Drove Roma yesterday...

Great write-up and insight as usual, Ryan.

I really love the photos as well...You can see the shared lines with your F12. I completely agree it would look magnitudes better with some from of side gills ala 550/575.

 

Had our test drives today at the Austin event. My wife and I each had our own cars.

We both came away disappointed in some common and individual ways—even after making a deposit 4 weeks ago.

We are performance-oriented drivers (GT3 RS and X5M).

Felt the driving dynamics were odd. Acceleration was not linear. Long pedal travel felt laggy then burst of power. Easy to spin wheels. Upshifts to economy mode (7,8) by 35-40 mph. Wife had same experience. She also kept activating some of the hidden steering wheel controls while driving.

Finally, some of the materials (other than the leathers and alcantara) are a bit plasticky (turn signal buttons and tablet frame).

The acceleration was impressive but the chassis and tires don’t feel like they are up to the task. Felt like I needed to keep it pointed straight too much. Btw, not our first F car.

Will re-look the 992 Turbo S.


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I think at $150k this would have been an acceptable car for Ferrari owners. Sad to see actually.
As a few owners commented in other model threads....there is very little in the lineup that is exciting.

 

I sat in it at Salon Prive in the UK and entirely agree that it felt tight plus the screen set in the centre looks like an after-thought, & I just know it would irritate me!

Myself & other FOC members had seen several Roma’s at a Ferrari Racing meeting held at Silverstone a week before Salon Prive, & they had had mixed views. I was really disappointed by how fat it looked. I’d thought it was going to be narrow, based on the photos, but it’s another wide car. The grille is far from the delicate 1950’s styled grilles & the lower black mesh looks cheap & the two materials don’t integrate. Having the grille in body colour doesn’t help & it’s not elegant.

Having seen several Roma’s side by side, it is clear that it’s very colour sensitive! Black does nothing for it. The silver with carbon fibre sills looks ok, but the best is the blue. No red ones were shown. The Electro blue succeeds as it needs an exciting colour.

I’ll stick with my 1988 Mondial 3.2 for more space, easier to see out of, & a manual shift!

 

i just saw the roma next to an FF and 612 earlier at the dealership. The FF actually looks good compared to the Roma, literally didnt look like a ferrari. and the 612 is in a class of its own. its all ferrari.

grigio roma, pozzi FF, and TDF 612

 

I disagree. The 911 turbo series has no would. It's the best vacuum cleaner in the world though.

The mclaren while a missle I feel is clinical in everything it does and doesn't have a soul. It just has purpose.

 

Drove one today and can only echo many of the points already made. Car looks subtle and is very handsome, interior much better than I expected and could even fit my 10 year old son behind the passenger seat with sales guy in it. Not keen on how Ferrari tries to reinvent things that don’t need to be (like the start pad on the steering wheel). Setting of in Sport mode I was surprised at how lazily the engine responds and how quickly the Auto shifts up. Manual mode feels a bit sluggish too, so dynamically this car misses the point for me. On the other hand, the car is easily comfortable enough to drive as a daily and there were no sign of quality issues or any rattles/squeaks. For me it has gone a couple of steps too far towards GT cruiser and I think it could have easily played the GT part with a much sportier set-up and engine/box tune, so reckon there is still room for a Stradale version, or something like that. Coming from Porsche and Mercedes, I also think prices for Apple CarPlay, mediocre stereo system and some other bits need to be reconsidered to win over buyers. Glad I tried it, but overall not quite what I had hoped for.

 

Agree 100%. While the Roma may be an upgrade in all around performance, her aesthetics are not. The basket grill looks simply awful. They've taken away the iconic analog tach and red push button engine start and replaced them with an all electronic dash and touch pad on the steering wheel. Not trading in my Cali T for a Roma.

 

I also drove it, felt like a great GT cruiser, maybe if i was shopping for an AMG or Maserati i'd consider it, however big premium compared to those cars..the car sounded good, and responded fine, shifts weren't stellar, but again its just a GT car...very elegant, loved the interior, i do think the red start button should have stayed ...the tach is also digital but you can "change its color"

 

I drove one as well. I felt like it would be a good car to drive cross country in and would make a fun daily. I felt it was rather lacking in the weekend category. I might buy one in 10 years when they depreciate to next to nothing. For $300k? Not so much.

 

Only just seen this….your detailed assessment of the Roma was spot on. I traded my F12 for a Roma as I wanted a car I could use more easily, like trips to the south of France. In eight months I drove 5000 miles. As an 80+ for me it’s an old man’s Ferrari but it drives really sharply. I enjoyed the F12 for three years but I was somewhat disappointed after coming from a 458.

I noticed your reference here to the Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio…..I hope you still have yours. Mine has sat Image Unavailable, Please Login next to three Ferraris since 2016….458, F12 and now Roma. You know which is the best car!


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My F12 is in for some work but I’m also at a crossroads with it. 296 supposed to ship from Maranello any day now… but no status changes in the past month. I had toyed with the idea of keeping the F12 a while longer but it might be time to hand it off with everything fixed and fresh at 45k miles.

I ended up selling the Alfa after 4 years and 20k miles because I got a G63 too, then traded that on a CPO Bentayga after 18 very expensive months. But I really miss the Alfa, there’s really nothing similar with that razor sharp steering and laugh-out-loud torque.

 

Congratulations on the 296. I was lucky enough to be invited by Ferrari to drive that car over two days. It is brilliant, probably the best car they have at the moment, but it didn’t fit our needs and also too expensive. My F12 had only 12,000 miles and I got back what I paid for it at the beginning of Covid in 2020. It would certainly have been a good investment provided I kept it in the garage. We will use the Roma for long trips and I intend to keep the Alfa….it’s now in its eighth year with 45,000 miles and no issues.


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