If you haven’t put your name down on one then you’re a little too late to get the LaFerrari Aperta. This open-topp limited-run of an already limited-run hybrid hypercar was sold out a couple months before it made its debut at the 2016 Paris Motor Show, which is not really a surprise since Ferrari is only making 209 examples of the LaFerrari Aperta.
Some would say the “spyder” usually carries a performance deficit over the standard coupe but the Aperta is far from any of those compromise. Despite carrying extra weight, the Aperta matches the performance figures of the coupe, so Aperta owners can still crack 100 km/h in just three seconds and they should see 350 km/h on the speedo if they have an empty stretch of road long enough.
The hybrid powertrain is left untouched, which by the way consists of a 6.3-litre naturally-aspirated V12 that works together with a 120 kW (161 hp) electric motor. Connected to a seven-speed dual-clutch ‘box, it gets a total of 950 hp and 900 Nm sent to the rear wheels.
But to match the coupe’s figures, Ferrari has done a couple of changes on the Aperta. The chassis has been strengthened to deliver the same torsional rigidity as the coupe, and the aerodynamics have been recalibrated to match the coupe’s drag coefficient even when driving topless (the car, not the driver).
From the pictures alone, it may look like a simple job of removing the roof from the coupe, but they actually had to redo the butterfly doors on the Aperta. The carbon-fibre insert just aft the front wheels are not merely to differentiate the Aperta from the coupe, but they are actually needed so that the doors could rotate.
Apart from that and the absence of a roof, other changes are not exactly visible from the outside. There’s a redesigned vortex generator underneath the front dam, and they’ve added two small flaps at the upper edge of the windscreen and a fixed angle wind-stop on the parcel shelf to maintain the same drag even when the top is removed.
With those modifications done, Ferrari claims that the occupants can “easily carry on a conversation even at high speeds”. We’d love to put that claim to test, unfortunately all of the LaFerrari Aperta have been spoken for. Oh well.
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