides better protection from the wind and the rain than the likes of a Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet. With the 488 being a heavily revised 458 beneath the skin, this latest Spider never was going to going to use anything but Ferrari’s RHT (or Retractable Hard Top). The advantage is that 488 Spider is as much a coupe as it is a convertible. What’s the upshot of sticking with the folding metal roof?
Like the 458 Spider before it, the 488 Spider hides its heart. It’s a shame that where the old Ferrari 360 and 430 Spider’s fabric roofs tucked tightly away and left enough room on the rear deck for a glass panel through which to gaze upon their glorious red cam covers, the mechanisms associated with a folding hardtop negate such perversions. The upright door handles, too, look like an afterthought that only came once the designers had finished sculpting huge swathes out of the sides. And the once svelte flanks are now almost entirely gaping intakes to feed the new turbo’d engine. Gone is the 458’s delicately moustached nose that deformed (on purpose) at speed to guide air into all the right ducts and vents and cooling channels instead it’s rather wide-mouthed and buck-toothed. But first impressions are of a Spider not so pretty as its predecessor. Just as the 488 GTB is a heavily revised 458 Italia (with the biggest change being the adoption of a smaller twin-turbo engine), the 488 Spider is a heavily revised 458 Spider. However, the 488 GTB (that’s the coupe in Ferrari-speak) was leap and bounds better than the front-engined California T – its engine night and day different – so hopes are high for the 488 Spider… So it’s a faster 458 Spider then? Especially when we were disappointed with the California T, Ferrari’s first stab at turbocharging since the F40. And with the limited-edition 458 Speciale Aperta that followed representing a final hurrah for Ferrari’s naturally aspirated V8 engine, there’s a lot to live up to. This streamlining has resulted in a lower centre of gravity and a reduction of the overall weight, also thanks to the use of Inconel® in the exhaust pipe.Its direct predecessor, the 458 Spider, was nigh-on perfect though. In the new configuration all the ducts are almost horizontally lined up at cylinder head height, the turbocharger unit has been lowered and the exhaust line is higher. The technicians focused on redesigning the intake and exhaust system to achieve this result. Thanks to its 780 hp (and 195 hp/l specific power), the SF90 Spider's internal combustion engine is at the top of the Ferrari range. The synergy between the internal combustion engine and the electric motors makes it possible to reach a maximum power of 1000 hp and puts the SF90 Spider at the top of the category and the Maranello-based company’s range.
There is also one at the rear which is derived from and takes the name MGUK (Motor Generator Unit, Kinetic) from the Prancing Horse's Formula 1 experience. The SF90 Spider features a plug-in hybrid architecture where the internal combustion engine is integrated with two electric motors at the front, which make up the RAC-e (electronic cornering set-up regulator) system.