WHEELS & WATER
SUPERB SUV Introducing the exciting new Ferrari Purosangue.
WORDS CHRIS NIXON IT’S EASY TO SEE our conversion to SUV-ing is almost total when sports car icon Ferrari finally comes out with its own interpretation of the trend. The high-er riding, first production Ferrari with four doors is named the Purosangue – but Ferrari insists on not calling it an SUV or cross-over, a description used for existing rivals Lamborghini Urus, Aston Martin DBX, Rolls-Royce Cullinan, Bentley Bentayga, Maserati Levante, Porsche Cayenne and Range Rover. If you can even get on the order list for Australia, you’ll need around $600,000 to buy a Purosangue and will have to wait to receive it until late 2023 at the earliest. Production numbers will be capped so that the Purosangue’s inevitable popularity in the Ferrari range does not overshadow the brand’s pure sports car image. Patience should be rewarded with a truly exciting vehicle. For starters, it’s arguably the best-looking execution yet of the conventional two-box SUV body shape, which usually leaves little room for true style. Beside it, a Porsche Cayenne looks like a Volkswagen.
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– Issue 93
Another temptation, the Purosangue comes with an enormously powerful V12 engine. In its pure natural form, without turbocharger, supercharger or hybrid-electricity boosters, this classically-Ferrari masterpiece delivers 533 kiloWatts of power at a dizzying 7750 rpm, spins to 8250 rpm and drives the vehicle from rest to 100 kmh in 3.3 seconds, then onward to a 310 kmh maximum. The engine has further significance because it will be likely among the last pure Ferrari V12s you can buy – really, the essence of the Ferrari legend as expressed by Enzo Ferrari himself – as the Italian make continues its transition to hybrid and full-electric power. A V12 Ferrari will become even more coveted in future years. The Purosangue’s performance is the territory of the world’s fastest sports cars and doubly exceptional for a ‘not-an-SUV’ four-door wagon weighing just more than two tonnes. Easy to understand why Ferrari rejects the SUV tag; this is more like a different kind of sports car. Specifically, it’s a Ferrari with four doors. Aston Martin has tried the Rapide and Porsche the Panamera, but neither flew off the sales floor.
The Ferrari Pursosangue, however, is certain to be a huge hit. A clue to Ferrari’s market ambitions might be that this was its first vehicle in memory not displayed in traditional red at launch; instead a conservative metallic grey. Such details matter. This is the Ferrari for people who yearn to drive behind the yellow-and-black prancing horse badge, but don’t want a noisy, flighty, low-slung two-seater. It will be almost as fast, turn heads from Sanctuary Cove to Milano and be easy to live with. To be transported by Ferrari Purosangue will be among the most prestigious perks of the world’s richest hotel guests. Passengers, naturally, will be in the lap of leather-lined luxury as they’re pinned in their seats by the Purosangue’s dramatic acceleration. There are four individual seats, the rears accessed by unusual suicide-style doors. Those doors open to a new era for Ferrari, ironically just as the classic, naturally-aspirated V12 engine faces down the road to its own inevitable – but hopefully, distant – demise.
