Jeremy Clarkson reviews the Ferrari 296 GTS

I can only liken this Ferrari 296 GTS – a plug-in hybrid – to what happens when you ask the world’s best chef to make supper using only a turnip and dog food.

The Ferrari 296 GTS

It’s hard to know where to begin with this column. But, in a nutshell, the Ferrari I was testing last week was parked in a pub car park late at night when Jacob Rees-Mogg drove his brand-new pick-up truck into it, causing a significant amount of damage. Then the next morning Mr Rees-Mogg woke to find his truck had been stolen. It’s going to be fun for him, filling in the insurance claim form on that one. “I crashed into a Ferrari and then my vehicle was stolen.”

And what was the Ferrari doing in a pub car park late at night? (These days I’m in my pyjamas by 10.30pm, not pub-crawling round the Cotswolds in an Italian supercar.) Well, I have an answer for that. It was all the fault of Andrea Corr, from Irish family band The Corrs. Like I said, it’s hard to know where to begin.

So let’s start with the Ferrari. It was a new 296 GTS and it came with a man called Jason, who thoughtfully left me a video ­explaining how I could turn off all the health and safety bongs and beeps that so comprehensively ruin almost every new car on the market today. I’m not sure ­customers get a Jason, even as an optional extra, but I was grateful nonetheless, because when you climb into the 296 nothing makes any sense at all. If I’d been asked to disable the safety features on my own I never would have guessed that you have to turn on the ­ignition, then press the dot in a ­circle button on the left side of the steering wheel before touching an unmarked button on the right side. And touching is the key word here. If you try to “press” it, nothing happens.

Inside the cabin

Then there’s the dash. I recognised the speedometer and rev counter, and once I’d found my spectacles I saw there was a fuel gauge too. But the rest of it? Absolute gobbledygook. As were all the other buttons and switches. H? What does that do? No idea. And what’s this? Whoa, the wipers just came on. And how do you turn them off? If you buy one of these cars, set aside a week to work out what everything does, and bear in mind that because so many of the controls are on the steering wheel, they move about, so are never where you left them. It’s not like moving from a PC to a Mac. It’s like your current car is a typewriter and this is an air fryer. But no matter. I figured it would all become clear, and started the engine.

Nothing happened. So I put my spectacles back on and realised after spotting a “charge” readout on the dash that this is a hybrid and that I’d engaged the electric motor only. Fine. I’ll simply put it in gear and go … so where’s the gearlever? For some reason it’s been replaced with three switches, one of which engages something called “L”. No idea what that is.

Finally, though, I was moving and, let me tell you, it’s weird. You’re in a Ferrari and all you can hear is the tyres. You can hear them in any car, of course, but in a Fezza it’s usually different because you have the bellow of internal combustion to drown them out. Not in this one, though. This one sounds like an electric VW.

And then, about a mile down the road … “What in the name of all that’s holy is that?” In a humdrum hybrid you barely notice when the petrol engine kicks in but, trust me, in the Ferrari it comes on-stream with an ungodly bellow. Anyone who thinks that because the 296 only has a 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 it’ll sound a bit wet is in for a shock. It doesn’t. It’s a huge noise. And if you remove the roof, which you can do at up to 50km/h, it’s even louder. Is it a good noise? Dunno. It was too loud to tell.

From the rear

So now I’m in a Ferrari, on the way to give Pierre Gasly and his mechanics at Alpine some beer as a present for coming third in the Brazilian Grand Prix. And then I was on my way from there to my pub, which means using one of the best roads in England. In a Ferrari.

Obviously it’s quite heavy as it’s a plug-in hybrid, but you don’t really feel the weight as you have 610kW under your right foot. And it all comes from the middle of the car, which means everything is in harmony and balance. Weirdly, I thought the Porsche 911 Turbo I reviewed recently was slightly better on that road. And better looking too. The 296 looks a bit heavy somehow. The thing is, this car is the spiritual successor to the F355, a car so wonderful I bought one. And the dreadful 458. (I say it’s dreadful because James May has one, so it must be.) And this lineage counts for something – something you can’t feel. It makes you feel ­extremely special.

I felt very special indeed whizzing along in my own personal noise cloud, so special that I wasn’t really inclined to fiddle about with the various switches. I tried Race mode, which made it uncomfortable, and then various other ­options, but each time there was a bong followed by a message that I couldn’t read as I wasn’t wearing my spectacles.

Radio? Couldn’t find the controls and even if I had I wouldn’t have heard it. Airconditioning? I did find the controls for that, but they didn’t seem to do anything. And pretty soon I concluded that the car is a bit too complicated.

I then arrived at my pub, where The Corrs were due to play. They were great and afterwards I tore myself away from Andrea and tried to go home. But the engine went wonky. It sounded as if it was firing on one cylinder. Then it caught but was stuck in first, which gave me a top speed of 50km/h. I deduced that something complicated had gone wrong and went back to the pub, left it in the car park and cadged a lift home. ­Ferrari later checked the car and said it was fine but may have been affected by cold weather.

And that’s when one of our film crew, whom we call Jacob Rees-Mogg (after the former Tory politician and Brexiteer) because he is the complete opposite, drove his now-stolen pick-up truck into it.

To sum up. This is (was) a lovely car and if you drove it every day for a couple of months I’m sure you’d get used to the complexity. But there’s a nagging doubt. Asking Ferrari to make a car to suit the wishes of Greta Thunberg and the EU lawmakers is like asking the world’s best chef to make supper using only a turnip and dog food.

They’ve done a cracking job, but there’s a sense it’s the best they could do under the circumstances. Which is why I’d buy a low-mileage, proper Ferrari instead.

FERRARI 296 GTS

ENGINE: 2.9-litre, twin-turbo V6 petrol plus electric motor

PERFORMANCE: 0-100km/h 2.9 seconds, top speed 330km/h

PRICE: From $668,000

STARS: ★★★★