Ferrari Celebrates its 50th Drop-Top Model With The 488 Pista Spider

TopSpeed

By Kirby Garlitos

Published Aug 27, 2018

The convertible version of the 488 Pista turned a lot of heads at Pebble Beach

Ferrari has unveiled its 50th drop-top model in the company’s history, called the Ferrari 488 Pista Spider. Essentially a convertible version of the 488 Pista, the Pista Spider packs all the potency of its coupé counterpart and wraps it up in a mesmerizing road-legal drop-top supercar. Ferrari hasn’t said how much the 488 Pista Spider will cost but expect it to be more expensive than the $350,000 488 Pista.

As the newest model to come out of Ferrari’s new Special Series collection, the 488 Pista Spider isn’t your typical Ferrari. It also happens to be the 50th drop-top model Ferrari has built in its 70-year history. That’s a distinction no other drop-top Prancing Horse model will ever have.

The supercar lived up to its status when Ferrari unveiled it at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Dressed in a predominantly white paint finish with matching blue racing stripes running the length of the car, the 488 Pista Spider definitely looks the part of a Special Series model. The same two-color treatment also appears in the interior.

The 488 Pista Spider’s biggest and most important feature, though, is its beating heart: a 3.9-liter, twin-turbo, V-8 engine that was recently named the Best Engine in the world for the third straight year at the 2018 International Engine of the Year Awards. The V-8’s ability to produce 710 horsepower is the attention-grabbing highlight of the supercar, but there’s more to the 488 Pista Spider’s V-8 unit than its incredible power. Torque figures weren’t announced, but Ferrari indicated that torque figures increase at all engine speeds, ensuring that the 488 Pista Spider can accelerate unimpeded until it hits the red line. The engine noise that comes out of that is more intoxicating now that you can actually hear it with the open-top roof setup of the supercar. Glorious, Italians!

If there is one issue to the 488 Pista Spider, it’s the car’s weight. In standard form, the drop-top is around 200 pounds heavier than the 488 Pista, and that’s after Ferrari removed the interior carpets and replaced them with patterned aluminum footplates. Even the driver’s door handle is less luxurious than it used to be. It’s just a strap, now.

Future owners can opt to cut more weight off the car by signing up to get the optional one-piece carbon fiber wheels. These wheels are 20 percent lighter than the standard 20-inch diamond-finish alloy wheels.

Still, even if the 488 Pista Spider is heavier than its coupe counterpart, nothing’s stopping it from accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds before climaxing at 211 mph. Regardless of its weight, the Ferrari 488 Spider is still one heck of a supercar that has earned its place in the annals of Ferrari lore as the company’s 50th drop-top model.

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