On Thursday, Ferrari revealed the Roma Spider as its newest convertible car. It is the replacement for their entry-level droptop, the Portofino M, and it has a soft-top roof. This type of roof design hasn’t been used on a front-engine Ferrari since long ago – about fifty years! A car from that time inspired designers when making the Roma Spider.
The fabric roof of the car can be opened or closed in 13.5 seconds, even while driving at speeds up to 37 mph. Ferrari chose this fabric roof instead of the heftier retractable hardtop because it allows for more space in the trunk when it is folded down. With the roof raised, there’s around nine cubic feet of storage. There’s also an extra opening between the back seats, which can let you fit longer items inside your car.
To fit in the new roof, the designers changed the style of the Roma coupe by adding a colored band along the bottom of its rear part and joining it to the active spoiler made from carbon fiber. They also put in a special wind-blocker behind the back seats. This was needed so that wind doesn’t get into the cabin.
The car was modified to make up for not having a solid roof. This included making the sides stronger, like on the Portofino M car, and increasing the weight by about 185 pounds, bringing it to 3,430 pounds in total.
This convertible sports car is quite heavy, but it has a super strong engine to make up for it. The engine is a twin-turbo 3.9-liter V-8 that can produce 612 horsepower and 561 lb.-ft. of torque. It’s linked to an 8-speed automatic gearbox, allowing the car to zoom from 0 to 62 mph in just 3.4 seconds, and reach speeds beyond 199 mph!
The Ferrari Roma comes with many standard features like seats that can be heated and adjusted 18 ways, support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and lots of screens – one on the instrument cluster, one for the infotainment system, and an extra screen that can be added in front of the passenger seat. There’s also a wheel with five settings including a Race mode. The cost of the car has not been announced yet but you should expect to pay about $250,000 for it.
We don’t yet know when this product will be available in the United States.