The Ferrari Amalfi Feels Special Like a Ferrari Should

5 min

December 19, 2025 | Road & Track

The Ferrari Amalfi Feels Special Like a Ferrari Should

5 min

Despite sitting at the base of the range, the Roma revamp is better to drive, is easier to live with, and has undoubted superstar power.

Road & Track

December 19, 2025

Originally published on Road & Track.

The very first Ferrari I drove was a California T. I was only 19, with big dreams and a nascent YouTube channel. A well-to-do family friend tossed me the keys and told me to take it for the day, no restrictions. Looking back, that was thoroughly absurd and incredibly generous. But I returned the car in one piece, and 10 years later, I'm now having my second Ferrari test drive.

Which is, in a way, a full circle. The California T was replaced by the Portofino, which then spawned the Roma coupe, which has now been transformed into the Amalfi, with a thorough refresh and redesign. But all of them have occupied the same position: the least expensive car with the prancing horse on its hood, each powered by an increasingly brawny iteration of the same twin-turbocharged 3.9-liter V-8.

So although "entry level" is the wrong expression for a car with more than 600 hp and a six-figure optioned price that will start with either a three or even a four, the Amalfi will be the first Ferrari that many of the brand's buyers will drive. Before I experience it myself, company test driver Francesco Comand tells me that's why the engineering team has put a real emphasis on making the Amalfi easier to drive than the Roma, for the benefit of all those newbies. An assertion I remembered a wry smile after experiencing the rear end snap sideways after the first time I dared get the gas pedal all the way to the floor. That was in third gear, on a straight. I tried again in fourth, and the rear tires only spun up briefly before they found traction on the cool morning road I was driving on in southern Portugal. My initial conclusion? Yeah, there might be a strong family link, but this is a whole lot more car than the California T I drove.

Being a 2+ coupe, the Amalfi straddles the line between grand tourer and sports car. The design brief generally adheres to the well-received Roma but deletes that car's distinctive integrated body-color grille for a more traditional contrasting look. Ferrari has made some big changes out back too, swapping the jewellike taillights for LEDs seamlessly integrated with a wraparound black contrasting trim piece. There's no black graphic emblazoned across the front end as on the F80 or the 12Cilindri, though the shape of the nose and front bumper looks like it's derived from the same headspace as Ferrari's front-engine V-12 model. The Roma was truly a breath of fresh air when it comes to recent designs out of Maranello, and while I miss the funky grille, it's safe to say the Amalfi keeps things looking positively beautiful.

In true Ferrari fashion, the new car is also faster. The latest evolution of Ferrari's twin-turbo 3.9-liter V-8 benefits from lighter camshafts, a redesigned engine block, added boost pressure, and a tweaked ECU to take peak outputs to 631 hp at 7500 rpm and 561 lb-ft of torque from 3000 rpm. This is only 19 hp more than the Roma, but Ferrari has managed to raise output while also meeting Europe's latest emissions targets, the same ones that other automakers have had to cut power to satisfy.

With the tires fully warmed up, the Amalfi is finally ready to show me everything it has on a Portuguese mountain road. Despite the sheer amount of shove being far more than that long-ago California T, what hasn't changed is Ferrari's dedication to making its turbocharged engines feel linear and enticing to rev out, characteristics tuned to match a naturally aspirated engine. There are no early peaks or valleys in the boosted torque curve, only a constantly increasing, rapturous pull to the 7600-rpm redline. While the eight-speed dual-clutch transaxle can be left to select its own ratios by itself, I challenge anyone to resist the temptation to pull the carbon-fiber paddle shifters, which change cogs at the first hint of movement. Ferrari claims a 0-to-62-mph time of just 3.3 seconds, which is only a tenth quicker than the Roma but is also limited by the traction the Amalfi's rear tires can deliver. Top speed sits at a lofty 199 mph.

But there was a disappointment in the Amalfi's powertrain experience: the sound. Rather, the lack of it. The company blames strict noise regulations in Europe for the quieter exhaust note. According to Giannis Kitzer Panides, one of the powertrain engineers, Ferrari has maintained its signature sound with a new muffler incorporating a bypass valve, as well as tuning intake and turbo to amplify the noises passed into the cabin. But while the tune the Amalfi spits from its four pipes outside the car is true Ferrari music, it would be better if that exhaust note could be louder and more of it could reach the driver's eardrums.

Similar to the engine, the Amalfi's chassis settings went under the scope. It still uses the same semi-active dampers as the Roma, but Ferrari has tuned Race mode to be stiffer while maintaining the same level of plushness in Comfort. Cruising through small Portuguese towns with poor pavement proved the softer setting can fittingly do its job, and during my drive I found plenty of excuses to use both Sport and Race, without ever feeling like the car became too stiff.

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The Amalfi is also following the rest of the range into brake-by-wire. Ferrari has adapted the ABS Evo system from the 296 GTB for duty, one it says reduces pedal travel and increases modulation control. I can't say how well the Amalfi trail brakes into corners from threshold down to an apex—my drive was road only—but the pedal felt sure and predictable on the road when driven in anger. The only added oddity is a smidgen of artificial softness to the initial application when you're not using them hard. Ferrari says the new brake-by-wire system is pivotal to the Amalfi's also updated Side Slip Control system. The 6.1 version of this is able to feed the electronics even richer data and to make the driver feel like a total boss swinging the rear end around corners. Ferrari is the best in the biz at invisible intervention from active safety systems, without the driver realizing the gutter rails are in place. The Amalfi is yet another shining example.

Steering the Amalfi gives me flashbacks to the California T. Nothing else in the world steers like a Ferrari, and despite having driven hundreds of cars between my two experiences of the brand's products, the new car felt immediately intimately familiar. The wheel was the perfect shape for my hands, weighting less heavy than normal in this macho part of the market, but the front end responds with a similar lightness and sense of vitality. From nose to tail, the car felt like it was at my fingertips, ready to tuck into a corner but never feeling darty or excessively keen, trust and communication established from turn one.

Ferrari has also employed some new aero strategies to make the Amalfi more stable at speed than the Roma. None of these has been allowed to compromise the minimalist, flowing design of the car, but at the back, the new car has a three-position active spoiler that deploys at speed to stabilize it under heavy braking and to give assistance in high-speed corners, with Ferrari claiming up to 243 pounds of downforce at 155 mph. Other hidden aerodynamic improvements include new diffusers, a pair of vortex generators, and an almost invisible duct within the headlight units that sends cool air into the engine bay.

One of the only areas Ferrari readily admits it goofed with the Roma is the overreliance on touch controls. The Amalfi fixes most of the problems. There's a beautiful, physical, red start/stop button positioned where it should be on the steering wheel, and the Roma's awkward swipe and touch (or more often swipe and swear) controls have been swapped for real buttons you can actually press. A new dashboard deletes the Roma's vertical infotainment screen for a horizontal 10.3-inch one tucked farther down. It's like the more expensive 12Cilindri, choosing to prioritize a driver-focused dual-cockpit experience over having a touchscreen front and center.

The Amalfi's cabin is undeniably gorgeous and trimmed in the finest of luxury materials, with the anodized aluminum central tunnel housing the artful shifter controls as the ultimate focal point. That said, it sure would be nice if Ferrari could add a few more of those sensational metal switches for things like the heated seats and nose-lift function, which are still annoyingly tucked into the touchscreen.

Our long, ongoing transition from analog to digital is one every car company tussles with internally, even Ferrari. The good news is that the Amalfi is a vastly improved car compared to the outgoing Roma in both ease of use and its ability to push the envelope even further for the hard-core enthusiast. Anyone could hop in and enjoy a quiet, comfortable drive down the highway, with adaptive cruise and workable lane-centering, but the Amalfi will just as happily blitz through the most technical mountain road the way a car from Maranello should.

Ferrari has come a long way with its entry-level car since I drove that California T a decade ago. I walked away from that first drive drained but absolutely wired at the same time. Thankfully, I can say the same for the Amalfi all these years later, which is exactly the way a Ferrari should leave you.