OPINION: Ferraris deliver a greater driving experience than anything else

My first experience of driving a Ferrari was back when I was 21 years old. For my birthday I was gifted a track day experience at Goodwood to drive three supercars, a Porsche 911 Turbo, a Lamborghini Gallardo and a Ferrari 360. Three cars with very different characteristics and each a dream come true for me to climb behind the wheel.

Fast forward ten years or so and I had my second chance to drive a Ferrari. Once again at Goodwood, but this time completing some laps in a 296 GTB. I’d had a bit more track experience by this point, so I had a greater appreciation of what I was feeling in those moments, and suffice to say I didn’t really want to get out.

Then earlier this year, I had the opportunity to spend some time in a Purosangue, my first experience of driving a Ferrari on the road which opened my eyes even further still. This particular drive came with a realisation that there’s something about these cars marked with a Prancing Horse that captures my imagination more than anything else on the planet.

I’ve had to come from a position of privilege to make that realisation, and I consider myself extremely fortunate in that regard. I have driven some incredible cars, a Porsche Le Mans legend, a Gen3 Formula E car, and supercars from Aston Martin, Porsche and Maserati, but it’s the three Ferraris that I’ve driven that are burned into my memory and forever embedded in my emotional makeup.

Still, so many years later, I can hear the roar of that 3.6-litre Tipo F131 V8 in the back of the 360. It remains perhaps my most treasured memory of driving a car. On a day when I also experienced a Lamborghini V10 and a Porsche flat-six, it was the Ferrari that struck me deepest. It was a more emotional sound, more theatrical, more addictive. You simply can’t describe the effect it has on you, only to say that it is truly unique, and not something you’re ever likely to forget.

Even in the 296, where the sound of that twin-turbocharged hybrid Tipo F163 V6 might not quite be so magical as the naturally-aspirated V8, it still revs to 8,000rpm, and when you’re sat in the cockpit with that spinning up behind you it gets your goosebumps popping. It’s just so easy to manipulate as well, the response from the throttle posits you as the conductor of an orchestra.

Then there’s the Purosangue, with its naturally-aspirated Tipo F140IA V12… Do I really need to say any more? It elevates the experience of driving Ferrari’s ‘FUV’ to such an extent that there really is nothing to compare it to. Sure the magic is softened, only slightly, by the fact the engine is hidden under the bonnet some way ahead of you, but the sound is still simply sublime. A Ferrari engine strikes a literal chord that hits deeper than a V8 from Ford, a V6 from Maserati, or a V12 from Aston Martin.

But there’s more to this story than just the sound. In every case, Ferraris give you the sense that something genuinely exceptional is occurring every time you get behind the wheel. Even as an inexperienced car fanatic who had arrived at Goodwood driving my own Nissan Micra, climbing into that Ferrari 360 hit me differently. In this instance, it was the work of art sculpted into the transmission tunnel that struck me first, that glorious chrome manual gear shift that was so wonderfully mechanical.   

I’ve since experienced the slick gearboxes of Mazda MX-5s and Caterham Sevens, but nothing encourages, nor rewards, precision quite like the Ferrari did. The way you can feel and hear the mechanism working underneath you, you get a sense that you are a part of the machine, a feeling that is slowly becoming lost in modern times that a bit of skill and finesse from the driver would make a difference to the way the car performed. This particular Ferrari must’ve been wondering what on Earth it had done to deserve my horribly uncoordinated efforts at changing gear with my right hand for the first time, but whether I butchered it or not, I have yet to experience that same feeling in any car since.

And that is a theme that continued when I came to drive the 296. No manual here. Instead, the best paddle shift transmission I’ve ever used. The 296 is a remarkable piece of kit, with depth to its engineering that I couldn’t hope to comprehend with a quick ten-minute blast around the Goodwood Motor Circuit. But I once again got a sense within a very short space of time that I was driving something significant. 

The feeling that you get from behind the wheel is utterly phenomenal, and that was me barely scratching the surface of the car’s capability. The output from the hybrid powertrain is alarming, as is the chassis’ ability to harness that power into usable momentum. Then there’s the grip that feels limitless, a temptation to carry more and more speed into each and every corner, a confidence that you’re going to have to mess up pretty dramatically for something to go wrong. This was a moment of realisation of just how good a car can be, and in the case of this Ferrari, it was better than anything else I’ve ever experienced.

Which leads me neatly back to the Purosangue, because I had that realisation all over again when I took it for a drive in the South Downs. What Ferrari has done here is absolutely mind-boggling. You hear about its trick suspension and you might wonder what difference it can actually make to the drive. 

Then you experience it for yourself and you’re reminded all over again that Ferraris are just inherently special. It may be placebo, but the sensation of driving a Purosangue as it actively fights against body roll to keep the car perfectly balanced at all times is unique. You expect to feel yourself sway gently from side to side as you tackle corners, even slight undulations and cambers in the road. Nothing of the sort. You can throw this thing, which weighs two tonnes by the way, down a winding B-road and it will behave as you would expect a one-tonne sportscar. It’s ludicrous, frankly.

In their individual ways, each of these cars with that small yellow badge at the centre of the steering wheel has been more special than anything else I’ve had the privilege of driving. There’s an emotion attached that you simply don’t get elsewhere. Perhaps it’s a deeply ingrained attachment to the legend of the name and all of its history, but that spirit of Ferrari has a corporeal manifestation that delivered on every single one of my expectations.

Ferrari Purosangue photography by Joe Harding.