Everything you need to know about the new Ferrari 849 Testarossa

‘Testarossa’ is Italian for ‘redhead’. Your thoughts may wander to Gina Lollobrigida, or Botticelli’s Venus, but no. It’s used to describe the crimson cam covers on a Ferrari.

And the car you’re picturing right now is the Testarossa that came out in 1984, isn’t it? I know it well, because when I was ten I had one on my duvet cover. I wore out my bedroom carpet with a red Burago model. A generation of kids stared at its black-grilled derriere for hours playing Out Run at the arcades. The ultimate Hollywood car of the 1980s was the white Testarossa in Miami Vice. Its only competition came from Knight Rider, the Delorean in Back to the Future, and the A-Team van.

In fact, the Testarossa’s story started in 1956 (shortly after Marty McFly avoided a tricky Oedipal situation) when Enzo Ferrari applied this nomenclature to the ultra-rare 500 TR. The achingly pretty 250 Testa Rossa followed in 1957. The eighties car - a definition of the decade’s excess rendered in aluminium and steel – was known internally as the Type F110. Its cheese-grater side-strakes became nothing less than iconic. But while it’s a pop culture high point for the prancing horse, the fact is the F110 wasn’t actually a very good car. Speed-wise, a modern Range Rover would have it for breakfast. If you went too fast into a corner and lifted off the throttle mid-turn, your white linen suit trousers would require urgent dry cleaning.

The eighties and nineties are, of course, back in fashion. Perhaps that’s why, having been retired for 35 years, the Testarossa name has been resurrected. The car it’s attached to – Type F173M internally, but to the world the Ferrari 849 Testarossa – is not, however, a throwback. There’s no cheese-grater and, alas, no pop-up headlights. The name was decided upon after it had been designed, so this is more about marketing than anything. The ‘849’ refers to the number of cylinders (8) that are central to its four-litre engine and the displacement of each cylinder in cubic centimetres (49). That’s even geekier than the cam cover thing. I assumed it referred to horsepower, but what was I thinking? Output is, in fact, 1,036bhp! It’s a hybrid, so 819bhp comes from its petrol pumping heart, which also has the biggest turbochargers ever fitted to a Ferrari. The rest comes from its three electric motors.

The £407,617 849 coupé (or £442,467 for the Spider) tops Maranello’s production model range, though it sits below the £3.1 million limited-production F80 hypercar with which it shares some facial characteristics, namely the black Zorro mask that disguises the lights. The rear haunches have hints of another seven-figure modern Fezza, the SP3 Daytona. The twin-tail winglets are reminiscent of the extreme FXX-K – a track-only machine that literally looks like the F-word written down. The 849 is so brash you might confuse it with a Lamborghini.

Coloured Alcantara inserts keep the inside bright. A curved loop runs from the dashboard down to the central armrest, which delineates the driver and passenger zones and gives it an airy architectural quality. The transmission selection pad, rendered in brushed aluminium with three levers, apes the famous manual h-gate which Ferrari discontinued in 2014.

Unlike the 1984 F110, the 2026 Testarossa is ferociously fast and vice-like in its grip. Zero to 60mph takes under 2.3 seconds and doesn’t let up till the needle passes 205. It has a bewilderingly complicated suspension system which uses 6D sensors to read every input and direct torque expertly. Most of the time it’s rear-wheel-drive, but when needed it’ll power the fronts too. The all-new braking system uses something called ‘anti-jerk’, which might reject the lion’s share of Ferrari’s customers.

Lift-off oversteer is a distant thing of the past. Ferraris are actually very easy to drive, particularly if you ease yourself into the experience via the different traction settings on the steering wheel’s Manettino dial. Each mode – Wet, Sport, Race, CT (traction control) Off, ESC (electronic stability control) Off - trims away the hand-holding as you get more confident with the way the car rotates through corners, flexes its muscles via the loud pedal and tears through the gears. The ride, grip and feel engages every sinew, but you need a race track to get any kind of sense of what it’s capable of, unless you have a very good lawyer. On public roads, you’re never going to get close to the edge of its abilities. For that reason, you’ll have a lot more fun driving its smaller sister, the 296, which is just as clever and thrilling and almost half the price.

However, if you’re a Miami Vice fan, accept no substitute. Don some Wayfarers, slide up the sleeves of your jacket, and bust some drug traffickers. I’m told a new Miami Vice is in development, and Austin Butler and Michael B. Jordan are in talks for the Crockett and Tubbs roles. If you want to be the star of your own reboot, your Testarossa awaits.

Ferrari

849 Testarossa

£407,617

Enquire - £407,617