Not good. I’ve selected first in the 275 GTS’s open gate and tried to pull away but the car won’t budge. Back into neutral, then into gear again: build revs, release clutch… Still nothing.
I feel the car’s transmission loading but its handsome Borranis will not rotate one inch. Must be something I’ve done, but I replay in my mind the drive we’ve just had – a steady 60mph cruise on an open A-road, with very little need to brake or even change gear – and it doesn’t equate.
A quick call to the GTS’s keeper, though, and, 20 minutes later, utter relief: when I’d backed into this pub car park to get my bearings, the rear brake pads, which have a habit of expanding when warm, locked onto their discs, rendering the car immobile.
While I’d been waiting they’d cooled, and £1.5 million worth of classic Ferrari was once again good to go.
I dare say that such a faux pas would never beset the Roma Spider that has joined us today. We’ve brought together these two Ferraris – the 275 from 1964, the open Roma launched in the UK this year – because between them they bookend a 60-year period during which Maranello produced some of its most memorable front-engined drop-top cars.
But this coming together marks more than just a convenient anniversary. Like the 275 did back in its day, the Roma Spider has moved the game on substantially from its predecessor, in terms of both design and technology.
That car, the Portofino M, could trace its roots back to the 2008 California via the 2014 California T. But the Roma Spider reintroduces something absent on a Ferrari since the 1969 365 GTS/4 ‘Daytona Spider’: a fabric roof.
Before I’m corrected, yes, the 550 Maranello-based Barchetta from 2000 had one too, but it was a mere get-you-home-in-the-wet appendage that would have done Heath Robinson proud.
The Roma Spider’s, however, is a proper eight-layered item, electrically raised and lowered with balletic precision in 13.5sec at speeds of up to 37mph.
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Quite agree Anton.
Most modern Ferrari's leave me cold....the Roma one of the better designs of late.
But the 275GTS is just lovely. II would pick this over the Roma in a heartbeat. From an era when elegance was seemingly 'a given', mostly through the auspices of Pininfarina.
In my humble opinion the 330 GTS is even prettier, and the GTC better still. I am not the hugest fan of drophead's in general.