Just a week before its official debut at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show in Germany, Ferrari held a special event in its home town of Maranello in Italy to present its latest creation to the members of the press.
You’re lucky because GrayTT, a TeamSpeed member was present at the event and snapped some photos as well as a video of a selection of 458 Italia Spiders finished in various colors including the traditional red, yellow, black and what looks like a dark plum finish.
The world’s first mid-engined car with a retractable hard-top, the new Ferrari 458 Italia Spider is powered by a naturally-aspirated, direct-injection 4.5 liter V8. The new model, comes with the same dual cluth F1 style transmission through the E-Diff, itself integrated with the F1-Trac traction control and ABS.
The figures tell us that the extra weight of 50kg adds a tenths to the 0-100km/h time, taking it to 3.4 seconds. Top speed drops from 325km/h to 320km/h being Ferrari’s fastest-ever convertible.
According to the Italian car maker, certain features like the accelerator pedal mapping and the damping of the multilink suspension have been re-tuned in order to assure maximum pleasure and sportiness when driving with the top down.
Now comes the interesting part: the roof with a clever folding aluminium hard top. Despite the fact that none of the pictures released show the car with its roof in place, we know that it’s a two-piece system that’s claimed to be 25kg lighter than a conventional soft top, and which (when folded) is stowed in front of the Spider’s engine bay.
So far no details about pricing were released, but stay tuned because the brand new 2012 Ferrari 458 Spider will make its official debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show 2011.
Source: TeamSpeed
