2018 Ferrari Portofino

Before 2008, no roadgoing Ferrari had ever featured an eight-cylinder engine ahead of the driver, a dual-clutch automatic transaxle at the rear, direct fuel-injection, or a power-folding hardtop. All of those brand firsts showed up at once on the sweet-driving California, wrapped, sadly, in suboptimal styling.

Customers looked past the California’s bulbous trunk to appreciate the considerable junk within: The all-season folding hardtop, which stowed atop the spacious cargo hold, and that sharp-shifting rear transaxle. The Golden State warrior became the best-selling prancing horse ever, bringing in a high percentage of new customers at its $200,000 opening price. Ferrari engineers wisely copied their notes to its clean-sheet replacement, the Portofino, while the stylists carefully avoided creating a second Sir Mix-a-Lot music-video extra. (The car is named for a ritzy Italian village on the Mediterranean, but the late Brock Yates would no doubt be honored to see name of the finishing location for the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash applied to a Ferrari. You may recall that he won that race with Dan Gurney in, yes, a Ferrari.)

Despite being only 0.1 inch lower, 1.1 inches wider, and 0.7 inch longer, the Portofino’s look is lightyears beyond the California’s tall, narrow, and somewhat doughy appearance. A pair of fairings trail off of each rear-seat headrest into the trunklid to break up the panel’s visual heft, and when the roof is raised, those spears gracefully carry the greenhouse’s profile all the way to the Portofino’s tail. The grille’s upturned edges form a confident smirk suggesting that if the California was the Ferrari you might text “U up?” in a late-night bid for a good time, the Portofino knows it’s pretty enough to be the one you wanted to take home in the first place.

The smattering of punctures in the bumper, hood, and front fenders add sinew to the design and belie the “entry-level” Portofino’s more serious hardware and intent. Thin vertical slats outboard of each headlight let air slip into the front wheel wells to force pressure out from the wheel spokes and reduce drag. Hood vents evacuate engine heat, while the outboard front air intakes up front feed air to two intercoolers. In spite of the more powerful Portofino’s higher cooling needs demanding more open frontal areas, Ferrari says its 0.31 coefficient of drag is 6 percent lower than the California T’s.

It’s the “Entry-Level” Ferrari. With 591 Horsepower.

And oh, boy, that engine. It wasn’t a weak point in the California T, and just to be sure it wouldn’t be here, Ferrari gave it an additional 39 horsepower and 4 lb-ft of torque. All 591 ponies hit at redline, marked in the Portofino at 7500 rpm. Credit revisions to the V-8’s pistons, connecting rods, and management software, although a lighter-weight, freer-flowing intake also helps, as does larger-diameter exhaust piping and equal-length, single-piece exhaust headers with integrated twin-scroll turbochargers.

In a Ferrari first, the exhaust flaps are electronically controlled, not pressure-actuated, and, when open, raise the engine’s voice an octave or two over the baritone California T’s. The Cali’s seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission carries over with revised ratios and new calibration to match up with the Portofino’s extra oomph, although it now sends power to Ferrari’s clutched E-Diff differential, which can selectively send power to the rear tire with the most traction.

The uneven, slippery roads of Italy’s Apulia region where we drove the car occasionally challenged the E-Diff and F1-Trac traction-control system under full-throttle launches. This manifested in slight tail wagging, but not much wheel spin, as engine torque shuffled between the left and right rear wheels in search of grip. Our experience with other E-Diff­–equipped Ferraris on smoother, less slick roads strongly suggests this was an Apulia problem, not a Portofino problem. Where it really counted, blasting out of low-speed corners, the E-Diff flawlessly maximized how much engine output was put to the pavement.

The twin-turbo V-8 is so beastly that Ferrari limits peak torque in first, second, and third gears. From fourth to sixth, the computer manages torque, gradually allowing more to be loosed; only seventh gear receives the full allotment of twist. Ferrari’s engineers chased that torque when tuning the transmission. When left to shift for itself, the dual-clutch automatic races to seventh gear in normal driving and stays there even in lower-speed city driving and in Sport mode. You won’t notice, because the engine’s 561 lb-ft of torque ably moves the roughly 3700-pound Portofino around even in high gear. Or, like we did, you’ll slap away at the metal shift paddles fixed to the Portofino’s steering column and explore the lower gears—and the accompanying lustier engine sounds. Below 3000 rpm, where some droning occurs, the engine is quiet; above it, hold on.

Ferrari claims the Portofino can reach 60 mph in as little as 3.5 seconds, but that estimate is as conservative as Alabama. The heavier, less-powerful California T needed only 3.3 seconds in our testing, and the Portofino launches hard—torque fiddling be damned. The ease with which we attained 130 mph on the autostrada leaves us with little doubt of the factory’s quoted top speed of “over 199 mph.”

Italian Riviera > the Golden State

Other impressive numbers? Ferrari found 176 superfluous pounds in the California T’s engine and structure and excised them. More efficiently allocated welds in the aluminum body-in-white reduce weld lengths by 30 percent. Pressed-aluminum underbody aerodynamic pieces replace the California’s plastic, bolt-on panels. The power-folding hardtop is lighter than before despite being larger and beefed up. It can be opened and closed at speeds up to 25 mph; doing so is like opening a drag chute.

Ferrari says the lighter body also is 35 percent stiffer, although we noted some mild cowl shake with the top lowered on uneven pavement, and chassis flex entering steep driveways. Those bugaboos have no apparent effect on the suspension’s competency. The springs are 15.5 percent stiffer in front and 19.0 percent firmer in back, bringing the baseline setup to nearly the same level as the California T’s optional handling package. Adaptive magnetorheological dampers are again optional, and they’re so good they ought to be standard. Flick the steering-wheel-mounted Manettino driving-mode switch between Comfort and Sport, and the dampers deliver a composed ride and peerless body control either way.

Only the second Ferrari with electrically assisted steering after the 812 Superfast, the Portofino reveals that the automaker is still sorting out its system. 7 percent quicker than the California’s rack and with a satisfying on-center valley and pleasantly light effort, the steering twitches the Portofino into corners like a Taser to the quarter-panel. But it never transmits that last iota of feedback that electrically boosted Porsche racks do. Your internal gyro makes up the difference, aided by the Ferrari’s rear-biased weight distribution (54 percent of the mass is claimed to sit on the rear axle) and surfeit of front-end grip. When the tail begins to slide—something it’ll do as readily off-throttle as on—the action is gradual and easily detected. The standard carbon-ceramic brake rotors offer reassuringly strong stopping power for fixing misunderstood butt signals and, after a brief top-of-pedal squish zone, a firm pedal feel.

Ferrari’s latest infotainment system earns a call-out for responding promptly to inputs and being fairly easy to navigate. An optional touchscreen sits on the dash in front of the passenger, enabling your copilot to view speed, gear selection, and other performance metrics, or to modify navigation waypoints and send them to the central and driver displays. The front seats, with thinner frames newly rendered from magnesium, are supremely comfortable and leave a skosh more room for rear-seat riders’ knees. With the top raised, the Portofino is coupe-like quiet, and you can fit three carry-on roller bags in the trunk. So it’s as everyday useful and uncommonly athletic as the California, with fewer firsts. The one that counts most with us? It’s the first classically pretty, front-engine, eight-cylinder, folding-hardtop Ferrari.

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 2+2-passenger, 2-door convertible

BASE PRICE: $214,533

ENGINE TYPE: twin-turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 32-valve V-8, aluminum block and heads, direct fuel injection

Displacement: 235 cu in, 3855 cc
Power: 591 hp @ 7500 rpm
Torque: 561 lb-ft @ 3000 rpm

TRANSMISSION: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic with manual shifting mode

DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 105.1 in
Length: 180.6 in
Width: 76.3 in Height: 51.9 in
Curb weight (C/D est): 3900 lb

PERFORMANCE (C/D EST):
Zero to 60 mph: 3.1 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 6.8 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 10.9 sec
Top speed: 199 mph

EPA FUEL ECONOMY (C/D EST):
Combined/city/highway: 18–19/16/23 mpg