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SpidEr MEN A mere three weeks after the Frankfurt Motor Show, James McCarthy finds himself in sun-drenched northern Italy to drive one of the show’s biggest stars and the last of the great sports car marques yet to feel the full weight of his lead foot.
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he hills are alive with the sound of 562 thrashing Italian horses bellowing in protest at the punishment being doled out to them by regular Sur la Terre motoring correspondent, Kevin Hackett. While I grin inanely in the passenger seat, letting out occasional squeals of sheer pleasure, he rapidly changes down and throws our Rosso Corsa rocket for the day into the next impossibly tight mountain corner. At the same time the glorious V8 choir, in full voice behind our heads, responds in kind by coughing and spluttering a little before starting the next verse of its automotive aria in a much more throaty and soul-shaking timbre.
As we fly by, a herd of terribly uninterested cows who have clearly seen it all before watch us impassively, in complete contrast to the locals who seem to be waiting for us. As we rush past, they wave and whoop, encouraging us to open the taps a little more. It is probably not by chance that they just happen to be on the street watching the roads, as we are not the first pair of journalists to be speeding headlong through the twisty mountain roads and beautiful villages of the Po Valley, near Modena in northern Italy in the Ferrari 458 Spider. However, SLT is the only magazine from Qatar to be trying out the latest set of haute wheels that the house of Enzo has to offer. And what a set it is. The car still bears all the aesthetic hallmarks of the 458 Italia coupe when the aluminium hard-top roof is in place, and side by side there would be very little to distinguish the two, apart from the lack of the traditional plexi-glass window of the engine cover on the Spider.
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With Great Power Comes Great Response Agility.
After a breathtaking mountain ascent, both in terms of Kevin’s instinctive driving and the stunning views afforded by the sweeping Italian countryside, it was time, as it was so eloquently put by my travelling companion, to “pop my Ferrari cherry.” After an hour of experiencing the awesome power of the car from the passenger seat, consumed by a potent mixture of nerves and excitement, I was handed the yellow-crested key.
With adrenaline coursing through my body, I fumbled for a moment before my right thumb settled on the shiny, big red start button. With barely an ounce of pressure, I brought the stallions to life once again with the deeply visceral “THRRRRUM” that had already become the soundtrack to my day. Because I have not driven the Spider’s coupe forebear, let alone any other Ferrari, I have no benchmark against which to compare this car as a driving machine. That is if you can indeed compare a Ferrari to anything else on the road. Perhaps the vehicle closest in specification and pure road-ripping DNA that someone has been foolish enough to hand me the keys to is the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera which, by dint of it having a (fixed) roof, precludes it from being any kind of legitimate control subject. Despite that, I was deeply aware that, while the Lambo can be quite a naughty bit of auto, its fantastic four-wheel drive system will nearly always stop you from getting gored when fighting it into a corner, while a similar power to weight ratio (2.5kg per horsepower) delivered to the road through just two rear wheels on narrow and windy mountain roads is, in my book, just asking for a stray hoof to the groin. The reason that this is no longer in evidence is due to a magnificent feat of engineering that is tantamount to automotive origami, with the 458 Spider boasting the world’s first fully retractable roof to be fitted to a rear mid-engined sports car. Somehow, the boffins in Maranello have managed to create not only a two-piece folding hardtop that fully retracts, at the push of a button, in just 14 seconds, but one that only takes up 100 litres of space directly above the engine and weighs a, frankly, staggering 25kg less than the soft-top fitted to the Ferrari F430 Spider. Equally, the car itself has only piled on 50kg of kerb weight when compared to its coupe cousin thanks to some clever design. While tortional stiffness has been maintained through the use of ultra-modern materials in the chassis, the buttresses housing both part of the roof mechanism and the newly positioned air intakes not only look incredibly sexy, but act as static rollbars, negating the need for additional heavymetal components that would be required to maintain top-down safety. While Ferrari has identified two separate demographics of driver (based mostly on ego) for both the 458 Italia and the 458 Spider, I guarantee that most right-minded people, if faced with a choice of a fixed-roof car of this calibre or the ability to have ultimately the same looks, style and performance, but with the option of going topless on a sunny day, would happily drop the additional $40,500 over the asking price of the coupe for such a pleasure. Given what I was about to experience, in hindsight, it wouldn’t even be a question.
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I was nearly reaching for the proverbial ice-pack as soon as we hit the first couple of corners. Racing into a hairpin chicane a little too hot, followed by some lead-footed braking and rather clumsy steering, caused the back end to flip out wildly. The evasive correction put us into the wrong lane as we exited the second corner, causing Kevin to visibly flinch with fear in the passenger seat next to me. This had absolutely nothing to do with the car of course. It was purely down to my own inexperience and an unfamiliarity of the prancing horse that I was desperately trying to rein in with all of the finesse of an inebriate trying to ride a fairground bucking bronco. The beauty of the 458 Spider, though, is that with very little time behind the wheel, you start to get an instinctive feel for the car. Once I had gauged the responsiveness of the steering, coupled with the massive amount of grip that you get from the front wheels after switching the steering mounted Manettino to “Race,” it became easier to direct the Spider into a corner and pull it around tight bends with a relative ease that belied the exhilarating results. As I took manual control, the howling V8 cried out with every imperceptible gear change from the seamless, high-revving, dual-clutch 7-speed gear box and I began to relax behind the wheel and revel in the sheer joy of driving. My confidence grew with every minute, throttling hard in the short straights, and feeling the now familiar gurgle, pop and thrust with each quick change down, closely followed by a primeval bellow as I barrelled into each corner and every banking curve in the road, safe in the knowledge that the Spider, true to its namesake, would grip to any surface. If all else failed, the huge carbon ceramic brake calipers would bring me to a grinding halt. With no pitch or roll, and just enough playful skittishness to keep me focused, the Spider took each new challenge in its stride until eventually we reached the villages on the other side of the mountain. It was pretty slow going then, but even in traffic the 458 was a joy to drive. I poked the car back into “Sport” and switched the gearbox to automatic, which Ferrari claims immediately reduces emissions by 30%. Despite this, the deftest of touches on the accelerator releases an angry growl and delivers a satisfying punch of power, causing the locals to stop, smile and wave enthusiastically. In turn you feel obliged to give them another burst, “It would be rude not to,” grinned Kevin.
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AS I TOOK MANUAL CONTROL, THE HOWLING V8 CRIED OUT WITH EVERY IMPERCEPTIBLE GEAR CHANGE FROM THE SEAMLESS, HIGH-REVVING, DUAL-CLUTCH 7-SPEED GEAR BOX AND I BEGAN TO RELAX BEHIND THE WHEEL AND REVEL IN THE SHEER JOY OF DRIVING. -
As well as the dynamic appeal of the car, there is the noise. That beautiful noise. It is incredibly difficult to put down on paper just how moving it is, on both a physical and an emotional level. It is positively intoxicating to the point of addiction. Even when you are just trundling around town in automatic, this car just makes you feel like a hero. This is as much due to the aural assault that follows it as the sheer driveability of the Spider. While the sound of any approaching Ferrari engine is guaranteed to make the hairs on your neck stand on end, the company was keen to point out that a lot of work has gone into making this, the 458 Spider, its most emotive songbird yet. New rear intakes that feed into the engine differently compared to the coupe, as well as a highly re-tuned exhaust system deliver a sonic fish-hook that yanks your mouth into a permanently gormless grin. Ferrari knows this only too well, which is why our carefully planned route through the Italian countryside was interrupted by a wonderfully contrived motorway section, punctuated by long straight tunnels that pierced not only the heart of the region’s picturesque mountains, but deep into the emotional core of both Kevin and myself as they allowed us to immerse ourselves completely into the amplified noise of the naturally-aspirated engine in full voice. I have goosebumps now, as I remember the stereophonic joy of two 458 Spiders vying for aural supremacy deep in the bowels of northern Italy.
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It is made all the more powerful an experience because, with the top down, you are exposed to the elements, which is quite fitting as this Ferrari is possibly the closest that something made by the hands of man can possibly come to being elemental. Or is it? Despite this seemingly gushing and sycophantic reportage on the 458 Spider, there hangs a heavy pall over the design of the car that, in the interests of journalistic integrity and objective reporting, I should bring to light. After much post-drive discussion, Kevin and I noted two glaringly obvious areas where the Ferrari could improve. Firstly, the rear parcel shelf is in no way capable of holding, as the company claims, a golf bag. Should I ever want to become a slave to the ridiculous and join the stickwaving, ball-chasing masses, I would be forced to rest my golf bag in the passenger seat. Which leads me neatly into my second complaint: there is clearly a disparity in volume between the left and right half of the passenger side footwell, which is fine if you are Heather Mills, but not so much if you’re a strapping lifestyle editor. I can only hope that these design choices don’t overshadow the less important features of the 458 Spider - like its epic turn of speed, which can be deceptive (particularly on the motorways where the speedo creeps past 200km/h with unnoticed ease), its handling, its stunning aesthetic beauty and an engine that sounds like a Norse-god snoring - and conspire against it to cost the car a place among the pantheon of Maranello greats.
WHAT’S IN A NAME? There are several theories as to where the automotive term “spider”, or “spyder”, originated for drop-top sports cars, but here are two of the most convincing. The first finds its origins in transportation antiquity, being derived from the time of horse-drawn carriages. A “Spider” was a lighter and quicker model than the standard phaeton carriages and had narrow, spindly wheels, a two-seat cabin and a folding sunshade made of four bows; with its black cloth top and exposed sides for air circulation, it resembled an eight-legged spider. Another school of thought, however, is that Italians, upon seeing a sports car rushing past would gesture to the driver with a winding arm movement and shout “Speeder! Speeder!” Encouraging them to give the car some welly and passers by a bit of show. Over the years this has gradually morphed into the name “Spyder” or “Spider” and, as such, has gone on to grace the tailgates of countless Ferraris, Fiats, Alpha Romeos, Lancias, Porsches and Aston Martins, among others. Interestingly, Aston Martin has long since dropped the name “Spyder” and now uses the term “Volante” which, when translated from Italian into English, spells out the word “Speeder.”
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