Despite looking a heck of a lot like the 458 Italia, Ferrari->ke252 claims the 2016 488 GTB is 85 percent new. It shares some body panels, chassis components and hard points with the old car, but with its new turbocharged V8, it’s probably easiest to view the 488 as the spiritual successor to the F40.->ke434 Going by these initial impressions, courtesy of Chris Harris, it lives up to the legend. This thing is massively fast. With 659 horsepower on tap, it’s nearly two seconds faster around Ferrari’s Fiorano test track than an Enzo->ke389, and 0-60 comes in three seconds dead.

Before letting Harris loose in the 488, incredibly casual yet incredibly quick Ferrari test driver Raffaele de Simone takes us out for a few laps around Fiorano to show us what’s new. It sounds great, even for a turbocharged engine. Power delivery is also sharper and more linear, with an additional dose of torque arriving in the middle of the rev range.

After coming to grips with the new speed, Harris executes a few of his trademark smoky drifts and then takes the 488 out on the country roads around Maranello. You really need a track to extract the most from a car as fast as this, but it’s also incredibly usable on the road, as a modern Ferrari should be. Thanks to its adaptive dampers (from the 458 Speciale) and comfortable cabin, you could easily use it as a daily driver. But the 488 GTB isn’t a car for commuting; it’s a car for driving really stinking fast, which it seems to be very good at.

2016 Ferrari 488 GTB

Read our full review here.