The Ferrari SF90 XX is the first road legal XX model in the firm’s history... but is it deserving of the badge?
WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE
When I first drove the SF90 back in the weird summer of 2020, and in the hills not far from here, what blew me away was how fast it got itself out of corners. Inside, I felt like a tennis ball: roundabout, thwack, tight bend, thwack, open curve, thwack, hairpin, thwack. It was a physical bombardment and I was in the firing line.
And now Ferrari has built a faster SF90. More aero. More grip. But how it gets itself out of corners remains the most remarkable thing. At least dynamically speaking. But put dynamics to one side and there’s something even more remarkable: that the car exists at all.
My God there must have been some fights, scuffles and scrapes in the corridors of power at Maranello about whether to lend the hallowed XX label to the SF90. This is a badge that matters. It’s less a car, more an entry to Ferrari’s most exclusive club. Up until now, as far as I can work out, Ferrari has only built about 116 XX cars over 12 or more years. Now it’s about to build 10 times that many of a car that breaks with everything that XX stands for.
It’s a road car. It’s high volume. You can have it as a drop-top Spider. It’s not eligible for any of the XX extras: the events, activities, track days. Ferrari won’t store this XX car at the factory for you. It’s not part of the Corse Clienti program. So why not plunder the back catalogue and stick a less contentious badge on this moderately uprated SF90? GTO perhaps (although that opens another can of worms), or Speciale? Plunder something else from the back catalogue.
Probably because it wouldn’t have done enough. When it came out it looked like the biggest issue the SF90 had was its lack of luggage space. It wasn’t its pace, the way it drove or even the slightly ungainly styling. However, the intervening years have revealed something. Wealthy car enthusiasts really adore the V12. They don’t mind hybrid, but a twin-turbo V8? That was what featured in the 488 and F8 – the entry level supercars before the 296 came along (that uses a twin-turbo V6, which acts, sounds and feels more exotic than the V8).
The SF90 is Ferrari’s current flagship and its blown 4.0-litre V8 is potent, responsive and very, very effective. But it doesn’t sound great. And since Ferrari builds a truly epic V12 (and has kept it alive in the not-an-SUV), this powertrain, even reinforced
