Men's Journal

A moment of appreciation, please, for the Ferrari 458 Italia. As tricked-out vehicles lessen driver involvement and electricity usurps oil, the fuel-swilling, corner- devouring supercar may be the last of its kind.

By Ezra Dyer

I have a standard answer when people ask me which car I would buy, money-no-object. You can spend more and you can go faster, I say, but cars don’t get any more fun than Ferrari’s track-bred coupe, the F430. Well, here I am in the hills of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, screaming from switchback to switchback, and I have a new answer: You can spend more money, and you can go faster, but I don’t think it gets much better than the F430′s replacement, the Ferrari 458 Italia (cost: about $225,000).

With its 4.5-liter V-8 behind me and the cabin pushed forward on the wheelbase, the 458′s driver¹s seat feels as if it’s directly behind the front wheels, a sensation I imagine is like piloting a fighter jet. You can watch each corner’s apex disappear under the sinister crease of the front fenders, which peek into your field of vision like a rifle sight. The steering is so quick—30 percent quicker than the F430′s—that you need never move your hands from nine and three, even on 180-degree switchbacks.

I am an easily distracted person, but out here in the sticks of Italy, in this car, I slip into a hyperfocused driving fugue deepened by the unending concurrence of curves: Stand on carbon-ceramic brakes, pull left paddle for downshifts, turn in, feel face crawl sideways around head, apply accelerator, scream up to 9,000-rpm power peak, pull right paddle for upshift, repeat through two more gears, stand on brakes, repeat again. Even the free-range chickens I nearly flatten give me a look that says, “Right on, man—that was awesome.”

The 458 allows boneheads like me to drive faster than boneheads have ever driven, thanks in no small part to its nearly overwhelming amount of technological wizardry. Never before have I had a readout in the dash tell me when the motor and tires are warm enough to unleash hell. The new dual-clutch, seven-speed transmission shifts gears as fast as my neurons fire, which explains why Ferrari buyers voted out the manual (no longer even an option). And the engine¹s direct fuel injection provides instantaneous response along with a downright silly 562 horsepower (up from the F430′s quaint 483), produced by only 4.5 liters’ worth of naturally aspirated engine. That¹s like extracting enough juice from a D-cell battery to power Oprah¹s mansion. Zero to 60 takes less than 3.4 seconds, nearly a half-second faster than the F430. Progress is a wonderful thing.

Mostly, that is. At times the 458 feels satisfyingly raw and belligerent, particularly when the variable muffler system goes into straight-pipe mode, resulting in an unholy wail. And I won’t pretend that I fully disengaged the 458′s stability control—the system that saves the car (and you) if it starts to spin—because if my balls were that big I’d have to check them at the airport. But this supercar is also slightly more anesthetized than its predecessor. When you crack off an early upshift, the exhaust doesn’t shoot flames, exploding like an M-80 in a trash can, as the F430′s did. The F430 never, ever warned you that your tires were too cold. Even if you turn off all the nannies on the 458, a computer is still working the gears, which means you can’t possibly flub the second-to-third shift. This in itself isn’t cause for alarm—with every successive generation in the 458′s lineage, Ferrari engineers out some of its predecessor’s rough edges, the endearing inefficiencies known as character, in the quest for speed. But the fact that Ferrari is currently showing off a hybrid concept and talking about implementing hybrid technology into its cars within five years suggests the clock is ticking for internal-combustion masterpieces like the 458. Someone call the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and get this prancing horse on the endangered species list.

Now, people have been bitching about technology infringing on the driving experience since the invention of the pneumatic tire. (“Nothing gives you the feel for the road like a wooden wheel!”) Improving fuel economy is a laudable goal, and one that isn’t necessarily at odds with Ferrari’s insatiable demand for demented, terrifying speed. But the quest for efficiency seems always to lead to greater automation of the driving experience. More computers, less mechanical control. And that’s a little bit sad. An electric motor may make for a faster, more eco-sanctified Ferrari, but it will never make your hair stand on end like the piercing shriek of the Ferrari 458 Italia’s V-8, a 9,000-rpm protest against its own looming obsolescence.

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This article first appeared in the August 2010 issue of Men’s Journal.