IMAGINE climbing into your TV and playing the Sega classic Out Run for real.
Red open-top Ferrari.
Passing Breeze.
Coconut Beach.
Blonde in the passenger seat.
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Well, this is the closest I’ve experienced to it . . . minus the mistress, sadly.
This is the new and jaw-droppingly beautiful Ferrari Roma Spider.
Much like the jaw- droppingly beautiful Roma, just with a more expensive haircut.
Roof up, it’s everything a Ferrari should be — loud, fast, exhilarating, totally gorgeous.
Roof down, the needle moves to 12.
It’s louder.
It feels faster.
It’s more exhilarating than skydiving in the dark.
There’s all sorts of F1 witchcraft here
Now let’s pretend we’re loaded and can kill a year waiting for one.
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The Roma Spider kind of replaces the Portofino M, like the Portofino M kind of replaced the California T.
It costs £210k, which is £27k more than a regular Roma.
By the time you’ve spent a day or two on the configurator you know it’s going to be way more than that.
You get the same mechanical spec as a Roma, the same cocooned cockpit with the merest gesture of a set of back seats, the same everything.
Just a deeper sun tan.
The engine is a walloping 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8 feeding 620 horses to the rears.
Find an open road, flick the red F1-style switch on the steering wheel to Sport mode, select “bumpy road” suspension, and hold on tight.
Because you’re about to punch a very big hole in the horizon. It’s phenomenal fun — and one of the best singers on the road.
Now I’m not going to bore you trying to explain Ferrari’s Side Slip Control system version 6.0 or the Ferrari Dynamic Enhancer, which adjusts the hydraulic brake pressure to all four wheels.
Let’s just say there’s all sorts of F1 witchcraft going on underneath you to maximise cornering grip and keep things shiny side up.
You can’t have a whoopsie in this car and just start a new game like Sega Out Run.
But drive it sensibly and it’s a total pussycat, with eight speeds for motorway cruising.
Although you’d never do that of course.
Go on a motorway, I mean.
You’d always take the long way home.
The cockpit has THREE screens.
One for the driver, one for the co-driver to fix the music and satnav — and see how fast you’re going — and a central touchscreen that talks to your phone.
The big flappy paddles and RPM lights on the steering wheel when you floor it are hugely satisfying.
I’ll finish by saying Ferrari is rightly proud of the five-layer fabric roof.
Not only is the wind and road noise impressively low, the silhouette is almost identical to the coupe.
Which is a neat trick.
Other expensive cabrios suffer from what I like to call ballooning.
This one doesn’t.
The coloured denim-effect finish looks ace, too.
It’s impossible to be glum when driving a Ferrari — especially a red one, roof down by the coast.
It’s like a real-life arcade game.
