Is The Ferrari 458 Italia REALLY That Good? My First Drive ft. Damian of TheCarGuys.TV

Hi everyone, earlier this year I posted a poll asking which of the regular mid-engined Ferrari V8 road cars was your favorite and I have to say the results surprised me because by far the 458 was the most popular one I know of. Many people would think that this is due to the age of the people who watch my channel, but in reality they would be wrong because there is a very wide distribution among my audience, we have people of all types of ages and locations who watch the channel, so There must be something the 458 is

really

doing right.

So I had the great idea for Christmas to try to feature as many mid-engined v8 street cars as I could, from the 348 to the 488, but the one that turned out to be the hardest to get. It was the 458, so when time was running out, I made a quick phone call to my automotive fairy godmother, Damien, on behalf of the automotive guys, who triumphed and drove almost 200 miles to come see me so I could test

drive

this car in some of my very. favorite roads, so in honor of him, before we start, let's take a quick look, check that no and now in the car, because of the way YouTube and my life works, we've done things in a very strange order because actually This was the final video. filmed and tomorrow's finale was actually the

first

.

There won't be an in-depth review of this car today because we don't have the time or climate for it, if you want to know more about what it was like. own, please check out the car guys channel if you want to see more about cars like this and many others. They have a very nice collection and are nothing but honest with them. In fact, this is a particularly special car because Damien. He picked it up new, didn't specify it, but got it from Meridian Modern in 2015. There is a very late example of a 458 and it's been in his collection ever since, so it's clear he has a real affection for this car and us.

I'm going to talk to him after I've

drive

n by to see why he's managed to stay on the market for so long, even at over a decade old. It's actually still a pretty new looking car and has a place in history. as one of the final designs written for

ferrari

by pininfarina everything after this was done in-house now as always

ferrari

aerodynamics was at the forefront of all the changes they made there are many things they were very proud of such as these little flexible ducts at the front that deform as speed increases to try to reduce frontal drag, there are holes and scoops and shapes everywhere, although they don't particularly have large air intakes on the sides and I think that's a bit disappointing because I'm a bit old school, I see a supercar and I think a big air intake on the side, instead this Ferrari took air for the car from below and from above, very clever, but this is the car for me where Ferrari starts to move away from car styling and more engineering. them, the rear underwent equally dramatic changes, the classic Ferrari quartet of lights was replaced by these unique two on each side, here you have a small nod to the F40 with the trio of exhausts, the engine is a development of the previous 4.3 liters seen on The F430 here reaches four and a half liters and produces 562 brake horsepower.

Now, another thing that was tragically lost in the eyes of many was the option of a manual gearbox. Your only transmission option here was a seven-speed dual-clutch element that replaced both. the f1 manual and automatic transmission that ferrari had used before, this was not actually the

first

dual clutch ferrari that honor, in fact, it went to california and uses similar hardware but with some important revisions to make it more in line with the interior of this type of car was also a big departure from all of their previous models and in fact probably looks quite familiar to anyone who has seen a more recent Ferrari because this is essentially the template that has been used for every car since this little one.

The pair of screens with a central tachometer is the same formula that Ferrari still uses in the F8. Now the buttons for the gears are down here and the 458 also introduced this type of steering wheel with all the buttons now to hold it, it's a beautiful thing. but it's not perfect in its execution, the manatino switch remains virtually unchanged from the 430 and it's

really

nice to have here on the 4582 the bumpy road mode that was introduced on the 430 scud, but you also have the gauge controls here and they are a bit rubbish and annoying. The paddles are where they have always been in a Ferrari mounted on the column so they don't move.

It's a tricky little system to get used to and honestly. The truth is, I've driven a few cars with this layout and you'll get used to it, but on the third day, as soon as you get out, you'll try to signal it in your other car by honking. or changing the radio station is frustrating and it's one thing that I think Ferrari didn't really need to do, but somehow they felt it was a

good

idea and fully committed, but I guess now it's become an iconic piece of design By the way, the steering wheel is connected to a steering system that is 30 percent faster than in the 430.

This was designed to be a pretty elegant car. Ferrari also put effort into trying to make this car even more usable on a day-to-day basis. It was one of the first vehicles they sold with their 7 year free service plan, so I can't tell you how much it costs to repair one of these because in the five years Damien has owned it, he hasn't actually had to pay for the service. , but there have been a few other issues, although the car's corrosion warranty is only four years and there have been some corrosion issues that required sorting, the bodywork had some and the wheels are starting to fail as well which is unfortunate, at one point 458 prices seemed safe.

They fell below the hundred thousand pound mark, but they quickly stopped, did a U-turn and have been going up ever since, then went back down a bit, so I imagine there are a lot of people wondering if now is the time to go down. One of these particularly confusing is the fact that at the top end of the 458 market there are many crossovers priced at 488 and that is a car that on paper is much newer and with much more performance, could this be the last of the normal naturally aspirated mid-engined v8 Ferraris, it's actually that

good

time, I guess finding out that making a video of a car like this with the kind of reputation it has is always a tall order, it's really only going to be two ways.

Either I love it and people will tell me I'm only saying that because that's what everyone else says or I don't love it and then they tell me I'm being difficult and controversial and how could I say that when everyone else wouldn't agree with me , so with this car I'm simply going to explain to you how my first thoughts come to me. Wow, that steering is very quick and the gearbox is very slick if you're used to the old F1 box cars like the 430 is better day and night. We'll soon see if it really is much slower than modern versions, but if you're used to the old F1 cars this is a big improvement, no doubt, if you want to use it. in automatic mode, where it will quietly move up to seventh before you know it, it really is a smooth and very good gearbox, the car also to me feels slightly more connected to the road than the 430.

In that sense I never completely trusted him. steering and although here it is certainly a lot more hyperactive than it really needs to be, it is actually quite crazy, I think I have a little more faith in the chassis, speaking of which, I am currently driving the car in sport mode and I haven't even Pressed the bumpy road mode button and it's impeccably well damped. I'd say it's actually a much more luxurious car than the 488. It's actually quite comfortable and on a bumpy road it's great. It really is spectacularly well controlled. At the front, Ferrari had a development of the double wishbones they've been using for a while, but with a new layout at the rear, they've introduced a multi-link setup that's a bit of a departure from the double wishbone they used previously.

It's not the easiest thing to just get in and out. Yes, the driving element is perfectly fine and simple, but the controls for all the screens and all that jazz are not easy and certainly not intuitive. This is not a car. that you want to try and learn when you're on the move, that said, although the actual driving aspect couldn't be simpler, the visibility is quite good, not as spectacular as some of their older cars, particularly three five five three four. eight and so on, but it's very good by supercar standards, this car still seems to vaporize quite easily and I have no real idea why because I have the air conditioning and everything on, but I hope it gets fixed just so the box isn't as Fast as the modern one, certainly not when you push hard, but they often change as you get a little more aggressive with them.

The exhaust note may also not be as loud as what you'll find in an older Ferrari. You know I'm going to have to roll down the window and this thing being Ferrari is never as simple as thinking the tires are pretty cold and, uh, downshift. This thing, as you may have seen, is quite squirrelly, I'm still in sport mode and it will quit. You get quite sideways before you intervene, it's a lot of fun, it's pretty cold out there, so I'm going to be a little cautious, it's not scary or intimidating or anything like that, our throttle response is actually pretty good, although the power is perhaps very linear. even to the point of failure, I mean it peaks at 9000 rpm, something that Ferrari and their press release claimed was the front row car to do that, the honda s2000, yeah, so the box dct I would say is in line with the previous pdk that Porsche put on the 997.

A big jump from what came before, but not the blazing fast system we know now. I'm going to put the car in race mode for my sins. Keep it on a bumpy road and I'll see if that improves things. one touch or the exhaust valve opens much earlier in the stroke the steering doesn't really wait like I'd like there's no reward for taking it to nine that's really disappointing. I was hoping it would have some kind of With a second boost, the 991.1 gt3s engine reached about the same level and from seven to nine thousand rpm it becomes a completely different animal than the engine it was before.

It's pure direct power here throughout the rev range, it's reasonably powerful. the mid range is not a turbocharged unit it's not like a mclaren but it's certainly flexible it's on days like this where the road conditions aren't brilliant and your concentration levels are high where things like the gauges being in silly places just don't they are useful everything slow this car is slow at all i like the steering but i don't love it it just doesn't talk to me it doesn't have that amazing level of communication you will find it is a mclaren 570s 600 lt and in fact it's not even that good i would say , like a 650 or a 720, so it is often a weak point of Ferrari.

However, having said that, the brakes I really like on some more recent Ferraris I found ceramic, which by the time they want to say this became standard fit. be a little too flashy a little unnecessary but here I actually find them quite easy to modulate, in fact I had forgotten it had ceramic oh this is great for pedaling, you have to do it be careful with that rear part because it will turn towards you, a Unlike McLaren Ferrari, they stuck with a sort of mechanical differential, what they called their edif, and you have some faith in it, but on a day like today, even an upshift will cause the rear. end just to kick slightly, not intimidating, not scary, just something to keep in mind, you don't want to give it the full bar alone in a corner in these conditions that's for sure, what did I expect the 458 to be?

I really don't know, it's so hard when people constantly, for over a decade, tell you how absolutely brilliant something is to turn it into something tangible, expectations that it could possibly meet and if this has met them, I don't know, I've just really I've been driving it for a few minutes, but you get a real feel for the car. I'm really enjoying it. In fact, today's weather was promised to be a little sunnier and nicer than it actually has been. I am very, very grateful. Damian for bringing it out to play because a lot of other people have already taken their 458s for the winter and won't see them until April.

I would have thought that ASAP isn't him, he really is a car guy. I was. stop the indicator again I won't find it there I tell you it's heating up again it's heating up again I promise I'm not doing anything lewd in this car oh, so there's reverse gear, it's a little slow to activate no, no , and now it's little things like this, the window control doesn't work like you think.I wish they would, are you corrupting one side? Damien hasn't actually had any real mechanical problems with these cars. I know they became quite famous early on for some thermal incidents. what they suffered was due to some glue in one of the rear wheel arches, which meant the cladding fell off and then caught fire - nothing as catastrophically wrong from a mechanical point of view as, for example, on the 911 gt3, but it's still pretty embarrassing to see your product go bad. on fire very publicly, that's not something I would really worry about at all and in fact the 458 has proven to be a pretty robust and decent model when they made this Ferrari, they seemed to have stopped publishing numbers of the models made but fair enough .to say they probably sold quite a few more of these than the 430.

That means that while they are still pretty reasonably priced, there are plenty of cars in the classifieds for you to choose from these beautiful seats for me. Would be a must have, they are lovely, supportive but actually quite comfortable too. I'd probably go for the carbon interior and it's a disappointment that there are quite a few parts here that you simply couldn't have in carbon and so are that kind of weird, rubbery plastic that Ferrari likes to use; in fact, some older 458s still suffered from the same weird sticky switch syndrome that my 550 has. I don't like how annoyingly vocal the card tries to be on race. mode and so on, this is a problem I've had with a few different Ferraris.

I actually wish they were a little more predictable, you know, just make it so that above 4000 rpm it makes a noise or or something or give me a button where, like bumpy road mode, I can say if I want it to. Noisy or not, Ferrari, although I was never interested in that kind of thing, the important thing is that it is fun to drive. Cars like this, which really are quite a technological tour de force, can often be quite the opposite, there's so much going on under the skin that sometimes you feel like you've been robbed of a bit of the experience here, I think the knowledge of Ferrari.

It really shines because all those electronic tricks only serve to give you more confidence in the car. This is a very expensive game from someone else. It's seven degrees out there. This is a car with over 560 horsepower and I am very happy to be able to turn it. traction control in its half off mode because I have confidence in it, that's not something I'll do, I'm not often a driving god, I'm not Chris Harris, I'm not Henry Catch Pole, I'll happily admit that I'm just a guy that he really likes cars and that is why it is very important that something like this is something friendly and accessible;

It means that you actually feel safer to explore your limits rather than simply living in fear, of course, it has many possibilities. glitches it goes up a little too high there is still a reddish fog here even though it has absolutely no reason to do so these screens down here are almost impossible to navigate without at least a two day course like all ferraris this thing has a thirst incredible At all times the indicators on the steering wheel were simply something very unnecessary that no one asked for and no one still wants, but Ferrari persevered, however, to criticize this car for that I think is not to properly understand the objective of a Ferrari but that of a supercar , believe.

In reality, it is much more valid to criticize, say, a Portofino or a Roma, because it is a car designed to be used every day and its ergonomic flaws like these are of much greater importance; There really aren't that many 458's out there with big miles on them despite all the effort Ferrari makes to make sure they are cars that can actually be ridden with the very generous sized trunk it actually has a lot of space. I have an R8 in the driveway at the moment and I'd say you can comfortably fit almost twice as much in this as you can in the trunk of that.

Damien's last car I drove was his Gallardo Balboni and it was certainly an experience, but if only he had brought that. He came out and said James, do you want to leave it in the driveway for a week? I'll take the 550 home. I would have said it politely, thanks Damian, but also no thanks, though, if he made the same offer with this, oh yeah, all day. Damian, could I borrow this car for a week because I really want to get to know you better out of all the people who voted in my poll for the 458? I'm not sure how many of them have actually driven one.

I suspect it's probably quite a few, but for those who one day get the chance to do it, I don't think you'll be too disappointed, this really is a very special car and that's enough from me for today, but I want to hand it over now to Damian , who's going to talk a little more from his perspective about what makes this car so special. Thanks for watching, bye. The only Ferrari I had before this was actually my 355 Spider, so that was my first Ferrari and my dream car. and after that it was obviously a used car but then I had the option to get the 458 so for me I wasn't interested in the 458 at all when they first introduced it.

Ferrari had gotten rid of the manual gearbox, so it was like no, I'm not going to have that, uh, I'm not going to buy one of these cars and I stayed away for the entire life of this car and then in the The moment they said they were going to stop making the 458, I suddenly became desperate. I wanted one so I ran out and immediately bought this one. I have used this car every day. This has been my everyday Ferrari. If you can imagine something like that, it's gone everywhere. They are trips to the stores. It's all over the country.

It's been on a lot of different road trips what I like is that it's very useful, it's very comfortable, it's crazy if you want it, it has a lot of storage space inside, which is obviously good if you're going on trips long, but maybe I can. relax if you want, it can set you on fire if you want, it's just the whole package and then of course you've got that great V8 soundtrack too, so for me I always wanted a car that I could use. A lot and this car has been all over the country and been on every trip you can imagine, from track days to mundane shopping trips, it's done it all.

I think I'd still prefer it to have a manual gearbox if I could, in my heart. So that's one of the reasons I've considered getting one of the late 430 manuals because I love that slick open gate shifter, but other than that I think it does everything fantastically. There is nothing I would change about this car. Compared to the special, I would say it's everything the 458 Italia is, but with an extra 25 of everything, so the feeling of noise in the steering, all the things that make this a great car, speculating just makes it turn it up to 11, it does a little better. in all areas, which is why I think the Spectale is probably the best modern Ferrari they've ever made compared to the 488.

The 48 to me feels a lot more numb, it feels a lot heavier. The responses are muted in almost all areas. It's a lovely car, it's well put together but it doesn't have anything like sparkling performance or character or soul it's a lot less fun than the 458 the 458 is actually a pretty loose car, you can play with it, you can throw it around 488 it's much more stuck on the road it is much faster but it is much less attractive to me this is the perfect spec that I wanted at that time not everyone can drive a white ferrari not everyone wants a white ferrari but for me When I saw that shiny pearlescent paint on the dark roof, I thought it looked so sharp and I never thought I would have a white Ferrari but there is nothing about this car I would change, I think it is absolutely perfect and that is why I have kept it for five years.

In a recent video of mine I said I was probably going to sell it. I think I could keep it forever. I've put 16,000 miles on this car, so you know. I have been a properly used Ferrari with 16,000 miles. Most Ferraris don't even reach that mileage that takes 20 years to reach. I have used it a lot and have enjoyed every mile.