Ferrari 488

The Ferrari 488 is a twin turbo 3.9 liter v8 derived from the one first used in the California two years earlier. 

It makes for sizeable gains in peak power and torque relative to the atmosphoric  v8 in the 458 Italia and delivers the required improvement in fuel economy and reduced emissions.

The logic of the car’s nomenclature is also new. The 488’s predecessors have flip-flopped between different rationales for their numerical identities since departing from the one that seemed to make the most sense: the first two digits of the name representing engine size and the last the number of cylinders, hence 308, 328 and 348.

Ferrari departed from that logic with the F355 but returned to it with the 458 Italia. And now it has departed once more, choosing ‘unitary displacement’ (or volume of one cylinder) to define a model name, as it once did with its V12 cars.

Perhaps this car should be called 398 GTB, with an extra character allowed somewhere to represent those turbos.

But Ferrari has rarely replaced one of its cars with another of lesser apparent numerical ‘value’ and credited its customers with the intelligence necessary to understand that less may be more, as seems to be the case with this downsized 488.