Welcome to Maranello’s newest ode to sensation, a car designed to make your heartbeat match the redline.
Unveiled in April 2025, the 296 Speciale is Ferrari’s latest entry into its hallowed lineage of “special series” berlinettas, joining the Challenge Stradale, 430 Scuderia, 458 Speciale, and 488 Pista. Now add 880 cavalli vapore and a whiff of Le Mans magic.
This is a car for the purist, the corner chaser, the kind of driver who judges a vehicle by the goosebumps it delivers. It’s about feel as much as it is about figures, though with 867hp, 0-100 km/h in 2.8 seconds, and a Fiorano lap time of 1’19”, the figures are hardly shy.
Yet, Ferrari insists this isn’t just a numbers game. As their engineers will tell you, driving thrill is a science of the five senses: lateral and longitudinal acceleration, braking, shifting, and sound. And here, every one of those notes has been tuned to perfection.
At its heart, the 296 Speciale retains the ingenious 120° V6 architecture, paired with a plug-in hybrid system that adds 177hp of electric punch, enough to make even the most seasoned Ferrari aficionado grin uncontrollably. With titanium rods, a lightened crankshaft, and engine mapping straight from Ferrari’s motorsport playbook, this thing sings. Loudly.
Acoustic ducts funnel the roar of the V6 directly into the cabin, like piping opera into your eardrums from centre stage at La Scala.
If you’ve laid eyes on the 296 GTB, you’ll notice that the Speciale is visually louder, but in that very deliberate, motorsport-derived way. The nose is scalloped like a wind-swept ravine, the front splitter suspended like a race car’s air blade. Vertical fins and active spoilers adorn the tail, creating a silhouette that looks as though it’s cutting through air even while parked.
Every slit, winglet, and diffuser has a job to do. With 435 kg of downforce at 250 km/h (20% more than the GTB) this car partners with the wind.
The Speciale features ABS Evo for surgical braking precision, Multimatic dampers for race-bred road manners, and an ‘extra boost’ function lifted from the SF90 XX to give you that final sling out of apexes like a catapult with attitude.
Over 60kg was shaved off thanks to carbon fibre body panels, a titanium exhaust, and featherweight suspension components. The result is a rear-wheel-drive berlinetta with a weight-to-power ratio of 1.6 kg per cv.
The cabin is a love letter to minimalism. Carbon fibre abounds, Alcantara hugs every contour, and there’s no frivolous ornamentation to distract you from the task at hand. Even the iconic gated shifter design has been reinvented not as a mechanical necessity, but as a visual centrepiece.
The 296 Speciale is a spiritual exercise in engineering restraint, where power, weight, sound, and surface are orchestrated into one pure idea: joy behind the wheel.
And in typical Ferrari fashion, it’s all done with a wink that says, “You’ve never driven anything like this before.”
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