Ferrari 456 - Il Cavallino's last great Gran Turismo
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 9:31AM Every time I look at the new FF, I think how Ferrari's design standards have fallen from the peak of taste and restraint they reached in the mid 1990s. After the excesses of the 308/328 and Testarossa era (aka the 1980s), Ferrari offered the more refined, if less exciting 348, and finally some superb designs like the 456 and the F355. The 456 in particular oozed desirability and exclusivity, but had a particularly Italian sense of purity and restraint that enhanced its exoticism rather than detracted from it.
You look at a 456 and can't help but picture a wealthy Milanese gentleman clad in cashmere sweater and his elegant wife stepping out of it at their Lake Garda weekend home. Today's Ferraris...well, can you picture anyone other than a douchebag getting out of one? The interior of a 1990s Ferrari is also far more sober and clean-lined than the more elaborate confections being dreamed up today--it emphasizes the luxury of the materials used, rather than the styling. But that brings me to my real questions here: Has Ferrari's taste atrophied? Or is their current design direction just a response to a shifting customer base in new markets? Were the 456 and F355 anomalies, or do they represent the last vestiges of the true spirit of the marque?
