Driving Ferrari’s weird but wonderful 296 GTB

Leow Ju-Len

Of all the weird things I’ve experienced in my life, driving a silent Ferrari has to rank among the weirdest (and I’ve stayed in more than one haunted hotel room, mind you). When your car has a prancing horse emblem on its fenders, you expect a snarling, wailing engine to propel you rapidly down the street and into the jealous hearts of other men, but the 296 GTB can waft around like a ghost instead, with nothing but battery power to get by on.

Welcome to the new era of Ferrari, where the newest, most playful car in the lineup isn’t a traditional sportscar with a revvy V8 engine behind the passenger compartment, but a plug-in electric hybrid vehicle. Imagine the righteous indignation it’ll arouse in electric car drivers when they see it parked in a charging station.

Of course, the 296 GTB is no Tesla, not least because a lack of sound insulation means you can hear every piece of grit the tyres flick up into the wheel wheels, but it’s an oddly relaxing experience when put into electric mode, thanks mostly to the smooth, languid acceleration the motor serves up. I can see how it would deliver you to work in a perfectly unruffled state, assuming work is within the 25 kilometre range that the 296’s lithium-ion pack can hold.

You’d imagine that Ferraris demand skill from their owners, but what they really require is patience. Even if you have S$1,240,000 to spare (plus another couple of hundred grand for a Certificate of Entitlement and a few optional extras), you’ll have to wait until 2024 to get your 296 GTB. That being so, you might as well go crazy with yours and add the S$133,500 Assetto Fiorano pack, a collection of special parts that lighten the car and make it more suitable for the track. It also comes with racing-inspired livery, so your 296 will leave no eyeball unseared.

For all that, purists may turn their noses up because the money buys just 6 cylinders; the 296 GTB is the first Ferrari without a screaming V8 or titanic V12 for half a century. 

Yet, this is a car that could go toe-to-toe with just about anything out there. Though petite, the 296’s V6 has twin turbochargers and a 167 horsepower electric motor, so there’s an almighty 830 horsepower altogether, enough to scorch tarmac as the Ferrari barrels to 200 km/h in just 7.3 seconds. In fact, the 296 GTB is so stupendously fast, it leaves you with the feeling that given enough clear road, it would be capable of busting clean through the sound barrier. In this Ferrari, petrol and electricity are allies instead of foes.

Unusually for something this powerful, the 296 GTB’s petrol-electric duo send all their power only through the rear tyres, yet it isn’t a wild, bucking bronco of a car that has trouble travelling in a straight line if you so much as glance at the accelerator pedal wrong. Instead, the Ferrari is remarkably poised, pivoting neatly around you and dancing deftly to your every input on the steering wheel on well-planted feet. 

If you’re careless with the accelerator, the Ferrari’s shapely tail end wiggles out of step, but the razor sharp steering is quick enough that you can gather it all up neatly and carry on. Nothing I’ve driven has combined this much ferocity and finesse with fun in quite the same way.

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The 296 GTB is blessed with the voice of an angel, too. From the outside it’s far from being obnoxiously loud, but sound tubes carry the whoosh of air from the intake and the thrum of the exhaust straight from the engine bay to the cabin, filling it with rich noise. Ferrari’s engineers say they played up all the right frequencies to make the new engine sound like a V12, and to my ears at least, the 296 GTB sounds much better than the F8 Tributo, the sportscar that it essentially replaces.

All of that is straight from the Ferrari playbook, but the 296 breaks with tradition inside. The distinctive, circular rev counter with a prancing horse graphic is gone, and in its place is a fully digital cockpit. Nearly everything is now controlled by touch sensitive switches on the steering wheel, along with two small panels on either side of it for the air-con, wing mirrors, reverse camera, even a nose lifter that helps the Ferrari to clear small obstacles without bruising its chin. I admit I had no idea how to operate any of it.

Even switching the 296 GTB on is an alien experience. You jab a haptic panel that boots up the car like a computer, instead of stabbing a start button the colour of blood. It lets out an electronic whirr when ready to go, and there’s no longer an evocative explosion to herald an engine coming to life. 

Whatever you think of all that digital stuff, the 296 GTB is a Ferrari at its core, which means it’s been built, shaped and optimised for speed. At 250 km/h, the sleek, sculpted body guides the airflow around it to generate an amazing 340kg of downforce, so it always feels utterly stable even at those speeds. The brakes have immense stopping power, and thanks to a new brake-by-wire system the pedal stays fade-free, even after the brakes themselves take a serious pounding at the track. 

In fact, it’s impossible to find an area of the car untouched by computing power. The suspension is active and adjustable on the fly, and even an algorithm decides when the rear wing should pop up and stabilise the back end. 

What ultimately defines the 296 GTB is that its plug-in powertrain feels like part of a coherent attempt to rewrite the rules of the sportscar game, to keep it relevant on a playing field that has changed and become hostile to carbon emissions.

Fans of Ferrari’s V8 sportscars might lament the loss of 2 cylinders, but they would be better off examining what they get in return. Even the most famous name in motor racing has to evolve or die, and the 296 GTB is what that evolution looks like. A sometimes silent Ferrari may seem weird to ponder, but it’s wonderful to experience.

Ferrari 296 GTB Assetto Fiorano

Engine 2,992 cc, V6, turbocharged

Power 663 hp at 8,000 rpm

Torque 740 Nm at 6,250 rpm

Gearbox 8-speed automatic

Electric Motor 167 hp, 315 Nm

Battery Type / Capacity Lithium-ion / 7.45 kWh

Charging Time / Type 1.5 hours (estimated) / AC 11.4 kW

Electric Range 25 km

System Power 830 hp, 900 Nm

Top Speed >330 km/h

0-100km/h 2.9 seconds

Fuel Efficiency TBA 

Price S$1,373,500 without COE

Agent Ital Auto Pte Ltd

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