2012 Car Red 2012 Ferrari 458 Spider

As the auto industry gears up for the 2011 Frankfurt auto show, Ferrari has released the first official photos of the 2012 458 Spider, the roofless iteration of the mid-engine 458 Italia. Other than losing its lid and gaining some structural enhancements, the 458 Spider will be largely identical to its coupe counterpart.
Hooray for More V-8 Wail
Besides shaving the 458’s head, Ferrari altered the car’s throttle mapping, suspension tuning, and “engine soundtrack” specifically for topless motoring. The task of dialing in the sound of the 458’s tightly wound 4.5-liter V-8 for droptop duty seems to us like a two-step process. Step one: Remove roof. Step two: Rev engine. Regardless, the Spider’s soundtrack should be hugely satisfying, produced as it is by the same sonorous 562-hp engine as is used in the 458 Italia. That power is routed through the same seven-speed dual-clutch automatic as is used in the coupe to the same torque-vectoring differential. The 458 Spider also inherits the coupe’s F1-Trac traction-control and performance anti-lock-brake system.
Ferrari claims the Spider will run to 62 mph from a standstill in less than 3.5 seconds before romping on to a top speed in excess of 198 mph. In a recent comparison test, we kicked a 458 Italia to 60 mph in just 3.0 seconds, so the Spider’s figure is probably a bit conservative.
Now You See Me, Now You Don’t
Ferrari’s photos—and a video below—put to rest any doubt as to the style of folding roof the 458 Spider will use. The car’s mid-engine layout makes a folding roof of any kind difficult to integrate, and after seeing the leaked photos of the car we guessed that only a relatively space-efficient soft top would fit beneath its low-slung tonneau cover. Ferrari, however, cleverly adapted its rotating-roof concept from the 575-based Superamerica to the 458 Spider.
The 458 Spider’s roof is a bit more complicated than the Superamerica’s rotating lid, and it hides under a double-hump rear deck when stowed (the Superamerica’s roof laid itself on top of the rear deck). Ferrari claims this solution is 55 pounds lighter than a soft top and takes up less space. The roof can fold itself down into a space ahead of the engine bay in 14 seconds, and the independently operable rear window doubles as a wind blocker. Ferrari believes the rear window to be so effective that occupants can converse normally at speeds above 124 mph. The roof mechanism is compact enough that Ferrari was able to keep a parcel shelf behind the rear seats.
To help combat flex, Ferrari did beef up the 458’s chassis to ensure structural rigidity top up or down, but isn’t sharing exactly what it strengthened. The company does, however, claim that the Spider will only outweigh the fixed-roof 458 by about 100 pounds. The 458 Spider will be on display in Frankfurt in September, and a good part of the production run is likely already spoken for. View Photo Gallery