Think of a set of performance criteria that a modern supercar should meet in the late 2000s and it’s likley you would have drawn up a list of performance figures that all but mirrored those of the Ferrari 458 Italia.
Its 0-60mph time started with a three, its top speed started with a two and, on the way, it passed 100mph in around 7sec. The standing quarter mile was covered in less than 12sec and breezed past 150mph before a standing kilometre was out.
More impressive than the numbers themselves, though, was the way with which the Ferrari 458 went about setting them. Not too many years ago, extracting 562bhp from a naturally aspirated 4.5-litre engine – some 125bhp per litre – would have produced an undriveable, snarling fire-breather of a powerplant. Not too many years before that, it would never have happened in a road car at all.
So it was a testament to advances in production, materials, injection and electronic technology that the 458 happily spun into life without drama and, as early as 3000rpm, was pulling with as much torque as the outgoing Ferrari F430 gave in total – and this was despite a redline of 9000rpm.
Most remarkable of all, perhaps, was the speed with which the 458 built its revs. There was no hang, no lag. You asked of the throttle and the engine delivered in an utterly predictable, linear fashion.
Ferrari was and old hand at tuning the sound of a flat-plane cranked V8 so that it sounded like more than just two four-pots screwed together, and thw 458’s engine was no exception. This area of ltaly tuned induction and exhaust notes like nowhere else on the planet. The 458 was an aural as well as a technical triumph.
As with the California, the 458’s power was directed to its wheels via a dual-clutch transmission that, some might say (although not us), diluted the thrill of a single-clutch robotised manual. The efficiency with which it went about swapping cogs came with no loss of mechanical feel.
The 458, like all Ferraris at the time, came as standard with carbon-ceramic brakes capable of stopping it repeatedly, from high speed, in no time at all.