When the late Sergio Marchionne said that we'd have to shoot him before Ferrari would roll out a sport utility vehicle, nobody took him seriously. Deep down inside, we all knew that the Prancing Horse of Maranello would have to give in to the current automotive trends in spite of Enzo's distaste for automotive body styles with more than two (or three) doors.
From the point of view of a purist, Il Commendatore is perfectly right in his loathing. But on the other hand, the man who built Ferrari into the best name in the biz would be wrong in equal measure. Vehicles with more than two doors appeal to more people. Nowadays, sport utility vehicles are the name of the game. Enzo Ferrari started selling cars to the public in order to advance his motorsport agenda, and the commercial success of the Purosangue would have pleased the big kahuna enormously had he been with us here today to witness how much the Italian automaker has grown.
Not exactly to everyone's liking, the heir apparent of the GTC4Lusso isn't your average sport utility vehicle. It's THE sport utility vehicle with all uppercase letters for a number of reasons, including the way it corners when pushed as hard as a Ferrari test driver can at the Fiorano circuit. It's mesmerizing how flat such a heavy vehicle corners, a dynamic trait that wouldn't have been possible without active suspension wizardry.
The Maranello-based automaker employs TrueActive Spool Valve dampers from the peeps at Multimatic, a Canadian outfit known for game-changing damping technologies. The DSSV shock absorbers in the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 and fifth-generation Camaro Z/28? Yeah, those are Multimatic dampers as well.
TASV is the first series-production active suspension to integrate spool valve damping with a liquid-cooled 48V electric motor. Semi-virtual high wishbone suspension also needs to be mentioned, along with four-wheel steering, the 6-way Chassis Dynamic Sensor, Side Slip Control 8.0, a low center of gravity, and – of course - sticky tires. Ferrari used every trick in the book (and then some) to design the best-handling sport utility vehicle the world has ever seen so far.
There is, however, another way in which the Purosangue doesn't have an equal. Not only does it feature the most desirable badge in the biz, but the Purosangue boasts a naturally-aspirated V12 engine. Not even a single rival offers a naturally-aspirated V12, and lest we forget, the Prancing Horse of Maranello made the V12 its trademark engine from the very beginning of Ferrari as an automaker in 1947.
Oh, and another thing. What rival can pride itself on 715 horsepower without forced induction? Similarly, no other super sport utility vehicle can match the 8,250 revolutions per minute of the Purosangue's F140 IA.
Costlier than a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, the first series-production Ferrari with five doors (or four if you take Ferrari's marketing nonsense for granted) is capped at 20 percent of total yearly production capacity. Reading between the lines, the Purosangue wasn't developed solely to keep investors happy, but also to prove that it could make a better utility vehicle than competing automakers.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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