Prancing Force

Pista-power in the back of the 488 GTB’s replacement, layered by F1-inspired aerodynamics and electronic wizardry, make for Ferrari’s best series-production V8

- Sirish Chandran

FERRARI, THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY. Press drives for instance, there’s no hunt for fancy hotels in exotic locales — we always fly down to Milan or Bologna, a Lancia arrives to remind us that the brand still exists if only to ferry Ferrari guests, and a sharply suited driver canes it like Sandro Munari on the Monte to bring us to the Maranello Palace, a palace only in name. The Palace does have a great location though. Our room overlooks the Ferrari factory and an obsessive-compulsive colleague counted 18 camouflaged mules driving out of the factory gates while he maintained station in the balcony for God knows how many hours. In the automotive sense then, I guess, it is a palace and there’s always a dozen or more Porsches, Lamborghinis and, of course, Ferraris in the parking lot. No time for much staring. We’re piled into another Lancia for a leisurely lunch and in the evening everyone dresses up and goes to classroom.

This time round, it was in the studio of the new Centro Stile, barely a year old, and designed by architects in London and Bologna under the supervision of Ferrari’s design head Flavio Manzoni. The Ferrari factory is, in fact, a museum of architecture. The historic brick entrance is for guests and selfies, the employees use the back gates in the shade of the immense grey tubes of the wind tunnel designed by Renzo Piano. Office buildings are by Massimiliano Fuksas, the factory extension a decade ago when the California expanded the range was by Jean Nouvel. The design studio, fitting for what goes on in there, is the glitziest and ritziest of the lot, your correspondent who knows nothing about architecture commenting on the shades of the Middle East in the gold filigree work covering the matt-black exterior.