CLICK AND COLLECT

Ferrari asked Matt Saunders to choose the ideal spec for an SF90 Spider and click 'order'. Now that car is ready to be collected from the dealer. Will it live up to expectations?

- Matt Saunders

Collecting your very own half-millionpound super-Ferrari ought to be an experience to savour, no matter who you are or how often you've done it before. But what, exactly, does that experience consist of? Presumably, you don't just collect the keys from the service desk as if it were a used Ford Fiesta, but how much more pomp and ceremony can there really be? How is the modern hypercar client treated? And can driving away at the end of it all onto Britain's road network in a car with 1000 metric horsepower and rolling charisma to die for still give you a motoring experience that feels worth the investment?

I discovered a few answers to these questions recently at Graypaul Ferrari Birmingham, where I went to collect 'our' Ferrari SF90 Spider. Don't worry, reader: you haven't missed a significant hike in Autocar's cover price. This was Ferrari's own press demonstration car, which we merely helped to order and equip late last year (Autocar, 19 January), and which arrived with Ferrari North Europe in Slough just a few weeks ago. And, for the record, I arrived at Graypaul's via three trains and an Uber, which can't be how many SF90 owners travel.

If you haven't followed our story so far, it all happened in a bid to ease the suffering of Ferrari's UK PR man, whose burden it is to bear to 'spec up' as many as four or five new press cars every year - and who, last year, had run out of ideas for his SF90 Spider. "We'll do it," I said - an offer that led to a morning of detailed vehicular contemplation in the company of Graypaul's Richard Thompson in the showroom's Atelier studio. There was much sitting in sample buckets seats, handling of steering wheels, stroking of leather, and paint samples. It was a very comprehensive process.