It’s not often Ferrari shows an all-new car, and today is not one of those days. Instead the Italian automaker has pulled the wraps off the Ferrari Roma Spider. This is, as you may have guessed, a drop-top version of the beautiful Roma Coupe.

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Going Back

The Ferrari Roma Spider is the first front-engined car in 54 years to feature a folding soft-top. The last was the 1969 365 GTS4. The Portofino, which was also a front-engined convertible, featured a folding hard top. 

Ferrari chose to go back to the older option as it kept the mass increase down (to just 84 kg) and yields a much larger and usable boot. Dry mass of the Spider is quoted as 1 556 kg. Incidentally, the soft top deploys in just 13,5 seconds and can be actioned at speeds of up to 60 km/h.

Twin-turbo V8

The sun-seeker has the same 3,9-litre V8 force fed by twin-turbochargers. An eight-speed dual-clutch transmission is connected exclusively to the rear axle. It has an unchanged 456 kW of power between 5 750 and 7 500 r/min along with peak torque of 760 N.m. The Ferrari Roma Spider is said to be as quick as the Coupe taking an identical 3,4 seconds from standstill to 100 km/h. The  0-200 km/h sprint takes a fractionally slower 9,7. The top speed of the Spider is quoted as over 320 km/h.