Ferrari F430 Spider Review | Part Two

Electronically, operated and heated seats adds £1,825 and the ‘Daytona’ seat trim in Sabbia and Bordeaux, as described, will set you back £1,590 but that doesn’t surprise me as, although there are only two seats, there is an awful lot of needlework to them.

That said, if the basic price of £142,750 isn’t prohibitive, item prices from the ‘Carozzeria Scaglietti’, options list, won’t be off-putting either. The list is in four sections; Racing and Track, Exterior and Colours, Interior and Materials and lastly, Equipment and Travel. So it is possible to order your Ferrari with carbon-fibre, bucket seats and a set of luggage in an interior-matching colour to fit neatly behind them or in the 250-litre bonnet-boot.

Sitting in the sumptuous driver’s seat, looking through the list, I was taken by the curious thought that if I had the funds and the will, for the price of a standard F430 Spider, I could buy a 20-strong fleet of last week’s car, the Chevrolet Matiz. But then, the Ferrari has more legroom.

The F430 Spider is, as I have said, a wide car, so there is plenty of shoulder room, too and the boxy but slim, central tunnel makes it feel spacious, especially in the F1 version where the manual gearshift is replaced by a control panel. Interior storage is quite good with a lockable glove box and a small, lidded compartment, set into the firewall, between the seats. Behind the seats are small holding-nets and on the back of each headrest is a coat hook.

Also between the seats, on the central tunnel are two switches. One opens the bulkhead storage cubby and the other opens up the world. There is not a great deal of space twixt bulkhead and engine bay, so the clever soft-top folds itself twice and lowers neatly into the narrow area between without a trace that it was ever there. It had to be that way because, apart from not wanting a folded roof to spoil the view of the engine, the glass cover does get very hot. The roof-dropping and raising takes twenty seconds and can be accomplished at speeds up to 3mph.

Even in cold weather having the roof down doesn’t mean donning another layer of clothing. The big climate control vents that look like jet engines, are very effective and with wind deflectors in each of the roll-hoops and another, removable, plexiglass section in between, there is very little turbulence when driving.