Road Test: Ferrari F430 Spider

By Feann Torr - 21/Dec/2006

Before driving this decidedly sexy lump of Italian machinery, I'd only ever seen two Ferrari F430s on the road in Australia - one in Melbourne, the other in Sydney. Yep, these are as rare as they are precious.

The F430 is utterly gorgeous and supremely quick, supposedly the best Ferrari ever, and now having had the pleasure of driving one myself, I must say they also appeal to the show pony in all of us, if you'll excuse the pun...

Make no mistake - this is an exotic car with exotic appeal, and has a price tag to match.

And this being the Spider - the "Holy smokes, it's the convertible model" - it is an even rarer sight again, costing an another $36,000 over the already expensive $389,000 manual Ferrari F430 coupe.

The styling is evocative of a beautiful woman - all curves and absurdly alluring - and there's nary a detail inside or out that doesn't fail to excite. I can't even begin to describe the amount of heads this vermilion sports car turned during our test; it has the kind of sex appeal one doesn't normally associate with cars. It's like hanging out with Robbie Williams or Justin Timberlake, only without the self-righteousness.

Even bleary eyed gambling addicts stumbling out of Star City Casino at 10:00am seemed to snap out of their 32-hour sleep-deprived stupor when the F430 Spider drove (read: screamed) past, such is it's innate ability to attract - nay - command attention. And even people on the street who didn't know what it was instantly understood that it was no normal sports car. We had pensioners gawking at us with intrigued disdain, and I saw a few grinning kids who shrieked wildly as I gunned the throttle past Town Hall in Sydney.

As well as the undeniable aesthetic appeal that one of these beautifully sculpted Southern Mediterranean sports car exude, there is also the very serious performance aspect that regular Motoring Channel readers will no doubt be slavering to hear about. And slaver in confidence friends, because this car goes like a freakin' rocket!!

And sounds like one too.

The brand-new Ferrari F430 Spider we tested had only 3,500kms on the clock, and even though the engine probably wasn't fully bedded in, it still went like stink. Powered by a 4.3-litre Ferrari V8 engine with the obligatory red cylinder heads, this car is capable of accelerating from zero to instant-loss-of-license-speeds in less time than it takes to a road full of tyre smoke to clear.

"But Feann, $425,000 is a lot of money to spend on a car with no boot, only 2-seats and badges that says 'steal me'." Well, that's true. It would seem like a waste of money to many people. I thought the same thing.

Until I drove it...

As I meandered across Darling Harbour to the pick up point, I had butterflies in my stomach. I was fairly worried about driving an Italian exotic that costs more than what my bungalow is worth.

I had a foreboding feeling that I'd break it somehow, or scratch it, or maybe watch in dismay as it sunk into Sydney Harbour, or explode in a fiery inferno of molten titanium, melting carbon fibre, and scorching soft cow-hide.

But you know what? The daunting feeling I had was unwarranted, because this car is remarkably user-friendly.

Upon slotting in the unexceptional key fob and thumbing the bright red starter button on the chunky leather steering wheel, the engine purred to life rather quietly.

And for your almost $430k (which is quite fitting, really), the F430's interior isn't too bad. In fact it's rather swish.

There's beige leather everywhere. The central transmission tunnel is covered in it, and dash plastics? Not for Ferrari - more leather Mr Montezemolo! Almost the entirety of the dash board is upholstered in black hand-stitched leather, and the only place where cow-hide doesn't exist is around the circular air vents.

Matching the cushy beige leather of the seats and doors inners, the beige carpet is quite luxurious - plush pile, no less - and feels nice when you take your shoes off -- which is recommended as you get a better feel for the pedals, and they're quite narrow so thick-soled or smart shoes just won't do (as I discovered).

There's great support from the highly bolstered leather bucket seats, but they are quite narrow and, overall, the cabin is quite small. I wouldn't go as far as to condemn it as being cramped, but let's say you'd need to be a contortionist to get jiggy in this thing...

Thankfully though, the window sill isn't too high, so you can comfortably fat-arm it when the sun is shining. It's got a great stereo too, with enough clarity and volume so as to be crisp and clear with the top down and the wind in your hair.

The all important instrument cluster is quite the sight too. There's a large yellow tachometer that's mounted centrally, indicating a wild 10,000rpm peak, with a 8500rpm redline. There's also the 360km/h speedometer, an electronic fuel gauge, plus engine temp, oil temp, and oil pressure gauges that inform you when your scintillatingly alluring automotive sculpture is about to cook.

There are a number of doodads on the steering wheel, such as the engine ignition button and the manettino (a sports mode dial to switch between sports, race, low grip and a range of other driving modes), and the seats are electrically adjustable. The roof mechanism, while a bit slow, is electric as well yet there's no latches to secure – it's all automatic. Kind of like the attrazione.

Though very nice, the interior isn't without a few flaws. Plastic doors handles look and feel cheap. Even the Ford Focus Zetec has metal-plated door inside handles, and had I paid $425,000 for this I would have been very unhappy that there was any plastic at all. Titanium isn't too heavy, or carbon fibre would have done the trick. Generally speaking, everything's well placed and fairly ergonomic - you can reach all the dials and buttons from the driver's seat. I thought more style could have been injected into the indicator/wiper stalks either side of the steering wheel (a 350Z has more dynamically styled stalks than this) but overall it's a very plush interior.

And then, after examining the interior, it was time to drive the crimson sports car, but before noticing anything important about the way the car behaved on the road, the incredible amount of attention the Ferrari F430 attracted was mind-boggling - molto attenzione. It was rare for a human head not to turn when the car trundled past, as even at low revs it emits a nefarious growl unlike any other car I've driven, and because it's a drop top the sound is even more intense for driver and passenger.

Stab the throttle with a bit of menace however, and the engine screams and blats like an angry beast - it's both horrifically loud and instantly impressive. Let me add that you won't be the only one grinning like a kid when you open the throttle bodies in the this magnificent machine, and beyond about 4000rpm it sounds as though flanges open up in the exhaust system as the noise is just glorious.

And the power delivery? Certifiably mad. And highly addictive.

The engine is a very special piece of Italian kit, and arguably the most impressive aspect of this vehicle. So special is the engine, in fact, that it lives behind the driver's seat (in the mid-mount position) and can be seen by all and sundry thanks to its clear glass cover. Swoon... 

It develops a massive 360kW of power @ 8500rpm, and 465Nm of torque @ 5250rpm. In the old money, this car whips out close to 500 horsepower, dumping all of it on the rear wheels for what can often be seriously wild tail-out driving. For those without a grasp of power benchmarks, let's just call it well wicked: massively powerful, absurdly quick.

It can reach speeds beyond 300km/h and the body shape was designed in a wind-tunnel (just like F1 cars), and so the aerodynamics have been optimised to increase downforce (and hence grip) the fast this thing goes.

There's acceptable levels of push below 3000rpm that makes navigating traffic a lot less trouble than you'd think, then strong response rushes in as the tach heads towards 5000rpm. And then, after 6500rpm – when the engine is screaming like a orgasmic banshee – there's an awesome rush of speed, and the 8500rpm redline arrives frighteningly quickly. If you keep the V8 engine on the boil, and keep hammering it through successive gears above above 5500rpm, the F430 Spider becomes mind-meltingly quick. I cannot describe it any more than this because my brain is indeed melting down with the simple recollection of this.

And the sound at a high revs? Incredibly loud and high-pitched, and unlike a traditional Aussie or American small block V8. This thing has an F1 scream that shatters peace and quiet. Let's just say your neighbours won't be too pleased with your purchase…

While the power characteristics of this car are wickedly crisp, the torque delivery isn't as impressive, but with a rev ceiling of 8500rpm, it doesn't need to be. It feels less like a 4.3-litre V8 in a 1500kg tub and more like a tricked-up 2.5-litre inline six on a 900kg chassis. It just feels so light and is astonishingly eager to rev.

I remember early in this Ferrari F430 road test that, after a few minutes of cruising around the city of Sydney, I got impatient and decided to wind out a few gears on the freeway, and without being too gratuitous, I can confirm that this car is very fast. Ferrari claims the car does 1-100km/h dash in 4.1 seconds, but I reckon it felt more like about 4.3 or 4.4 seconds. Either way, it's bloody quick, and will destroy the quarter mile run in 12.1 seconds (even less with the automatic F1 gearbox).

I also discovered that it has a surprisingly decent turning circle for an exotic car, and best of all it's remarkably easy to drive. I tell you, I was expecting something far more daunting, hence the initial butterflies in the stomach syndrome (and the mental images of burning Ferrari carcasses). After Peter Dempsey's explanation of the Lamborghini Murcielago, I assumed that driving an Italian exotic car would be like taming a wild stallion with naught but one's bare and blistered hands, but the Ferrari F430 Spider was delightfully smooth to get the hang of.

It exhibits responsive turning at slow speeds, and has a user-friendly clutch that means low speed maneuvers don't need heaps of throttle. It's easy to drive, with a light-ish clutch, sensitive (but usable) throttle and surprisingly good wing mirrors for rearward vision. The gearbox is another story however, and perhaps one of the more obvious mechanical clues that this is indeed the product of a company that regularly builds F1 cars and regularly wins F1 races.

It's a sequential manual gearbox and it's a bare-bones looking piece of kit - which adds to the mystique in a way - and needs a strong and sure hand to get it in and out of its six beautifully manicured gates. It's very stiff and feels heavy when shifting, yet is a good reminder of how resilient and strong the car's drive line must be in order to survive the engine's relentlessly punishing power delivery. 

The brake pedal is also inordinately stiff, but it's reassuring to have astonishingly strong brakes (330mm front and rear) at your disposal. It's wide and it's low, and you have to be cautious when rolling over speed bumps and the like, but other than that, this Ferrari is very user friendly.

One of the coolest things about the F430 Spider, and particularly for a rev head like myself, was the manettino. This system is a basic version of what Michael Schumacher - sorry - Kimi Raikkonen will see on his personalised steering wheel of his Scuderia Ferrari F1 car. On the Ferrari F430 Spider, the manettino is a small rotary switch on the right side of the steering wheel that changes the car's chassis settings, such as the electronically adjustable suspension (via electronic Sachs dampers) , the electronic differential, and the electronic driving aids, like traction control. If you opt for the automatic 'F1' gearbox, which is a bargain at just $25,000, the manettino also changes the gearbox settings.

The various manettino modes include ice, low grip, sport, race and the no-holds-barred mode, which turns off all traction controls and driving aids and allows you to experience the ultimate (read: terrifying) driving experience, which is probably best left for track use, where you won't be impeded by oncoming traffic as the tail end of the car whips out as the rear hoops arc up.

I found the sport system to be best on the road, and even with the electronic aids doing their thing, it's barely perceptible to the driver. It just seems like the car is on rails when cornering. The suspension is tight, but not so rigid that you can't drive it through the city, which we did, full of half-finished road works and the like. We covered some really patchy stuff around Darling Harbour in the city, and it dealt with it surprisingly well.

And speaking of handling, this thing corners with a similar sort of deadly precision that the engine delivers. With its firm ride, the handling is progressive, and if you switch it to race mode, it gets even stiffer. It has a very precise feel through the steering wheel, and unlike the big 4WD Lambo that tends to understeer slightly, this is a traditional rear-wheel drive setup, and there is fairly dominant oversteer through corners, particularly when the revs rise. 

Another feature that augments the Ferrari's already impressive handling capability is the directness of the throttle/fuel injection when coupled with the motor sports drive shaft, which means that when you slam your foot to the floor, the rear wheels instantly respond, sometimes resulting in wild fish-tails and power oversteer if the revs are high, and likewise when you take your foot off the gas pedal, the engine braking is strong.

Slammed through corners at high speeds, the Ferrari F430 Spider comes across as very secure and has a pervading sense of being tied to the road. The nose tips into corners with aplomb and this is thanks to a combination of the electronically adjustable Sachs dampers, and also the massive 19-inch alloy wheels which are fitted with sticky Pirelli rubber measuring 225/35 ZR19  up front and even wider 285/35 ZR19 at the rear.

So yeah, grip levels are very high, and few cars (the Audi RS 4 and Evo come closest) give you the kind of thrill - and confidence - to accelerate so strongly through corners. The level of mechanical grip this thing generates is just magnificent, and the way it tracks through corners is superb. The V8 Ferrari has a 43:57 front-to-rear weight bias, but this reduced weight at the front (not unlike a Porsche) gives the car very good flickability and it changes direction very nicely.

With more time in the saddle, the car became even more intuitive to drive, and I was merrily flicking through traffic when not carving my way effortless through long sweeping corners, heedless of the speedometer reading that would have made my mother cross. I could almost hear the engine speaking to me: "Go faster, faster! Road laws? Police? In Ferrari land, these things don't apply."

And then, at the end of the test, I had to hand the Ferrari F430 Spider back. 

My time with this $425,000 Italian exotic was quite memorable. And more than anything else I was surprised at it's ease of use. Nothing prepares you for the noise the F430 makes - it's deafeningly cool - nor the levels of acceleration it has and stratospheric levels of mid-corner grip, but since when did exotic cars become so user friendly?

It is very, very nice car to drive. I thought it would be daunting to drive, but you could live with this car almost everyday. Almost. Maybe four days a week…

Overall: 4/5

Words like braggadocio, machismo, and others ending in 'o' instantly spring to mind when describing this vehicle. It's just so Italian - so extroverted and brazen - that it's hard not to become enamored with the fabled Ferrari aura. Believe the hype, because this thing is amazing. Even when cruising around at slower speeds and not employing the car's supernatural performance potential, the car is still a guilty pleasure to punt around in.

Unlike the Lamborghini Murcielago, this thing is quite drivable in the city. Apart from the hard core sequential manual gearbox, there's nothing greatly prohibitive about the way it drives that could turn casual admirers away from a purchase. Sure, it's a tad supercilious, but it's damned hard not to grin like an 11-year-old with a fist full of fire-crackers when you drive this thing.