Flenn. Posted March 27, 2019 Posted March 27, 2019 Overview What is it? A convertible Ferrari Pista. Which means it’s the drop-top version of the Pista Coupe, itself a limited-run, track-biased über-488 - ‘Pista’ literally translating as ‘track’. Or ‘dancefloor’ depending on who you talk to, but that’s another story entirely. Anyway, it’s an origami-roof version of Top Gear’s ‘Supercar of the Year 2018’, and therefore the custodian of a great deal of weighty expectation, because no one really wants the Pista’s sterling efforts chamfered soft by a weaker, poseur-oriented sibling. That’s if you could accuse Ferrari’s fastest-ever, most-powerful and best-power-to-weighted convertible as not having enough bite to go with the racy aesthetic. Mind you, this one’s not a surprise, and the basics of the non-Pista Ferrari 488 Spider we know to be excellent: a neat little Z-fold, two-panel hardtop that electrically stows behind the seats (roosting over the engine) in about 14 seconds, up to speeds of 35mph. It still feels pretty cosy in there, mind - more like a lift-out roof panel than a full-on convertible - but there’s nothing wrong with the way it operates. Again, just like the standard 488 Spider, it looks excellent roof up or down, and darker-coloured cars hide the roof split lines better than light - and it doesn’t really lose any of the Pista’s ‘whoa’ factor when it turns up. Especially in yellow with a blue stripe. Saying that, spec all the lightweight options including full carbonfibre wheels and the Spider weighs around 50kg more than the ‘standard’ Pista, which is anything but standard, and itself up to 90kg lighter than a normal 488 GTB. All the other metrics are the same - so it’s got the same downforce and aero properties roof up, the same trick bits and carbonfibre extremities. Similar story with the engine, which is the same as the Coupe - a race-derived twin-turbo 3.9-litre V8 with 710bhp and 568lb ft, served up through a double-clutch ‘box and a selection of horrendously complicated differentials-slash-electronic programmes, capable of launching the car from 0-62mph in 2.85 seconds and on to a top speed of well over 200mph. I have no doubt it will hit these numbers. And just for reference, the Spider is indeed slower to 62mph than the Coupe, but if you can differentiate the 0.1 second difference when the Pista Spider launches and your face twangs back past your ears, you’re a more sensitive human than me. Basically it does everything a Pista does, but you always have the option of slinging back the roof and expanding your view/aural appreciation. Driving What is it like on the road? Let’s spoil the surprise - the Pista Spider goes as hard as the coupe, but you can hear it more clearly, and get a bit of a tan if it’s sunny. Dynamically there is a tiny, tiny difference, but it’s not enough to inherently change the way the car behaves. Yes, it weighs a little bit more than the Coupe, and if you’re on the right road, at a specific speed and have a Coupe to compare back-to-back, you might be able to figure out some minor correction of structural rigidity not found in the hardtop, but it’s negligible. So this one’s purely really down to personal choice, or whether you think a hard top track car is just that little bit purer of intention - which is absolutely valid. Just don’t go thinking that you’ll outrun someone in a Pista Spider with a Coupe, because you… uh… won’t. A lot of the impact comes from the engine, designed very specifically to mimic as much as possible the effects of a naturally-aspirated motor. Except that nothing atmospheric builds a wall of torque like this, or manages the boost so that each gear grabs hold of the forward view and headbutts you through it. It’s a monster. Each step on the Mannetino wheel-mounted switch brings a different character, faster shifting, harder edges. In Race mode, as that pedal drops and feeds digital amphetamine to the car’s ECU, strange things happen. Yes, air and fuel combine with a spark to make good things happen, but time and space get twanged like a guitar string, the world gets stretched like chewing gum. And your face looks like someone punched you hard in the forehead. The violent analogies seem to be the most appropriate. There’s wheelspin in third. And fourth if you’re heavy-handed and on a slightly slick surface. It’s streetfight quick - brutal and disorientating. But the best thing is that the Pista isn’t actually that much of a handful. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but getting to within 8/10ths of a Pista isn’t actually that hard - the combination of E-diff, side-slip control and all of Ferrari’s various other mechanical magics make it fairly easy to drive hard. Not easy to get the absolute maximum out of, but definitely no harder to drive than the 488 GTB, and some way short of the holy-cow-I’m-going-to-die razor edge of something like an F12tdf. It’s also interesting how natural all the tech feels. Once you start delving into the systems of the Pista, you realise there’s a set of controls so massively complex you have to sit down with expert instruction for several hours to prevent your brain simply liquefying and dripping out of your ears. But on the road it just feels… right. In fact, there are situations where the Pista feels almost four-wheel drive, dragging the front end around when you think it should wash wide, dealing with big bumps where you reckon it might just bounce. And the Spider does all of this with the exhaust howling harder than the Coupe, and the more intimate feeling of hearing those shotgun gearshifts engaging. Dropping from, say, fifth to second down through the gears for a tight hairpin is one of life’s great joys. Saying that, I probably need more hobbies. There is a slight feeling that if you were searching for criticism, you could say that Ferrari has spent so much time trying to make a turbo engine sound and react like a naturally-aspirated motor that it has failed to recognise that turbocharged cars are a ‘performance sound’ in themselves. For the hardcore track-biased cars, there would be very little wrong with having a waterfall of induction or an avian massacre of twittering wastegate. Or just a less ‘managed’ torque curve. Just let it be silly - forced induction isn’t in some way inferior or embarrassing. But that’s a small criticism. On the inside Layout, finish and space Inside the Spider is no different to the Pista, so it’s a slather of carbon, lots of switches, a pleasant and ergonomic enough place to be. The seats are excellent - you’ll need those side-bolsters - the roof well enough insulated. It’s not church quiet, but you wouldn’t want it to be. True, with the aerodynamic ’S-Duct’ cutting into the nose there’s not as much luggage space as a GTB, and you lose the drama of seeing the engine bay in all its glory (the roof mechanism sits on top), but if you’re going to have a car with this level of performance, you should expect some compromise. We loose-packed enough kit for a day out taking pictures, and it worked, so there’s enough space for a weekend away and you wouldn’t want to fill every orifice if you were on a trackday anyway. There are a myriad of screens and temperature monitors - including one to tell you when you’ve warmed up the Michelin Pilot Cup2s to the consistency of blu-tack - plenty of things to fiddle with. It doesn’t feel like a ‘track special’ to be honest - certainly not in the same way as a caged Porsche GT3 RS or similar - but that in itself is probably appealing to a Ferrari owner. If you stuck this car on slicks and put some harnesses in it, you’d be looking at serious laptimes, but it’s probably happier out in the sunshine on a nice road laying waste to pretty much everything.
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