All Sections

Ferrari 488 GTB: Meet the turbocharged successor to the 458 Italia

Do yourself a favour and cast your eyeballs across the sexy new Ferrari 488 GTB, Ferrari’s replacement for the legendary 458 Italia.

Gorgeous, isn’t it? It’s certainly an improvement on the sexy 458 – like a LaFerrari made sweet love to a Ferrari F12 and spawned a beautiful little lovechild. Physically it’s marginally longer and wider than the 458, as well as 10kg lighter.

Power in the 488 GTB comes from a mid-mounted 3.9-litre V8 engine. It’s smaller than the 4.5-litre unit in the 458 Italia, but Ferrari’s bolted two turbochargers onto the thing so it produces 661bhp and 561lb ft of torque – a huge improvement on the 562bhp and 398lb ft that the 458 Italia managed.

It can even trade blows with the larger Ferrari 599 GTO, delivering the same horsepower and significantly more torque.

So how fast is it? Very, in a word. It’ll lap Ferrari’s Fiorano test circuit in 1 minute 23 seconds – half a second quicker than the stripped-out 458 Speciale and two seconds quicker than the legendary Ferrari Enzo.

In a straight line it’ll do 0-62mph in 3 seconds, 0-124mph in 8.3 seconds and hit a top speed of 205mph.

Interestingly, the transition away from natural aspiration to turbocharging doesn’t appear to have altered the way in which the engine delivers its power. Max power is achieved at an extraordinarily high 8,000rpm – just 1,000rpm shy of the 458 Italia’s 9,000rpm peak power marker. Ferrari also claims the engine note is “full, clear and totally distinctive”, though we’d prefer the “angry, spiteful and sumptuous” tones the 458 is well known for.

The Ferrari 488 GTB will go on show at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show where it’ll compete for eyeballs with the new McLaren 675LT.

We’ll be on hand to see them both for ourselves, so stick around for more information as we get it.

Ferrari 488 GTB Pictures

 

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *