MARANELLO RISING

The Roma GT is sublime and the F8 Tributo the benchmark mid-engined supercar. Yet the V6 hybrid 296 GTB raises the bar yet again

- Georg Kacher

QUITE FRANKLY, THE NOISE GIVES you the creeps. This engine, an all-new V6 that shares nothing but Maranello's cutting-edge combustion know-how with any other Ferrari motor, sounds unlike anything else. Imagine, if you can, a jam session in which Luciano Pavarotti, Robert Plant, and Adele lay vocals over brutal, skull-thumping techno composed by Verdi.

At idle it is restless, impatient, eager. And promising. Blip the throttle with the transmission in neutral and the so-called “hot tube” will pump pulses of aural magic into the cabin. From the outside, though, an otherworldly high-frequency treble prevails. Then, as you summon first gear via what is surely the longest shift paddle in Ferrari history, all those peripheral whizzings, rumblings, and hissings coalesce into a solid, billowing, and, at times, unnerving high note.

What happens next depends largely on the selected drive mode. In Hybrid, the combustion noises may momentarily give way to fully electric near-silence. More surprised than convinced, you tend to then instinctively add a dozen degrees of throttle angle... And then you are back into the eye of that raging sonic storm-and a surreal surge of acceleration as if the world is falling into a little black hole of the 296 GTB's own making.

The new engine is “only” a 2,992-cc six. But shift your thinking. In the old world, those were unimpressive numbers. But this is 2022, this a Ferrari internal-combustion engine and, in truth, this V6 is more vocal, more potent, and more extreme than most of the V8s and V12s that have served in Ferrari's cavalli rampanti.