By Tim Pitt
You can put your fingers in your ears, shout ‘LA LA LA’ and pretend it isn’t happening, but Ferrari has finally launched an SUV. What on earth would Enzo say?
We’ll come to that, but first let’s go for a guided tour – led by CEO Benedetto Vigna and his team at Ferrari’s Centro Stile design studio in Maranello. One thing quickly becomes clear: this is no ordinary SUV.
Indeed, according to Vigna, the Purosangue isn’t an SUV at all. He describes it as “a car like no other” and a “genuine game-changer” that creates an entirely new market segment. Inevitably, it will invite comparisons with the Lamborghini Urus and Aston Martin DBX, but the Ferrari will be more exclusive and more expensive. Prices start from €390,000 (circa. £338,000) in Italy, with the first right-hand-drive UK deliveries due in summer 2023.
Back to the old school
If you were expecting a twin-turbo V8 or some kind of plug-in hybrid, prepare for a shock. The Purosangue’s USP is an old-school naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12. Marketing boss Enrico Galliera says interest in the car “exploded” when the engine was announced: “the level of demand was like for our limited-series cars”.
Serving up 725hp at a heady 7,750rpm, it rockets the Purosangue to 62mph in 3.3 seconds and a top speed of 193mph.
Importantly for a car of this type (i.e. umm, not an SUV), there’s also a muscular 528lb ft of torque at 6,250rpm, with 80 percent of that oomph available from just 2,100rpm. A dual-clutch transaxle gearbox drives all four wheels via seven “quick-fire” ratios and an overdrive-style eighth gear.
Ready to go FAST
Lift the front-hinged bonnet and you see the Purosangue is effectively mid-engined, with its V12 squeezed up against the bulkhead for near-perfect 49:51 percent weight distribution. Even so, with a ride height of 185mm and portly kerb weight of 2,180kg (Ferrari also quotes a minimum dry weight of 2,033kg), the laws of physics must be tackled head-on. And that’s the job of Ferrari Active Suspension Technology – or ‘FAST’ for short. We wonder if they came up with the name or the acronym first…
While most SUV rivals use air suspension to quash pitch, dive and roll, Ferrari’s head of vehicle dynamics, Stefano Varisco, says “air springs are too slow to deliver this kind of performance”. Instead, the Purosangue rides on coilover dampers with 48-volt electric actuators. The system was co-developed with Canadian motorsport specialist Multimatic, which builds the current Ford GT supercar.
FAST removes the need for anti-roll bars, explains Varisco, and helps the Ferrari behave “100 percent like a sports car”. It’s backed up by the eighth iteration of Maranello’s drift-tastic Side Slip Control, torque vectoring on the front axle, a rear e-differential and traction control optimised for low-grip surfaces.
If you really must risk those forged alloy wheels off-road (22 inches at the front and 23s at the rear – the biggest ever fitted to a production Ferrari), an optional lift kit provides 30mm of added ground clearance.
‘Elegant and sensual curves’
We must wait a few months to discover what the Purosangue is like to drive, but chief of product development Gianmaria Fulgenzi promises “an unprecedented range of abilities”. Describing a “sports car with comfort and versatility”, he extols the “never-ending acceleration” of the V12 and “maximum harmonics” from the quad-tailpipe exhaust. “It has a GT soundtrack at low rpm that increases to a pure Ferrari sound.” Could it unseat the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT as our favourite road-focused SUV? Don’t bet against it.
For now, the Purosangue certainly has an aesthetic advantage over the car from Stuttgart. Design boss Flavio Manzoni admits that styling an entirely new kind of Ferrari was “quite tough”, but the end result, to our eyes, borders on the beautiful.
He walks us around its “elegant and sensual curves”, highlighting how the tapered, berlinetta body has “the feeling of a crouching feline”. When you consider how ostentatious and ugly many coupe-style SUVs look, Manzoni has done an exceptional job.
Four doors, four seats
You climb aboard via what Ferrari calls ‘Welcome Doors’, which part in the middle like those on a Rolls-Royce. The rear-hinged back doors open via a fingertip toggle that recalls the classic 308, while all doors have an electric soft-close function. Even though the Purosangue retains a B-pillar – “We needed to retain it for body rigidity,” says Manzoni – the ‘fully open’ side view looks spectacular.
Inside, you find a digital-first dashboard inspired by the SF90 Stradale and shaped into two wraparound cockpits for the driver and front passenger. Quality is excellent (the days of Ferrari borrowing parts-bin Fiat switchgear are long gone) and some of the materials are genuinely innovative. The Purosangue we sat in, for instance, had carbon fibre trim inlaid with strands of copper, plus a floor covering made from the same bulletproof fabric as military uniforms.
All four adult-sized seats are individually adjustable and the boot swallows a practical 473 litres of luggage. You can also enjoy Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, wireless phone charging and a Burmester surround-sound audio system. However, Ferrari stops short of offering a five-seat option or a tow bar – this is a thoroughbred, remember? On that note, spot the long shift paddles and F1-style manettino on the steering wheel, which has five drive modes: Wet, Comfort, Sport, Race and ESC-Off. Leave the labrador at home before you sample the latter…
A new kind of Ferrari
So, what would Enzo say? Would the late founder of Ferrari be rolling his eyes behind his trademark dark glasses? I’m not so sure. Enzo was a pragmatist, after all, who saw road cars as a way to fund his racing exploits. And the 1980 Pinin concept proves he certainly considered a Ferrari with four doors.
Whatever the truth, with production limited to 20 percent of Ferrari’s overall sales volume (around 2,220 cars a year), the Purosangue is likely to be a sell-out success. Just don’t call it an SUV.
Tim Pitt writes for Motoring Research
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