Ferrari Purosangue review: How does a $728k SUV handle on snow?

The claimed zero to 100km/h time from this 6.5-litre, V12 engine is just 3.3 seconds. But try to achieve that on ski runs built for cars and you’ll simply bury yourself.

The Ferrari Purosangue is powered by a 6.5-litre V12 engine that probably should be in a museum, writes Stephen Corby.

One has to feel some sympathy for the super-rich as they trudge through their constant battle with ennui. These are people who can own anything, go anywhere, never work a day again if they choose, and can casually drop a million dollars on a Ferrari they’re then told they’ll have to wait a year or three to get their hands on (don’t cry for them, they all have other supercars to drive). What ball of wool can you roll in front of fat cats like that to rouse them? Well, you can offer to let them ride an elephant on ice skates across an obstacle course covered in deep snow, because that’s not something even they get to do every day.

The elephant in this case is the Ferrari Purosangue, a vast and cumbersome-looking two-tonne beast of an SUV (albeit one with just four seats, two of which aren’t particularly comfortable) powered by a 6.5-litre V12 engine that probably should be in a museum rather than making the kind of shrieking metallic trumpeting sounds you’d expect from the devil’s own brass band at the top of a snow-covered mountain in New Zealand.

It was here that almost 100 Ferrari customers – most of whom have smacked down deposits for a $728,000 SUV (it doesn’t take much personalisation to push that over
$1 million) – were invited in order to distract them from thinking about how long they have to wait to take delivery of their newest toy, and to reward them for being such good people.

The claimed zero to 100km/h time for this car is just 3.3 seconds.

And entertained they most certainly were, with a fleet of Purosangues with their traction-control systems set to “go on then, I dare you”. The claimed zero to 100km/h time for this thing is just 3.3 seconds, but try to achieve that on ski runs built for cars (the Southern Proving Ground we visited is used by the world’s biggest car companies for winter testing during the northern summer) and you’ll simply bury yourself. Driving machines with this much power across fields of ice and snow should be the kind of fun that makes you feel more alive by dangling death in front of you, but the enthusiastic Kiwi driving instructors were determined to remove any possibility of boredom by constructing exercises, and time trials, that largely involved driving these beasts sideways, or around in circles.

It is magnificent from some angles, particularly front-on.

In the real world, you have to be a bit of a duck (sorry, I spent a whole week speaking to Kiwis, it’s catching) to experience oversteer, but on snow, particularly in a car with 533kW and 716Nm, you really need only to wave your foot in the direction of the throttle and you are throwing up bright white rooster tails of ice and snow, while either sliding sideways or spinning around in ever decreasing circles of embarrassment.

Trying to sashay your way through a field of cones without turning all of them into hats for toy-sized witches is a challenge, and an intimidating one, but once you learn that you’re not really placing the car with the steering wheel so much as the throttle, and develop the technique of stamping on the accelerator for controlled bursts of tail-wagging, it starts to come together.

I did fall deeply in love with its V12 engine.

The sense of accomplishment when you actually get it right and hold a slide long enough to draw something appropriate on the snow, like a big dollar sign, is so overwhelming that it brings huge smiles to even the most spoilt, seen-it-all, bought-most-of-it faces.

This was my first look at a Ferrari Purosangue in the flesh and, while I didn’t learn an enormous amount about what it’s like to drive in the real world, I did fall deeply in love with its V12 engine, which is surely the very last of its kind that I will ever get to make beautiful music with.

Purosangue means ‘pure blood’ or ‘thoroughbred’.

Sadly, while most of my learned friends in the industry think the designers have managed to create an attractive SUV (the Italians refuse to use this common term themselves, calling it a “four-door” Ferrari instead), I have to disagree. The Purosangue – it means “pure blood” or “thoroughbred” – does look good in photos, and that’s because it is magnificent from some angles, particularly front-on, but the sheer size of it, and its rather heavy rear end, mean it should not be parked near the pantheon of wondrous Italian supercar creations. Sitting so high off the ground in a Ferrari also feels sacrilegious, like riding a Melbourne Cup winner to the shops.

Fortunately, the Esperienza Queenstown team had also brought a few examples of my favourite car in the world, the Ferrari 296 GTB (and one convertible GTS), which gave us the opportunity to slip and slide in something even more powerful (610kW and 740Nm), yet lower to the ground and perfectly balanced. While I would be more likely to take up sword-swallowing than turn off the traction control in a 296 on the road, being given the opportunity to do so, on a sensational snow day, made me feel richly alive. Or at least very alive.

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Ferrari Purosangue

ENGINE: 6.5-litre V12 (533kW/ 716Nm)
FUEL ECONOMY: 17.3 litres per 100km (yes, 17.3, wow)
TRANSMISSION: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic, all-wheel drive
PRICE: $728,000
RATING: Four stars out of five