Car and Driver
During Monterey Car Week, all kinds of opportunities pop up to get behind the wheel of the exotic, rare, or vintage machinery. The challenge is figuring out the logistics given the overlapping events and the extreme traffic. But when we got the chance to sample the Ferrari Purosangue, three C/D editors—K.C. Colwell, Rich Ceppos, and Joe Lorio—made it a point to meet up with Ferrari’s Jeffrey Grossbard to accept the keys and head out toward Laguna Seca.
Joe Lorio|Car and Driver
JL: We’re in the Ferrari Purosangue, which we’re not sure how to pronounce [Editor’s note: It’s “Peur-Oh-Sang-Gway,”] in Carmel Valley. K.C. Colwell at the wheel, Rich Ceppos in the right seat, and Joe Lorio in the back.
JL: This back section is kind of a scooped-out cave with leather everywhere. Can’t really see out easily. The seats are kind of hard and firm, highly sculpted. Trying to fine-tune their adjustments is a little bit of a puzzle, because it’s done with a pop-up haptic touch wheel in the center console. Luckily, the main seat controls and the power window controls are real physical controls, but there’s all kinds of haptic touch stuff going on up front.
RC: What do you think of the Rolls Royce–style rear coach doors with the power closing? Pretty wild.
JL: I was looking for the door handle at the wrong end of the door.
RC: Power closing is necessary, because you can’t reach them when they swing all the way outward. This is also a very over-digitized car. It’s taken us all kinds of effort to try to adjust the seat heating from one side to the other, and figure out how all this stuff works, because it’s not obvious.
JL: Even after the tutorial we received at handoff.
Car and Driver
Car and Driver
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RC: You really have to learn this thing, and that’s going to take a lot of time.
JL: And I think even once you do learn it, it’s a lot of steps to do things that shouldn’t take a lot of steps.
RC: Exactly. It just shows you how some car companies have gone too far with trying to pack everything into digital control. We have the same pop-up wheel up front that controls seat heat, air conditioning, temperature, individual seat bolsters, and lumbar—and getting through all that, it takes time, and it’s not very responsive.
KC: It is a nice aesthetic, though.
RC: It looks great.
JL: Ferrari has cleaned up the steering wheel—it doesn’t have as many buttons as some recent models. But then it’s got all kinds of this haptic stuff, and you have to wake up the steering wheel first, by touching one section, and then it shows you what you can do.
RC: And here’s one of the craziest things: We were told that if we’re going to stop and take photos with the door open, we’d better leave the engine running. Because if you open the door, that wakes all the computers up, and that draws so much power that it can kill the battery in 10 or 15 minutes.
Joe Lorio|Car and Driver
JL: Speaking of running the engine, tell us from the driver’s seat what you’re experiencing with this V-12.
KC: The V-12 is obviously a lovely, melodic thing.
JL: It sounds good back here.
Joe Lorio|Car and Driver
KC: It’s like, little cabin, big car. I noticed I was hitting the rumble strips on the side of the road more than I would normally. So it’s quite wide. The mirrors are nice and big, but the visibility out the back is a peephole.
