RAISING THE ROOF

Only months after driving Ferrari’s 296 GTB hybrid supercar, Prestige gets the opportunity to test its brand-new topless sibling in Italy and we're still blown away by the experience.

- JON WALL

It's lunchtime at Forte dei Marmi, a posh resort on Italy's Tuscan riviera, and the place is almost deserted. The autumnal Mediterranean weather is sunny and warm, yet of the crowds who'd thronged here just weeks ago, sunning and playing on the long beach edging the shimmering Ligurian Sea,

filling the bars and restaurants, and splashing their cash in the luxury boutiques that stand cheek-by-jowl in the town centre, there's no sign. Occasionally a lone jogger, cyclist or motor car makes its way along the wide road that runs parallel to the shore; otherwise, silence reigns as this emptying seaside town begins boarding up for the winter.

There is, however, one hive of activity in these somnolent environs, and that surrounds a clutch of identical blue cars parked by the side of the road. These aren't just any automobiles: they're a line-up of Ferrari's newest PHEV supercars, the 296 GTS, which was announced only weeks ago.

Along with five other writers from Asia, I have the good fortune to be driving one of them back towards the factory in Maranello on a 280km route that starts out along busy stretches of autostrada before taking us on to the tortuous roads that snake up and down the Apennine mountains. Being in sole charge of a brand-new machine such as this is an enticing and thrilling prospect, though as the combination of petrol and electric power places almost 820bhp beneath my right foot, that anticipation is inevitably tinged with apprehension, too.

Let's backtrack for a moment. Regular readers of Prestige may remember we wrote about the 296 GTB only a couple of months ago, when we proclaimed it the best supercar in the world. Although there's great similarity between it and the car I'm driving today, this new GTS has one significant difference. The "S" in the name signifies it's a "spider" - in other words, the roof comes off- and for many ferraristi, a drop-top is the brand's ultimate road-going expression.