Ferrari California

Don’t let anyone tell you the Ferrari California isn’t a real Ferrari. I haven’t actually heard anyone saying that, at least not since it revamped the California into the California T, but it looks like art and sounds like music, as any creation from that boot-shaped peninsula should. I also saved a life while the car was under my command. Maybe should I have led with that?

OK, so I might have saved a young woman’s life. I never saw her again. Here’s what happened.

I was heading home in the Ferrari after my pathetic, southeastern Michigan excuse for a drive loop when I saw Jeep taillights about a quarter-mile ahead. The lights drifted right, then hard left, then hard right before they flew down an embankment off the side of the road. I was the only one out there, so I had to stop.

With the top down, I whipped the California into an apartment complex and ran over to find the Jeep flipped on its side, and crashed into a tree. The 40-mph speed-limit sign was bent in a way that looked like the Jeep drove up it as it careened off the road. Another woman arrived on the scene and we found a young blonde girl, dazed but not bloody, trapped in the non-running Jeep. We started yelling at her to open the door, but she must have unbuckled her seatbelt and fallen to the passenger side, which was on the ground, and couldn’t reach the lock button. Plus, the 911 operator told us not to move her if she seemed conscious and stable.

The police finally arrived and got her out of the car, woozy but in one piece, and then came over to me looking for answers. I was stunned at how appreciative they were for staying around. They said most people don’t do that, which was surprising. I noted that I didn’t see any other cars on the road and that it looked like she drifted, tried to recover and failed before going off the road. Then they asked me what I was doing.

“I was about a quarter-mile behind her when it happened, and I pulled off in that apartment complex,” I said as I pointed.

“You’re in the … what is that?” asked the cop.

“It’s a Ferrari.”

“Good for you,” said the cop with a little bit of snark.

“It’s not mine, I work for Autoweek magazine.”

“Sweet gig,” he said.

And that’s where I was going with this. As mortal, middle-class human, driving a Ferrari makes me feel…anxious. Everyone is definitely going to look, so you need to be OK with that. A lot of people will ask you how much it costs. Some just say “nice car.”

And it is a damn nice car. The first California was beautiful, but a little low on power (453 hp) for a Ferrari; with this new turbo version, that wrong has been righted. The California T is thrilling to drive. It’s surprisingly quiet at idle but wails like a banshee at speed. It has big, metal paddles attached to the column for cracking off six shifts in record speed. And as the modes ramp up from normal to sport to race, they get faster and louder. I didn’t feel any turbo lag, except for maybe on initial takeoff, and this thing revs to at least 7,000 before it loses any steam. The exhaust noise comes on hard at about 3,000 rpm, though I’d rather it ramp up more uniformly, like on the 488 GTB.