Flash Converters

摘要

The California gains a new turbo V8 but has it retained its Ferrari soul? Nic Cackett pits it against its rivals to find out. Of all the colourful phrases tossed around our office like wedding confetti, none is treated with greater reverence than 'fitness for purpose'. It is the bedrock on which any Autocar verdict is built, the reason we can gush convincingly about a people-carrier one week and a three-wheeler the next, and easily the best justification for lending us your credence every week. Manufacturers like it, too. They measure it with micrometers. They devote small armies to the business of probing, canvassing, questioning and comparing. They agonise over positioning with the sensitivity of a Mars orbiter mission planner. Their failures tend to play out similarly, too - no visible mushroom cloud, just a shoulder-shrug fizzle of disappointment. The previous Ferrari California could be characterised thusly. It was a smorgasbord of brand firsts - first fully retractable hard-top, first dual-clutch automatic gearbox, first front-mounted V8 - but it came across as only a middling effort, probably made to look softer than it was by the outgoing 430 Scuderia and incoming 458, both hewn in purpose like carbon-ceramic arrowheads.