The front-mounted, twin-turbo 3.9-litre V8 and its transaxle, with the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission and the E.diff inside, are closely related to the California T’s powertrain. The bodyshell and aluminium architecture, interior and suspension layout are all obviously aligned with the V12-powered GTC4 Lusso.
Ferrari, protected from conventional rules by its Maranello bubble, is so insistent that the GTC4 Lusso T is an all-new model (and definitely not an entry GTC4 Lusso model) that it repeats this eight times in one 10-minute presentation, then four times more over dinner.
Someone should have told the people in charge of badges, then, because just sticking a 'T' on the end of the GTC4 Lusso’s badge doesn’t convincingly send a message that it’s an “all-new” car.
Ferrari is keen to push this “all-new” business because the car is aimed at different people to ones wooed by the V12’s warbles. Oh, they can still afford the V12, but they’re up to 15 years younger, more likely to be died-in-the-wool urban dwellers and after a generation of performance turbo cars, they’re used to more low-end punch than the V12 has.
One of the key mantras Ferrari repeats is that it’s rear-wheel drive, not all-wheel drive. Secondly, it’s got big dollops of torque at low revs where the big-capacity V12 needs to be spun to nearly 6000 revs before it hits its peak. Thirdly, it’s cheaper by $74,000, give or take, and that’s not nothing.
In fact, you could just about take that extra $74,000 and buy, say, an Audi RS 3 for the grubbier jobs, which would leave you with two cars and one cylinder more than you’d get with just the GTC4 Lusso alone. Or you could match it up with an M2 and have 14 rear-drive cylinders.
Then again, neither of those cars can hit 100km/h in 3.5 seconds on their way to 320km/h.
Talk about torque
At $A503,888, the GTC4Lusso T delivers 449kW of power at 7500rpm and 760Nm of torque from 3000 to 5250rpm. Quirky fact: the T (let’s just call it the T, for the sake of simplicity) has an extended torque peak that starts tapering away a full 500rpm before the V12 model’s torque peak even arrives.
That doesn’t tell the full story, though, because like the 488 and the California T before it, the T doesn’t give the driver all of that torque until seventh gear. It acquiesces in seventh to let people stay in the tallest gear to overtake.
The second reason is that Ferrari believes it’s simply too much torque for the rear wheels alone to cope with. Instead, the torque curve gradually rises to 700Nm at about 5000rpm (the curves are different in every gear), except in sixth gear where it jumps there at 2500rpm.
At 1865kg (or 1740kg dry, with no fluids whatsoever), the T is also about 55kg lighter than the V12, largely through discarding four cylinders and the V12’s astonishingly complex all-wheel drive system (because its target customers live in high-grip areas).
The decision to go rear-drive was forced on Ferrari, because the V8 was never engineered to power the front diff directly off the crank, like the V12. It was either engineer an all-new all-wheel drive system, or just forget about it.
The removal of the all-wheel drive and swapping to a lighter engine has shifted 54 percent of that mass to the rear axle, making the 4.9-metre four-seater feel more like a mid-engined car than a front-engined one.
So when you look at the data and realise the T rips to 100km/h just a tenth of a second behind the V12’s 3.4-second burst, you really start to wonder at the common sense of that extra $A74,122. Especially if you don’t live where it snows.
There is no known method to make a V12 diehard consider a V8 if there’s a V12 in the same body style. It’s not that they’re derisive of the smaller engines; they just won’t acknowledge they exist unless they’re forced to, so there’s not much chance they’ll put one on the shopping list, even if it’s a better engine. (It’s not unique to Ferrari, as Mercedes-AMG, BMW and Bentley can attest.)
The shame of it is they’d be missing out on a pretty good car here, though parts of it feel slightly disjointed, like the engineers couldn’t quite shake off their innate obsessions with sports cars for long enough to allow themselves to deliver a comprehensively comfortable, balanced grand tourer.
Getting comfortable
Any time it comes to a choice between comfortable or fast, the T’s default position is to go harder and that doesn’t always feel in sync with its stated aims, nor its list of market rivals.
That doesn’t make it a poor car. It’s very, very far from a poor car. It’s a superbly fast car, capable of astonishing feats of cornering and, in particular, direction changes, but it doesn’t unlock that potential immediately.
That’s why our video review might sound a bit more critical than these words. Simply explained, we shot the video in the middle of the day, not at the end, and before a wicked drive through some of the most challenging, snaking, lumpy roads Tuscany had to offer.
But first, the things that confuse us about this car. Its ability to soak up bumps (on roads selected by Ferrari) was hampered by a spring rate that felt overly firm, especially at the rear end.
Sure, none of its rivals are quite this focused on speed, but they’re all more comfortable on a long highway drive than this. Not only that, but the suspension makes a disquieting amount of noise as it crashes over square-edged bumps and broken ground, again mostly from the rear. As a combined effect, it’s disappointing in isolation and unsatisfactory against the competition.
And, again, these were roads selected by Ferrari.
There are other quirks that leave an impression, too. The steering wheel-mounted indicator buttons seem like complication for the sake of it and the luggage area is only adequate, rather than class-leading.
Other than that, it’s all pretty good and gets better the harder you drive it. The engine fires up without the theatrics so many German performance motors favour these days. There are no blips, lumps, burbles or pops as it fires up and it doesn’t throw them out between gearshifts or on downshifts, either.
Quiet achiever
For a company that built a formidable reputation for audible theatrics, it seems there’s been a clear, conscious effort to stay away from them here. It just goes about its work cleanly and enthusiastically, almost goading the others by suggesting that if you drive a Ferrari, you don’t need to audibly tap people on the shoulder to make them look at you.
It’s just strong and meaty in its noise and it stays that way all across the entire rev range. You could almost argue that it delivers its best sound at wide-open throttle from 2000 to 4000 revs, with a brutal, smooth exhaust note backed up by the overlain hush of crammed air. It still sings out to its redline and does it freely, but the sound is only great, not astonishing, at high revs.
That engine never loses its smoothness at any point, and if Ferrari’s goal was to have a GT that could deliver punch anywhere, anytime at any point in the rev range, it has succeeded brilliantly.
It’s mated to a brilliant seven-speed transmission and it’s almost impossible to talk of the engine without the transmission, because they work so well together.
It can be goaded into lumpy shifting on light throttle in the Sport mode, but it’s typically fast and smooth and clean, grabbing gears instantly whenever you feel you need them. The only thing that really ever hampers your enjoyment of it is Ferrari’s insistence on steering column-mounted gearshift paddles.
On the T, these extend upwards, but not downwards, so you often find yourself grabbing air instead of shift paddle, even when you’ve only turned the wheel by 30 degrees or so.
Making friends
It feels like the kind of car that will continue to deliver its secrets gradually even after years of ownership. We found it a different kind of car in the afternoon, even after 250km or so in the morning.
Part of this is Ferrari’s preference for steering assistance that refuses to increase the weight on the steering as the cornering loads rise. That can be disconcerting for those who aren’t used to it and can lead to initial overcorrections, but there is plenty of road feel coming through the wheel to help you trust it.
And you need to trust it and just feel it, because just as it doesn’t load up as you corner harder, neither does it unload the weighting when it starts to slide at the front or the rear. You can still feel the slides and still feel their approach, but you have to listen in a different way to what you would in a fast Porsche or Bentley.
You have to be going some to get it to that point, though, because the T is capable of truly astonishing feats of cornering and it has a special appetite for quick direction changes, flicking through winding fast bends and up and over road crowns without every giving an inkling of concern or discomfort.
The fixed spring rates are clearly geared up towards this kind of work, rather than cossetting people on broken highways, and you can feel the entire machine rising to the battle as you put more energy into its springs. Ironically, it even rides better when you start throwing it about.
Of course, throwing about a car that’s 1.98 metres wide takes some faith and confidence, and it’s here that the T shows it’s a true Ferrari, delivering its very best when you do.
On these roads, the ability to run in Sport mode and simply push a button on the wheel to put the magnetic-fluid dampers in Comfort mode makes all the difference.
It feels awesome on smooth winding roads, but this single button means it also flows and oozes over the most broken Italian passes and b-roads, pushing the tyres so consistently onto the road that there is rarely ever a need to correct sudden slides, even with the skid-control software turned off.
There is little point in turning it off, though, because the car is just so good with it on and very few drivers will be faster without it and a great majority will be both faster and safer. It’s not intrusive and it’s one of the best out there.
The other trick to the handling package, aside from monster carbon-ceramic brakes, is the rear-wheel steering, which is a key reason why nothing unexpected ever bites from down below.
It’s a blisteringly fast four seater that will see off most proper sports cars in the mountains, becoming more serene in its work with the extra effort you ask it to exert.
Multi-talented
Of course, the mid-sized folks in the rear seats might not always prefer it that way. While they’ve not been forgotten about by Ferrari, they’re not exactly gone out of their way to make them feel at home, either.
They do have mounts for tablets and screens on the back of the front seats and they have their own console and sculpted seats, but the car begins to give its very best long after most rear seat passengers are crying for you to slow down.
From the driver’s seat, the range of adjustments in the seat feel like they’ll suit most people, the drilled aluminium pedals feel awesome underfoot and there are two surprisingly spacious cubby holes in the centre console. The multimedia screen is big enough now and even the glovebox is a useful size.
For now, this is a very good car most of the time and an utterly brilliant one some of the time.
For Ferrari to broaden that so it’s utterly brilliant all the time, it’s going to have to forsake sports car ideas of fixed spring rates for a suspension (probably air) that can smooth out the car’s ride in a mode even softer than the current Comfort set-up.
Because, apart from having four doors, that’s really all the rest of this terrific car is waiting for.
2017 Ferrari GTC4 Lusso T pricing and specifications:
Price: $A503,888 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo petrol V8
Power: 449kW at 7500rpm
Torque: 760Nm at 3000-5250rpm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch
Fuel: 11.6L/100km
CO2: 265g/km
Safety rating: TBA
