After six hours in the new Ferrari Purosangue, we’re not entirely sure what it is. What we know is it's the first four-door Ferrari and has been positioned as an SUV, a car that notionally has the Aston Martin DBX, Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus, Porsche Cayenne Turbo, and Range Rover in its sights. Except it isn’t an SUV. Perhaps it could fall under ‘jacked-up sports car’, a fashionable niche newly occupied by Porsche’s 911 Dakar and Lamborghini’s upcoming Sterrato, although it has considerably more bandwidth than either. When GQ attended the car’s reveal last year, we asked Ferrari’s chief marketing and commercial officer Enrico Galliera if he could pin it down. “We discussed this internally,’ he said, ‘and came to the conclusion that the segment is called 'Purosangue'.”
That’s a little high-minded, but not inaccurate: the Purosangue is in a class of its own, and is priced accordingly. It starts at £313k, although most will be so fulsomely optioned that a £400k outlay is easily possible. This is exceptionally good business for Ferrari, especially as so many people have already ordered a Purosangue that the book is effectively closed on it.
This makes it a tricky car to assess, because Ferrari knows its client base better than any other car maker, and the normal rules don’t apply. The Purosangue is best appreciated, then, as the Ferrari you can use every day, the answer to the world’s most definitively first world problem. Even Piero Ferrari, Enzo’s son and owner of 10 per cent of the company, had a Range Rover as his daily driver. Ferraris usually accrue very modest mileages, although they’re tougher than most people think. Expect to see plenty of these thundering up the snowy passes to Gstaad and Val d’Isère.
A little bit of history for clarity
In 1980, Ferrari’s long-term design partner Pininfarina presented a concept called the Pinin. This was a four-door saloon of unusually elegant proportions and future-focused design inclination. But while Enzo Ferrari, in his early eighties by this point, had always favoured four-seater Ferraris as his personal transport, he vetoed the project because a saloon was too pedestrian a format for Ferrari. Nor did he think his company had the chops to build a rival to the likes of Mercedes’ all-conquering S-class. Ferrari made sports cars, after all.
Fast forward to 2014. GQ is on the Ferrari stand at the Paris motor show witnessing a moment of historical high drama. Reigning CEO Luca di Montezemolo, the man who rebooted Ferrari following a lean spell in the early '90s, is being publicly ousted by then group boss, Sergio Marchionne. Two very big dogs of Italian industry, it seems they can no longer co-exist. Backstage, Montezemolo has tears in his eyes but he has composed himself by the time he’s addressing the media throng. He’s going nowhere, he insists, before adding that, ‘he [Marchionne] wants to build a truck!’ A few weeks later, Montezemolo has gone, no doubt on a handsome settlement but victim of another slice of Italian melodrama. Work on the Ferrari Purosangue began soon after, although Marchionne, a chain-smoking workaholic, didn’t live to see it (he died in 2018).
The Purosangue is an impressive beast
The Ferrari Purosangue is certainly visually impressive. Chief design officer Flavio Manzoni says the team spent a year defining the car’s architecture, before drafting its design. With no historical reference point, and given that the car is all-new, Ferrari had to create a fresh archetype. This was a liberating experience, says Manzoni, if a little daunting. He’s a true modernist, and the Purosangue has elements that are unfamiliar to the point of discomfort, and necessarily so. Good design does that sometimes. What look like headlights are actually aero ducts, the slim-line LEDs beneath actually doing the illumination, while air also flows through the ‘aero bridges’ that connect the bonnet to the base of the windscreen and the A pillars on either side.
The front bumper and wheelarch surrounds have a quasi-off-road look, but work together to create an air curtain that seals the front wheels, cleaning up the disruptive air flows there. Ferrari has patented what it calls the ‘floating body’, which separates the top of the car from its more technical underbody. It looks best from the rear three-quarters, full-volumed and dramatic, with a kick above the rear wheelarches and a rear light graphic that connects it to other contemporary Ferraris.
Another key feature are the rear-hinged back doors. Ferrari calls them ‘welcome doors’ and they help give the Purosangue a more naturally Ferrari look, as well as opening onto an eye-catching interior panorama. They’re electrically operated, and open and close smoothly via a little lever on the rear door. There’s still a conventional B-pillar, necessary to preserve the car’s structural rigidity, but the effect is powerful. This is the first Ferrari interior to feature four independently adjustable seats – with heated back rests and massage functionality. There’s enough space for four six-footers to sit comfortably in this car, as indeed there was in Ferrari’s previous four-seater, the three-door shooting break GTC4 Lusso. It’s just a lot easier to get in and out now. The boot isn’t as big as it might be, partly because the Purosangue has a rear transaxle gearbox which robs space, but a small-ish boot even on a practical Ferrari would be a daft deal-breaker. There’s also a very handsome carbon fibre roof, which helps reduce weight and optimise the centre of gravity.
Cop a bit of that interior
The dashboard is in a dramatic dual cockpit configuration, with displays for driver and passenger. On the Purosangue, the latter gets full control over infotainment, and each seat in the car can be personalised. I don’t really get the new fashion for involving the passenger quite so much, but the latest tech enables it so everyone’s at it. The new car refines the HMI (human machine interface) introduced on the SF90 and Roma, to only partially successful effect. The steering wheel is loaded with controls, including the start button, the manettino which alters the chassis settings, wipers, indicators, and a track-pad that allows you to cycle through the audio set-up and other features on the instrument display. Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel is the mantra, but the track-pad is fiddly to use under your right thumb and there’s a slight lag in operation. The wheel’s functionality goes into ‘sleep mode’, so needs to be awoken with a little tap. All of this makes sense in theory, but remains confusing in reality.
Interestingly, Ferrari has abandoned an integrated sat nav in favour of utilising the driver’s smartphone. It’s a cool idea, although it clearly leans hard on your phone’s connectivity. It also means that you can’t have the nav map and big central rev counter displayed simultaneously. It’s one or the other, a quirk Ferrari says is down to Apple’s proprietary software and algorithms. Climate control is via a central rotary controller. Ferrari says that 85 per cent of the interior trim is sustainably produced, with polyamide recycled from fishing nets and a new version of Alcantara that is made of 68 per cent post-consumer recycled polyester. Rather than carpet, there’s the option of a bullet-proof ballistic fabric as used in military uniforms. The upshot is that the Purosangue has a distinctly different feel inside, and isn’t quite as traditionally tactile. Then again, sustainability is part of the new luxury paradigm. German specialist Burmester provides the audio system, a breathtaking 21-speaker set-up that sets the new standard for in-car entertainment. It’s magnificent.
Is it possible that all of this takes precedence over how the Purosangue actually drives? That would be a first on a Ferrari, and the Purosangue is unquestionably a stimulating place to sit. But this is still a Ferrari so the engine remains dominant. Although there’s a magnificent V6 hybrid engine elsewhere in the portfolio (used in GQ’s Car Award-winning 296 GTB), Ferrari has elected to launch the Purosangue powered only by its 6.5-litre, 715bhp V12. We say only because we’re talking about one of the world’s greatest engines here. It’s mid-front-mounted for optimal weight distribution (49/51, front to rear). The engine itself has a redesigned intake, timing and exhaust, while the cylinder heads are from the extraordinary 812 Competizione. It has a new crankshaft, valve train timing, and a heavily revised camshaft. Ferrari’s commitment to its signature V12 is noble, given that combustion engines are now on the endangered list.
The fans go wild for it
According to Galliera, Ferrari had its clients at hello when they ran the concept of this car past them, but that their interest ‘exploded’ when the normally aspirated V12 was confirmed. There’s no doubt that it’s a thing of wonder, and instantly vaults the Purosangue to the top of this elite market sector in terms of its power output. Strangely, though, the V12 needs to be worked harder than you might expect in order to liberate all those horses, although that’s no hardship given the sound this engine makes at full tilt, and the fabulous responses from the eight-speed dual-shift transmission. But is it the right fit for this sort of car? I suspect the hybrid V6 will be a more seamless match. On the other hand, it’s a stonking great V12, one of the world’s most compelling engines, so who cares?
The chassis is all-new, and builds out on Ferrari’s enormous expertise in aluminium. It’s lighter than the one used on the GTC4lusso, despite being much bigger, and has greater structural integrity. There’s a trick new active suspension system, which combines a 48-volt anti-roll system and fast-acting dampers to deliver a sublime ride whilst maintaining the sort of dynamic responses and handling accuracy demanded by a Ferrari driver. The all-wheel drive aspect is done via a clever Power Transfer Unit that sits in front of the engine, and there’s four-wheel steering and torque vectoring to sharpen responses even further. The Purosangue also evolves Ferrari’s incredibly clever chassis control software in a new direction befitting a taller, heavier car. Zero to 62mph takes 3.3 seconds, 124mph is done in 10.6. The result is that this jacked-up new Ferrari behaves remarkably like other Ferraris, just one with extra doors and greater practicality.
On which basis, the Purosangue is a no-brainer, assuming you have the necessary disposable income. Ferrari has thrown more at it than needed, but the result is highly accomplished. Like previous four-seater Ferraris, the Purosangue also has an idiosyncratic streak, and does things its own way. That means it’s not without its irritations, but there’s more than enough charisma here to offset that. It’s also extremely expensive, much more so than some of its rivals, and that V12 comes at a price in terms of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The world didn’t really need another car like this, but Ferrari has delivered one anyway. And it’s a car that Enzo would no doubt approved of.
