Harder Better Faster Smaller

摘要

Much as we love Ferrari's front-engined V12s, with their unmatched patrician nature and historical resonance, the Maranello centre of gravity is the two-seat mid-engined V8. It's been that way ever since 1975's rather lovely 308 GTB. But the 296 GTB changes all that. It's got six cylinders not eight. It is a plug-in hybrid. And it's a solid step up in price, complexity and power from what went before. Like, about another lOObhp and a PHEV system. Now you might question, as I think I do, whether hybridisation of a vastly powerful, seldom driven and rare car is, environmentally speaking, any more than a fig leaf. So it's about performance? Well you might question, as I certainly do, quite what is the rational point of 830bhp in a road car, other than the bragging rights that facilitate Ferrari's relentless ascent through the price strata. Sufficient power liberates; excess power frustrates. Then take it to a track, they argue. Well, no. At a track you want a 600kg special. So as I sit here at my desk I recall, whenever I borrow a Ferrari for testing, the overwhelming sense of relief that always accompanies handing it back in one undamaged piece. And yet... I recall too that during pretty well every one of those days in a borrowed Ferrari, there has been some moment of transcendence, a time when somehow the magic of the machine has overcome all rational reservations like sunlight bursting out from behind a storm. Ferrari's engineers have an uncanny ability to make absurd power outputs feel usable, reasonable even.