Exactly 50 years ago, in 1973, the last Ferrari 365GTS/4 rolled off the assembly line in Maranello. And the premiere of the F430 Spider at the Geneva Motor Show took place in 2005 – 18 years ago. Why are there all these dates?
The fact is that Ferrari has recently been trying to equip its open cars with a hard top, which lets in less noise and provides higher body rigidity, on which handling directly depends. The F430 Spider was the last cloth-topped Ferrari, but it has a 4.3-liter V8 installed just behind the seatbacks. And before the premiere of the Roma Spider, the 365GTS / 4, which debuted back in 1969, was the last Ferrari with a soft top and a classic layout.
Based on the Portofino, the Roma coupe saw the light of day in 2019. Technologically, it is still connected with the California of the late 2000s, while both Roma predecessors had just a Webasto folding roof. For the Roma Spider, the soft top structure was developed separately. Additional changes have been made to the design of the sports car’s rear bodywork to direct ram air around the passenger compartment. The shape of the fabric top was calculated using hydrodynamic modeling.
For additional comfort of riders, a wind screen is provided (it can be raised at speeds up to 170 km / h, but it works at any) and optional air ducts in the headrests (“air scarf”), and the rear passengers of the roadster (if someone generally agrees to sit in the back in a car with a salon formula “2+”) got headrests.
The roof can be folded down in 13.5 seconds at speeds up to 60 km/h. When folded, its thickness is only 220 mm, but the Italians were too shy to indicate the capacity of the trunk in this configuration. If the roof is raised, then 255 liters of usable volume will be available – 90 less than the coupe.
We admit that the original proportions of the Roma left the Italian engineers no other choice, because a hard convertible roof would have turned out to be too bulky. To compensate for the loss in body rigidity, Maranello used stronger sills and A-pillars. In any case, the point here is definitely not in an attempt to facilitate the open version. When dry, the Roma Spider pulls 1,556kg: 84kg more than the original 2-door and 11kg more than the Portofino M coupe-cabriolet.
The new spider has other features as well. For example, an additional rear wing with three modes (in its place at the regular Roma the rear window ends) can rise to an angle of up to 135 °, increasing downforce by 95 kg at 250 km / h. Algorithms for changing the angle of attack of the wing are tied to the Manettino settings, but if you accelerate faster than 300 km / h, the “medium” (150 °) is automatically activated, the engineers assure that balance is most important at such speeds.
The power plant is the same. The 3.9-liter F154 twin-turbocharged, dry-sump, flat-crank V8 produces 620 hp. With. and 760 Nm (maximum traction is available only in the 7th and 8th gears of the branded “robot”) and accelerates the roadster to 100 km / h in 3.4 s. The advantage of the lighter coupe only comes to the second “hundred”, which Roma Spider gains in 9.7 seconds (four tenths slower than the closed version). The maximum speed of both cars “exceeds 320 km / h”, but it is clear that here, too, the regular Roma will be somewhat faster.
It has already been announced that with the advent of the Roma Spider, the days of the Portofino M will be numbered. The new soft top from Ferrari will go on sale in the summer. Given that the original coupe is now asking for at least a quarter of a million dollars, we are counting on a starting price of 290-300 thousand dollars without options.
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