Portofino Launch and picture thread

I want! glad I sold my T when I did. Love the look of this.

 

That's the difference with hood up or down. Up = 3 cases; down = 2.

 

That is a LdM quote ... not my words yet I agree more or less. Living in LA I see thousands, even millions of cars of every type, and this car looks to be leaning American. Especially those wheels. Needs a better wheel than either one offered. Being a corporation changes the culture. 10% shares, or 15%, it's no matter. Like all corps, annual growth is now God at Ferrari, not Ferrari styling and masterfully Italian "do not care" design freedom.

Of course there are "some similarities". Look, FF is for some an ugly duckling yet screams the boldness and uniqueness of Ferrari (in the NA 12 with 4 seats). Bold and original and yet not trying too hard to please people counts a lot in my book, as an artist who deals with aesthetics all day. The 458, S, SA and F12 are all magnificent drawings. Integration on all sides. Not hard to build out. PF was both bold and restrained in it's lines at that peak era, yet never swinging for the fences or appearing to be "trying too hard" which is the death of all timelessness in art. Swinging for the gallery, more like it ... the art gallery .... masculine and feminine in the right balance ... timeless and aggressive in the right balance ... aero with Ferrari cues in the right balance. They were not drawing from being pushed to sell more cars, they were asked to design instant classics within the tradition.

The TDF is a drawing by young people, or a young team, trying very hard to make a splash, and that aesthetic works perfectly for the fun muscle car extravagance of a true GT race car that sure, also has number plates. It's a teenagers F12. Which is very PF still. 488 has the turbos and the same LED rears on the Portofino so it's a compromise there, but in the right build a 488 can be beautiful. I'm just not sold on the turbo. Car needs to be over 70mph a lot to make sense, else you're in low RPMs in traffic. But it's ok as a design, not a train wreck at all, not trying too hard like the later drawings. A little less refined than the 458, with shall we say the "globs of shapes" here and there, but still ok. Would be happy to have one around.

Lusso, 812 and now Portofino (a very elegant name at least) look to be drawn by marketing people and a corporate culture pushing growth and relying more on test marketing. The same clunky wheel is now the norm. The carefree originality to the lines is lacking (evidence by the plagiarism of a post here to define the Portofino lifted from a Cali T review), They are lacking the creativity, the restraint, and the care free sense of the tradition. These cars look new, yet not like instant classics. New cars are mostly about being exciting so more people will buy them. That's the aim. Yet the odd part is that Ferrari was never really hurting for new car customers. And is not now. New money globally plus established clients are happy to buy them annually at the rate of under 10k a year. So why the need to grow? RACE? Serg-i-ego? Both? I don't get it. Why ruin a good thing, by making cars that are more disposable. This won't happen short term, sales will be good. Yet in 10 years, chickens and roosting and all that.

There is currently an ambition more akin to a watered down Lambo + Camaro aesthetic than a modernized Ferrari in these new drawings. The F12 vs. the Portofino only seems the same if you don't see the inside of the drawing. The subtleties lost, gone is the F12s simplicity and integrity from section to section. (I was never bothered by the rear end, seems like a weirdly sexist thing to see and hate on)

Art school trick, get an image of both, and squint at them. There are no bad angles on the F12, or the 458, which are obviously better than the FF as they are 2 door and no hatch. The Cali had the weird BUT BOLD rear end pipes. It's a Maserati, doesn't count. The Cali T has the curves and grille of a Ferrari. Now the grilles are all plastic and super aggressive and every angle is a box of chocolates. That's what we call "trying too hard".

 

Thanks for sharing the pics, I really like this profile shot of the car but that rear exhaust protruding just throws me off for some reason - maybe in person its better managed.

 

On a total side note, has anyone else noticed how the 488 in the background of that photo looks like a 288 GTO?! With its rear half hidden, it almost looks like a modern interpretation of one.

 

I took it from a youtube camera...now I like this. so clean...although the front still looks miata to me. I think i need to stay away from red. Matt grigio silverstone may work magic.

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Ok, I agree with this one.

 

Agree. That may be the best looking color on the Portofino that I've seen so far...T

 

Agreed. Very hard to package all that and still have it look stunning

 

The more I see the profile like this, the more I'm getting convinced.
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It does have several details from the J50 which I had said I wanted it to look like, including that diagonal beltline and the side sill area. I also like that the roofline now goes back farther towards the tail. The shape is more fastback than the Cali T.

 

Ok. The more I look at this the more I like it. It's a lot more "macho" than the T and some of the design elements are really good, and some not so much. What I love the the roof line (yellow). They way it sweeps back is just lovely and hard to do in any convertible. The side contours (blue) are nice and break up the side profile to the eye.

What I am unsure about is that rear piece (yellow). Maybe seeing it in the flesh might make me like it more.

 

I like the Portofino a great deal and I've never been a fan of the California, I just didn't like the styling. My wife was looking over my shoulder as I was scrolling through some of the press shots and asked me what it was as it looks lovely, and she's not the slightest bit interested in cars.

Our current open top is a Mercedes SL (drawn to it because of the hard top) but this new Ferrari will be it's replacement.

They got this really right this time.

 

Downside up.
The 'iceman bops edition' > black body with a silver roof. Done long before the dual tone 599 GTO arrived...

 

Thank you

 

Nice write-up BMan, I understand your points and I guess like you said we will wait to see how this all plays out. One of the richest women I know has a lady hand wash her expensive Italian/French clothing, refusing to dry clean. I was shocked and asked why, she explained the mastery of workmanship that has gone into some of her hand picked pieces and how it was all art to her and that needed to be treated as delicately as possible. Kind of reminds me of your post a little...

 

Or as my girlfriend puts it, in the most simple terms:

"that's not cute, it's too Ford Mustang, and those triangles on the side are weird ... and why is the plastic sticking out at the back? Plastic is cheap"



Nero Daytona will be beautiful on this car. Anything dark that hides the extreme angles and plastics.

 

Makes no sense to me to spend that kind of money on a car and feel compelled to order it in a dark color because you feel the need to hide "plastics and extreme angles".
The car should be aesthetic to the point of wanting to show off all its lines and dimensions not hide them. Nothing wrong with a dark color but not for that reason.

 

I have yet to see it in black except in my head, but it will make sense to you when you see it in person. It will make things more subtle that are trying too hard.

Everything matters in art, from every angle ... and a contrast of black on say a white 911, or a white 458 is very different from the contrast here with all the black plastics REALLY accentuating the aggressive shapes.

 

https://instagram.com/p/BZEfnu_llu9/
https://instagram.com/p/BY_e5wolpmO/

 

Brian - Totally agree with what you are saying about it possibly looking better in black. But what if someone doesn't like black cars ( upkeep, swirls, nicks etc ) ? On principle it irks me that one would have to compensate for deficiencies in a brand new car design by picking one specific color to hide its drawbacks.

 

I don't know what color I will get but I will pass on the 812 cannot get comfortable with the rear end (looks like an elephant sat on it )..
in person I found it no more attractive. But the portofino is beautiful in my eyes. I had two Californias and liked them both truthfully I found especially the 2013 with Hs to be the most comfortable of the 10 or so Ferraris I have owned .... I am not in a big hurry but I will order one just can't find a bad angle and now with enough power.....might just be perfect....

 

I've not seen the Portofino in person and that's a big limitation, however from the pictures I've already seen I also fancy the lighter colors because they seem to suit very well this new model.