Ferrari Roma Spider road test: Drop-top model offers speed, style and sportiness

Once familiarised with the light and highly sensitive steering and brake pedal, there's plenty of fun to be found

The Ferrari Roma Spider is available now in the UAE, with prices starting at Dh1.05 million ($286,000). Photo: Ferrari

Ferrari has greatly expanded the breadth of its model line-up with the mainstream range now comprising no fewer than nine offerings – including the upcoming 12Cilindri in coupe and Spider formats.

While the ballistic SF90 rounds out the top end, the biggest chunk of sales volume comes from the entry-level Roma, which has recently been supplemented by a drop-top Spider variant.

Essentially replacing the Portofino M, the Roma Spider differs markedly from the former in that it eschews a folding hardtop for a traditional fabric roof.

Hardcore performance enthusiasts are sometimes dismissive of roofless cars – as the absence of a fixed roof means they sacrifice some degree of torsional stiffness – but it would be a mistake to pigeonhole the Roma Spider as a pretentious pose-mobile that ditches dynamism in favour of a wishy-washy lifestyle focus.

In most respects, the Roma Spider effortlessly fulfils the dual facets of being a relaxed grand tourer and hardcore corner carver. Slot the manettino knob (drive mode selector) in Comfort mode and the Roma Spider lopes along country roads and highways with a decent level of refinement.

Even with the top down it’s possible to have a non-shouty conversation with a passenger at speeds of up to 120kph. This is especially true when activating the wind deflector, which is a fold-out panel that deploys at the press of a button, covering the space over the rear seats to reduce turbulence in the cabin.

That said, the cosseting experience is marred somewhat by jiggly ride quality over rough surfaces and there’s also a noticeable driveline shunt (a slight clunking sensation) when using the accelerator in stop-start traffic.

Another gripe is that the eight-speed dual-clutch transmission is overeager to shift up to high ratios in the chase for fuel economy. It even happens in Sport mode. Of course, I can easily take matters into my own hands by working the elongated carbon-fibre gearshift paddles, which I do and they have a pleasing tactility to them.

I don't have the opportunity to give the Roma Spider a sustained flogging across winding roads, but the few corners that present themselves showcase a level of tautness that’s hard to find in a front-engine roadster.

The drop-top Ferrari has a planted feel, although the light and highly sensitive steering and brake pedal take me a brief period of familiarisation to get completely in tune with the car.

The 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8 – which thumps out 620hp and 760Nm – has vast reserves of low and mid-range oomph that I deploy to waft past slow-moving cars, yet it’s also happy to zing its way up to its 7,500rpm redline.

The V8’s soundtrack has a decently sporting edge to it, although lacking the sheer drama and melodious timbre of Ferrari’s epic V12 motors.

With less than 1.7 tonnes to shift with all fluids on board, the Roma Spider nails down some eye-opening stats for a topless grand tourer. It sprints from 0 to 100kph in 3.4 seconds, flashes past 200kph in 9.7 seconds and can hit 320kph flat out.

There’s plenty of artistry on show in the Roma Spider’s cabin. The twin-cockpit layout not only looks good, but also creates a clear demarcation between the driver’s domain and the front passenger’s space.

That said, there’s a reason Ferrari refers to this car as a “2+” rather than a 2+2 as the rear seats are of the token variety. They’re OK for accommodating small children or tossing a backpack, briefcase or shopping bags into, but that’s about it.

Boot capacity is a modest but still usable 255 litres with the roof up – 17 litres less than what the Roma coupe can stash in the rear – but to lower the roof, a divider must be put down, which eats into boot space.

As with the coupe, the haptic buttons on the steering wheel don’t function very well and the menus for the infotainment system and instrument gauge cluster display are anything but intuitive. Hopefully, this is an area that Ferrari addresses in its next-gen models.

All in all, the Roma Spider serves up an enticing blend of pace, panache and day-to-day performance, with only Aston Martin’s DB12 Volante and Porsche’s 911 Turbo S Cabriolet offering comparable roofless thrills in the Dh1 million range.