2020 Ferrari Roma review: good looks, performance and comfort hit the sweet spot
There are no Ferrari cars in Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece, La Dolce Vita. The film has Alfa Romeos various, plus numerous Fords and Fiats, a Studebaker, a Cadillac, a Chevrolet Corvette, a Piaggio Vespa scooter (naturally) and (weirdly) a Triumph TR3a, the hero car in which the statuesque Anita Ekberg and journalist Marcello Mastroianni make good their escape from the paparazzi in Rome.
Ah yes, Rome, perhaps that’s the connection with Ferrari’s latest gran turismo model, the Roma coupé. The reveal in the Eternal City last year and this week’s test drive were themed around La Nuova Dolce Vita and Ferrari wasn’t going to let inconvenient things like the facts get in the way.
Nor, it seems, was it going to let the coronavirus. Italy is pretty much open for business as long as you wear a mask indoors and while German manufacturers are still scratching their heads on how they can legally get UK journalists even a look at their cars, Ferrari just got on with it.
Looks to covet
The impression we’re supposed to walk away with is that the Roma is as beautiful as La Dolce Vita. You might slyly observe here that while Fellini’s film looks gorgeous, it is also a biting satire on corruption and decadence at the heart of Fifties Romanesque society, alienation and despair…
And Ferrari’s Roma is lovely, even if photographs flatter its looks a little. Get close, walk around and weigh it up, and the proportions aren’t quite as magical as they first appear. All the curves and cutaways are there, but they don’t fit quite so well together. It’s almost as if the longitudinal panels work better than the transverse panels; as if the car had been stretched an inch or so too wide.
The body is pretty high tech with its downforce generators, flip-up spoilers and tail venturi, but I’d vouchsafe that even Dr Wunibald Kamm didn’t envisage his cut-off tail designs to be quite as cut off as this. And then there’s the body-coloured grille; medieval knight’s visor or statement design? Make up your own mind, but you can’t change it and, on the grey cars, it’s pretty stark.
Getting this sort of old-fashioned GT right is really difficult and the result is often derivative in parts; check out Henrik Fisker’s BMW Z8, for example. Looking at the Roma I couldn’t help thinking of Ian Callum’s Jaguar F-type design and also the TVR Sagaris.
And, while it might be a bit mean, since we’re still on giants of the cinema, Raymond Chandler’s script for High Window springs to mind: “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”
Who is it aimed at?
Why Roma? “It’s our most beautiful city,” says Marco Bai, marketing production manager for the Roma. “It’s for people looking for an everyday car to be used in the city centre and out of town at the weekends,” he adds, before getting himself in a bit of bother over sexual politics.
“The Roma is a modern take on the gentleman drivers’ cars of the Fifties and Sixties,” he boasts… “As for gentlemen drivers and whether they are women or men, well, that’s another question.”
Whether this £170,984, 612bhp missile is a perfect city car for “gentlemen” is also highly debatable, but what’s certain is that the Roma’s roots go back to the Fifties front-engined gran turismo, as well as the spirit of the 550 Maranello, a big, V12-engined GT which went out of the production in 2001, and the California, a V8 sports GT with a folding hard-top, which was replaced by the Portofino in 2018.
What's behind the looks?
So is this front/mid-engined, two-plus-two GT just a Portofino with a fixed roof? Well, yes and no. Yes because it uses a similar base and engine, no because the proportions are so different. Put simply, the Roma is wider and has a lower centre of gravity, which means its static dynamics start from a better place.
A Portofino weighs 1,664kg, the Roma has a stated weight of 1,570kg. But there’s a catch; to tip the scales at that weight you need to buy all the carbon-fibre and Alcantara trim options, which will cost you more than £25,000.
The driveline isn’t exactly the same as the Portofino’s either. The 3,855cc, 90-degree V8 with twin turbos has been given high-lift cams, hollow valves and the turbos spin harder, which means it’s more powerful and the power comes in earlier.
The eight-speed gearbox comes from the new SF90 Stradale rather than the seven-speed item from the Portofino. There are different suspension rates and settings for the electronically powered steering system and an optional magnetorehological damper set-up (£3,168), which was fitted to our car.
Interior design
Step inside and it’s charmingly designed, opulent and exceedingly high tech. There have been complaints about the Human Machine Interface (HMI) however, and I can understand why. Frequency of use has dominated the design, so the most commonly used functions are the closest to hand. Yet this also means less-used functions are hidden like the Arc of the Covenant; you will never find them.
There’s also an illogicality about some of it, where tradition butts up against state-of-the-art, not always with great success. So the manettino switch on the steering wheel to select the various driving modes is still there, but has no markings. Turn it and after some delay, a big message flags up on the digital instrument binnacle (obscuring the navigation display) to tell you which setting you have selected. Wow, this is pernickety to the max, or it would be if the Roma didn’t come with its own voice control system, which takes top honours for plain annoying. A gentle “Ciao Ferrari” activates it, but you need a bit of barrack-room Anglo Saxon to make it go away.
The capacitive switches work OK, but not if you burned your fingertips on a hot pan a couple of days previously. That’s the beauty of proper switches and dials, they work even if you aren’t a digital ninja.
The basics are pretty good, though. The driving position accommodates most sizes, the seats are fabulously comfortable and supportive, and vision out of the front is good, although the rear-view mirror isn’t terrific and over-the-shoulder views are restricted, so you need to get the mirrors sorted before pulling away. I can’t fully understand, either, why the seats and mirrors are all powered by heavy electric motors when Ferrari says it was religiously chasing weight reduction with this car.
The rear seats are ridiculously tiny and at 272 litres the boot isn’t much bigger, but you’ll get enough luggage in there for two, provided you are going somewhere hot and don’t go crazy with the shoes.
On the move
Start her up and the engine suffers the "leaf-blower syndrome" which affects all these big-capacity turbocharged units. Ferrari’s engine sounds purposeful once above 3,000rpm though, and there’s no doubting its muscularity at any speeds. Push the throttle and, without breaking a sweat, you are past pretty much whatever is in front.
It cruises quietly at 70mph-plus and doesn’t seem to be too thirsty as long as you leave the turbos alone. It didn’t really need an eight-speed transmission, but the ratios are stacked close so you can play tunes by short-shifting up and down. In Race mode the changes are super-fast and brutal, but even at low speeds in Comfort setting the gearbox thumps around the ratios, particularly on the way down. That’s the only harsh note around town, where for the most part the Roma passes without trace.
Having better proportions and suspension geometry means the wheel spring rates don’t have to be so high to get the same kind of handling agility, so the Roma feels more compliant than the Portofino and the ride is very good, especially over gritty stone and concrete roads of the launch route round the Langhe wine-growing area in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. There was, however, an annoying choppiness about the damping, particularly at the rear, while on the autostrada the Roma never felt fully settled.
The minor roads were dry, but unpredictably slippery and in places downright treacherous. We started with the manettino on its Wet setting, which effectively reined in wheelspin. The two further settings, Comfort and Sport, felt far too similar and seemed slow to recover wheelspin, but Race was a finely worked setting, with a noisier exhaust but more direct reactions to the major controls and sharper throttle mapping.
And does it handle?
Dynamically the Roma feels a bit soft on turn-in, and the steering doesn’t have much initial feedback – there’s not much telling you what’s going on until you’ve turned the wheel a bit. Once in the corner the car settles, but my perception was of a diagonal pitching with a bit too much load transfer to the outside front wheel which reduced the load on the inside rear.
Raffaelle de Simone is Ferrari’s chief test driver and a trustworthy cove. He explained that the Roma’s long-travel suspension allows it to have more body movement like this without compromising grip and traction, but those roads were so unpredictable it was difficult to draw absolute conclusions, even if the basically good dynamics of the Roma allowed a quick recovery from the slides.
On better (and wider) roads, the Roma was more surefooted and confidence-inspiring, with all the traditional advantages of a front-engined car (safer cornering traits, which are intuitively corrected) but few of the drawbacks (a lack of agility on twisty roads and stodgy nose-on understeer).
It was also refined, quiet, good fun and, if it isn’t quite as gorgeous as Ferrari would have us believe, the Roma is a good-looking thing.
Ferrari doesn’t reveal its production figures by model these days, but I’ve a feeling that in future many of the 10,000 cars it produces every year will bear a Roma badge.
THE FACTS
Ferrari Roma
TESTED 3,855cc, V8 twin-turbo petrol engine, eight-speed twin-clutch gearbox, rear-wheel drive.
PRICE/ON SALE from £170,984/now
POWER/TORQUE 612bhp @ 5,750rpm, 561lb ft @ 3,000rpm
TOP SPEED 199mph
ACCELERATION 0-62mph in 3.4sec
FUEL ECONOMY 25.2mpg (WLTP)
CO2 EMISSIONS 255g/km
VED £2,175 first year, £475 next five years, then £150
VERDICT Good looking, fast and comfortable, the Roma is a blast from the company’s past; a front-engined two-plus-two gran turismo. It’s expensive (naturally), but offers an exclusivity that some rivals don’t and has a terrific combination of refinement and performance that will likely ensure its success.
TELEGRAPH RATING Four stars out of five
THE RIVALS
Aston Martin Vantage coupé, from £120,900
Aston’s V8 DB11 AMR is closer in absolute performance and price (and it’s a two-plus-two), but the two-seater Vantage is closer in spirit - and, let’s face it, 195mph and 0-62mph in 3.6sec along with 50 grand change over the cost of the Roma isn’t a bad result. Marek Reichmann’s design is more adventurous but not as classical as Ferrari Centro Stile’s and the Vantage is an uncompromising statement car with a fairly extreme ride and handling compromise.
Mercedes-AMG GT coupé 63S, from £188,345
Merc’s monster and AMG’s first car, the GT is a hooligan in a hoodie. The 63S is the zenith of the range, but not actually the best car, which is the standard 4.0-litre version. Nevertheless, this beastie will trade performance with the Roma (and the Aston) and is a brutish looker, too. A bit of a handful if you drive it hard, though.
Jaguar F-Type SVR coupé, from £113,500
It never quite hit the high notes, but the coupé version of Ian Callum’s sports car is a terrific-looking thing. The 575bhp 4x4 drivetrain can’t quite match the agility and fluidity of rivals, but it does make it a more surefooted all-rounder. Interior space is at a premium, though, and you can’t help feeling the 3.0S version is a better car.
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