An Instant Classic
Arguably the “people’s choice”
of the 2015 Frankfurt Show, the Ferrari 488 Spider drew huge throngs
throughout the extravaganza
and on the public days you could
hardly even get a glimpse of the
new beauty from Maranello.
Amazingly, for a car as exotic
and curvaceous as the essential Ferrari 488, the Spider version
announced at Frankfurt has a
retractable hard-top. It’s the first
time such a solution has been
used for a supercar and it has
been achieved by adding, rather than retracting from the beauty of the basic 488 template.
Ferrari claims that the system
is also lighter than a traditional soft-top. And when the top
is lowered a glass wind-stop
prevents the traditional reverse
buffeting one gets in an opentopped car as the vortex of air
that results as it passes over the
wind screen gives your neck
and head a good blast from
the rear, so it appears as if you
are reversing as your hair gets
blown forward!
No such problems in this super
elegant Ferrari then, according
to its designers. Even better, the
top can be lowered or raised
in 14 seconds, stationary or on
the move.
To make the Spider special-looking and accommodate the retractable top, Ferrari crafted
special buttresses at the rear
which channel air flow to the engine cover-mounted intakes for
the engine.
For the new model, Ferrari also
introduced a particularly alluring colour, known as BluCorsa,
which can be seen in the accompanying photographs. The
paint has metallic particles in
suspension to give a slight gloss,
Far from making the Spider design bulky, the retractable hard top solution has
given the Spider serious gravitas, thanks to the pronounced buttresses at the rear
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