I had a chance to test drive the Ferrari Roma. I must say the car is heavily underrated. Overall feels and drives much faster than the Portofino. Stability of the car feels much better, perhaps the weight + lower center of gravity. Also stability control is very quick to react and with exactly the right amount without killing the joy of the drive. Steering is more precise and the car handles very well. While driving, I hit the limiter at about 305 kmh in gear 7. I was a bit disappointed that this was the max the car can do. Then I noticed that there is an 8th gear : -) Didn't v-max it though. Things i did not like: - Reverse: The steering blocks the camera which is annoying - Touch buttons, not being able to adjust e.g. mirrors without looking at them: I'm not happy about this trend. - Steering wheel controls: Previously adjusting volume was so easy using buttons behind the steering, now my finger touches everytime to the back of left/right signals. I hated it. - Emotionwise: No red physical start button. What were they thinking? - Cruise control: I couldn't find a way to change the adaptive cruise control distance. Then while trying to find, cruise control buttons disappeared and did not come back. i couldn't switch them back on whole trip. wtf? - Entertainment screen: needs heavy interface redo. Not very user friendly, it was difficult to find many things. Overall, the car is much better than I thought. I'm quite impressed. When cabrio is not a requirement, I'd prefer Ferrari Roma any day over Portofino. Image Unavailable, Please Login
305 kmh!!! Now that's a test drive! My test drive was 20 min. of freeway driving in traffic. But based on my limited drive I agree with you that the car has been underrated by several posters on FChat. Although all the You Tube reviewers have given favorable reviews, some very positive. I know they may not want to offend Ferrari and lose future chances at early reviews. But still they seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the car. I agree on the techno controls being an issue This may have been a mistake. One would need multiple days in the car to see if they became easier to use with familiarity. Did you notice any excessive slip from the rear tires under acceleration? I was surprised by the rear end wiggle I got shifting from 2nd to 3rd at about 3/4 throttle. It was in sport and manual. A couple of You Tube reviewers made comments on this as well. I think the rear tires are too small (285) for the amount of torque.
Yes a lot of slips with 2nd and 3rd gear (and 4th) but that is mainly because of power and it was handled very well with the esc/traction control even on sport mode during my test. I had similar experience also with F8. These new generation of cars are simply too powerful. However, they are fun and very well under control. In F8 with ESC off I spinned the car 3-4 times after full throttle in second gear and that was a bit scary, glad the car didnt hit anything. About Roma: it is a great car. I did not mention but the braking also felt very robust. did couple of stops from 300 kmh to 80 kmh and 200-0. The car is every bit a great ferrari. And I'm not a blogger/vlogger so I'm writing this without any bias.
Thanks for the feedback. I think Ferrari should have gone to a 305 tire given the power-to-weight ratio. The 458 has similar ratio and it has 305's in the rear.
Demo cars have beta software. Didn’t even have the US mph scale for speed! Only kmph! Lots of little things didn’t work or were not robust. Directional signal switches will take some getting used to. Opposite operation of what is in 458. I’d bet the traction control sw wasn’t ready either. But it was still an impressive ride! SV
The 458 Italia wears 295s at the rear.Its only the Speciale that has the 305s. I noticed an unusual movement from the rear while accelerating hard when i drove the Roma. It didn't exactly fill me with confidence to push the car hard on narrow heavily traffic roads. I attribute this anomaly down to the fact it was a pre-production car with much need for further chassis fine tuning before full production starts. I agree it needs wider tyres than 285s to cope with the traction.
I'm not sure changing to wider tires would make any significant improvement. Changing to more sticky tires could work perhaps better. It is a beautiful and elegant coupe which comes with a lot of power. 620 HP 760 nm torque is quite crazy.
Actually increasing the size of the rear tires contact patch is the only meaningful change you can make to a street car to increase tire traction under hard acceleration. Almost all high-performance cars run 305 or great rear tires. Given the torque spec, the Roma should have 11 in. wide wheels and 305 width tires. Perhaps the demo cars had a problem with the E-diff software. If so, poor marketing decision to allow them to be tested by prospective purchasers.
Same here and I was shocked. I was at full throttle and it wiggled several times on my road trip. While I liked it I could see Ferrari trying to dial that out.
I just came back from an extensive drive test in the Roma, i wanted to see if i'd consider trading my DB11 for it, well, NOT A CHANCE, very disappointing, body styling kinda plain, seats barely comfortable and fairly rough ride even in comfort mode, sure its a few 10ths of a second faster than DB11 but thats all, DB11 blows it out on looks in and out. while in the passenger seat, with seat all the way back i found the dash still too close, liked the sound track and dual clutch, but with the Quicksilver exhaust upgrade on my Aston mine sounds better, either way i'm not totally bashing it, just disappointed, afterwards i could help but think, "I just drove the poor mans Ferrari" P>S>: as many have said red color is not good with Roma, there was a rosso corso there, just terrible!
