Ferrari 296 GTB review: frenetically fast and fantastic
I was truly overwhelmed by the genius of the 296 GTB.
Frustrated, annoyed, disappointed, even just plain sad – these are the kind of emotions I had hoped to see on the primped, fillered and pencil-bearded faces of the fabulously wealthy Ferrari owners I joined recently for a few days of “la dolce vita” (se sei ricco).
Hoped – because I am a bitter person who feels that life has given him far too many lemons and not enough Ferraris (yes, sure, I get to drive them, but I have to give them back) – but not really dared to expect. My reality-bending mother would always respond to the child me, pointing feverishly at people with nice things and clearly lots of money, with the words: “Yes, but are they actually happy?” I spent some time pondering this on the Ferrari 75th Anniversary Tour, which involved more than 100 people in 55 incredibly expensive supercars (I calculated the total worth of the car park in front of our first hotel at $40 million, at least) driving from the Gold Coast to Sydney.
At first, I suspected that some of these people’s faces had been permanently and surgically set in a grimile – a combination of smile and grimace – but towards the end of the first day of driving, as we hobnobbed on the beach in front of a full-size Ferrari replica sculpted from sand, I realised that even richly happy people can be miserable. The problem, which might not surprise you, is that Australia is a really, truly, awful place to take a long drive in a Ferrari. Even the 296 GTB I had been loaned for the event (most other people had their personal cars shipped in, including some from New Zealand) can feel almost pedestrian at 110km/h on one of the world’s most boring, repetitive and dull roads, the Pacific Highway.
Anyone who’s done similar supercar events in Italy, or glorious Germany, will tell you that even the highway-blast parts of such drives are hugely entertaining, due to a kind of collective assumption that the police in those countries won’t mind if you attempt to break the sound barrier. In Australia, of course, the speeds a Ferrari is built for will result in your licence imploding into a supernova. So, instead, we got to appreciate the more noticeable road noise from the 296, thanks to our coarser-chipped surfaces. Yawn.
By late afternoon, people were throwing around the word “bored” in a way that suggested they were not much used to it. They’d paid $30,000 – per car – to take part in the event, and it wasn’t quite as Cannonball Run explosive as they’d imagined.
Fortunately, a large focus of this celebratory tour for Ferrari’s 75th year was about enjoying the brand’s lifestyle, and the opening night at The Darling on the Gold Coast had been a sparkling success, sprinkled with caviar and spritzed by $400-a-bottle champagne. When I started to sniffle, someone handed me a $100 note to dry my tears.
As the Tour went on, the food and wine only got better, as did the driving – thanks to a detour through the Hunter Valley – culminating in a closed-road hill-climb dash where owners could really test their mettle.
A colleague and I rudely left the route and found our own twisty ribbon of road early on day two, and I was truly overwhelmed by the genius of the 296 GTB, the riotous roar of its 3.0-litre V6 (such a sound coming from just six cylinders is like Natalie Imbruglia pouring forth Pavarotti), the staggering wallop of its 610kW and 740Nm (plus another 315Nm from the electric motor because this is a superhybrid, not just a supercar) and its stupendous steering and road holding.
While the hardware is impressive, it’s the software that boggles the mind, because nothing this powerful should be less than intimidating, yet it is so easy to drive. You can sense what feel like Flintstone feet beneath you, scrabbling for grip, but the 296 never wants to bite you, or send its hips sideways. It’s just frenetically fast, and fantastic. It was also entertaining to watch my colleague’s sense of disbelief that a V6 can sound so good, and so Ferrari. I can still barely believe it myself.
The car we were driving was one of just three in the country so far, and it was pleasing to see that even the awful broken surfaces of some of our back roads could not upset its poised perfection. Yes, the people around me had lovely Ferraris (some of them bright pink), and many had a couple more back at one of their homes – but I had, at least for a few days, the best damn Ferrari of all. (Oh, and “se sei ricco” means “if you’re rich”, in case you were wondering.)
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