The Ferrari 296 is a V6 twin-turbo plug-in hybrid sports car. It has 819 hp and 546 lb-ft of torque and can reach 62 miles per hour in 2.9 seconds. Ferrari is expanding its lineup with the 296 to augment the F8 and Roma. The Ferrari 296 sports car has a top speed of 205 mph with 15.5 miles of electric range. The 296 is one of the fastest and most powerful Ferraris ever produced. It takes aim at supercar rivals from Lamborghini, Audi and McLaren in a competitive field for enthusiasts buyers in 2022.
TranscriptLAWRENCE ULRICH: I just hit 127 miles an hour on a curvy road through the mountains. Just ridiculous.
Hey, Lawrence Ulrich with Autoblog. And this little cream puff here is the Ferrari 296 GTB, V12s are on the verge of extinction. Even V8s are under heavy threat from regulatory pressures and competition from electric motors that deliver even more power and use even less energy.
So what's Ferrari's answer to all this? It's the 296 GTB. This is a historic car. This is the first V6 road car in Ferrari history. And you might say, hey, what about the Dino?
Well, the Dino, named after Enzo Ferrari's tragic son, was not officially a Ferrari. That was a Dino badged car. So this is the first official V6 Ferrari.
And if you're thinking this V6 is something you settle for, this is some kind of entry level car, think again. This V6 is an incredible engine. 653 horsepower alone from a 3 liter V6, with a pair of turbochargers that each spin at 180,000 RPM. Now, the secret sauce, though, is a plug-in hybrid system, with another 165 horsepower from an electric motor sandwiched between the mid-engine and the gearbox.
Add it all up and we're looking at 818 horsepower from a 3 liter six cylinder car. And what does that mean? That means 2.7 seconds 0 to 60, maybe 7.2 seconds from 0 to 120, and a top speed of around 206 miles an hour.
[ENGINE REVS]
This is a sports car that basically takes everything Ferrari has ever known about engines, about gearboxes, about braking. Then they learned a little more and they applied it all to this sports car. The Piccolo V12, as Ferrari engineers are calling it, the little V12, tuned to sound uncannily like a V12 engine out of three liters. And with all this hot tubing and diaphragms and sound tuning to send the beautiful harmonics of this engine into the cabin, an engine with 120 degree crankshaft for the kind of beautiful V12, like, firing order that creates these incredible third order, six order, ninth order harmonics. All the good frequencies, in other words. And then amplified through both an intake tube and an exhaust tube all pumped into the cabin.
And I'm going to move into performance mode and turn my manettino to the race setting. And let's listen to this thing do its thing. This is a fantasy road through Spain here, well funded with EU dollars. It's like a double guardrail. All these blue turn indicators. And the thing just like winds through the mountains on incredible perfect asphalt.
It's like your own private racecourse through Southern Spain. This is a three liter V6 that on its own has almost as much power as the 6.2 liter supercharged V8 in a Corvette ZR1 or the Cadillac CT5-Z Blackwing. That latter Cadillac, what, 667 horsepower.
Again, 6.2 liter supercharged to make 667 horsepower. Here's a three liter V6 with nearly as much power much, much more throttle responsiveness because of an extra 165 electric horsepower in a car that lets you drive, you know, say, 15 to 16 miles on electricity alone. The theory being you could drive through a London city centers that start banning internal combustion cars and drive on electricity alone.
The transitions between gas and electric power, it's like they're not even there. But again, the Ferrari SF90 hypercar has an electric boost, but only at the front axle-- front axle electric, rear axle mechanical. This 296 GTB, perhaps, a pure expression of a hybrid idea-- electric mechanical sweetly combined all driving the rear wheels.
And now in this mode, performance mode and up and race mode, for a while I was using these big rabbit eared carbonfibre paddle shifters. There is just no need. The best technique of this car is to just stand on these by-wire breaks and let the car shift itself. And the advantage, Ferrari says, no Ferrari sports car in history has let you dive deeper into corners, lay on the brakes harder and maximize every bit of performance from this car.
When you come hammering into turns, not only do you get this incredible engine breaking, this engine is down shifting as low as second gear at over 6,000 RPM, down shifting at these speeds. Now in addition to that braking effect, you're getting incredible regen dynamic balancing and energy recapture. So think of it as a double whammy of engine braking and pretty much all you have to concentrate on is your steering and balancing the car.
All this shifting your hearing is the Ferrari doing its own thing. Shorter wheelbase. 50 millimeter shorter wheelbase than the mid-engine V8 Berlinetta in the Ferrari lineup. Compact. The lightness of the steering is just incredible. And the by-wire brakes are an absolute revelation.
You can just stand on the brakes going into corners as this thing drops two and three gears to set you up. I'm chatting with you and I've got to be pulling close to 1G on these curves. And it's just a piece of cake. And this car is shod with the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires.
Left foot braking to me is the way to go with this car. You can use your left foot, balance it and use it like a Rio stat, like, with your right foot. All those shifts you're hearing, that is pure automated Ferrari.
I just hit 127 miles an hour on a curvy road through the mountains. Just ridiculous. The thing that's blowing me away is just the lightness and the immediacy of the controls and the response. There is no chink in the armor of this car anywhere where you would normally feel some turbo lag, a drop in power between gearshifts. The electric motor is filling in all those gaps.
With 165 horsepower, you can breathe on the throttle going five miles an hour, going 150 miles an hour. And this 296 GTB is blessed with Ferrari's latest as far as side slip control, traction and stability oversight. But stability control and traction control in the sense of enhancing performance, not taking performance away.
The car never feels like it's being driven by electronics. It feels completely natural. This car is super enjoyable to drive in Hybrid mode. I've got 26 kilometers here of electric grunt left built back up from a big charge down this very mountain, where in qualifying mode, one of four driving modes, this thing refilled its battery from empty to full in less than 15 minutes of driving. And on this charge down the mountain, I didn't use a single mile of electric power because the electric regenerative brakes were sucking up so much energy, contributing to acceleration, stopping balance, and I still didn't even use one wit of surplus energy.
This is an electric, plug-in hybrid that has electricity at its disposal at any given moment. But it's really fun to drive in Hybrid mode. You're just cruising along on purely electricity with this little ghostly hum going on. And every time you want to blow somebody away, you just lay on to the throttle. Then, this magnificent engine comes to light.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
As for styling, just a beautiful expression. This isn't a retro car in any way, but it absolutely hearkens back to some '60s Ferraris, namely the 250 LM. This, with a sexier, swoopier look. And then these monster, monster wings. These fenders on the back. They look like extruded off the car, aggressive, but elegant at the same time. Just a real home run in the design department.
Gorgeous interior taking a lot of inspiration from the Ferrari SF90 hypercar. These big, extruded sections and carbon fiber everywhere. These racing seats with the cutout harnesses. Carbon fiber shells.
New steering wheel with dual manettinos. One for Wet mode, a Sport mode, a Race mode, traction control off, and then full stability control off. And then a second manettino with four driving modes, an All Electric driving road where it just locks into pure electric power, Hybrid mode that tries to maximize electric power but allows you to bring the engine to life with just a touch of your right foot. And then a Performance mode for maximum ongoing performance.
And then a Qualifying mode, full performance for a single lap. But at the same time will do its best to recharge the battery. New steering wheel here, carbon fiber. The shift lights that do trace when your shift points coming, turn signal buttons. And, of course, no stocks for any controls.
Kind of an all digital control strategy as well. But little easier to use, actually, than on the SF90. I've got a yellow classic tachometer here with a showing at 10,000 RPM peak. Actual peak, 8,500 RPM accessible in qualifying mode. Full width navigation. You can spread out a nav view across the whole screen. And it's got the passenger screen for the shotgun passenger to fiddle with various controls.
They have more carbon fiber on the door, the console. So think of this as like a little junior F1 car, a V6 car that is measurably faster on track or on road than the mid-engine V8 Ferrari. Ferrari strategy here with the 296 GTB-- to create the purest sports car in the Ferrari lineup. I believe they've succeeded.
The only bummer, when I first heard about this car, like a lot of people, sort of assumed this would maybe slide into the Ferrari line up a little more expensive than a Roma, perhaps. But less money. You figured that an F8, not even.
It's going to start at about $322,000, including destination charge. Significantly more money than an F8. But the Ferrari crew straight out says there is a level of sophistication and technology here that, sorry, F8 owners, is just not available on the current mid-engine V8 Ferrari. This is a signal achievement for a Ferrari sports car. And I'm going to go out a limb and say this becomes the most desirable sports car in the Ferrari lineup, especially for far less money than an SF90 or an 812 Superfast.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is a V6 car that's faster on the Fiorano circuit than any current mid-engine V8 Berlinetta. That means faster than the FH Tributo, faster even on track than the 488 Pista. Just the combination of the V6 shove and that constant boost from the electric power and all rear wheel drive, and there you have it, the Ferrari 296 GTB is a historic achievement for Ferrari. A V6 road car that's faster than Ferrari V8s.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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