New Roma Spider Is Ferrari’s First Front-Engine Soft-Top Convertible In Five Decades

Ferrari has revealed the mystery model it had previously teased with a short video of a steering wheel. The model in question is the convertible derivative of the Roma GT car that debuted back in 2019. The Roma Spider becomes Ferrari’s first car to feature a soft-top folding roof since the F430 Spider was dropped from its line-up and its first front-engine soft-top convertible since the 1969 365 GTS/4 ‘Daytona’.

The Roma Spider retains the styling of its hard-top coupe sibling with the most notable changes from the A-pillar onward. The Coupe roof makes way for the folding fabric soft-top with the rear deck being modified to make the place to stow the roof and its folding mechanism. The sloping rear glass has made way for a pair of buttresses with the deck sloping downwards to the familiar tail section.

Ferrari says that the move to a fabric soft top has helped in making the folding roof more compact giving the drop-top a boot capacity of 255 litres. The roof can be folded or unfolded in as little as 13.5 seconds and at speeds of up to 60 kmph. Ferrari says that buyers will be able to specify the colour of the fabric roof along with elements like contrast stitching for the roof.

Coming to the cabin, little has changed in the layout as compared to the coupe, though the Spider does get additional switches on the centre console to operate the folding roof. There is also a unique wind deflector system built into the cabin with the backrests of the rear seats of the 2+ GT car, when the seat is unoccupied, folding outward and upward into a shelf-like position to reduce the flow of air into the cabin. The deflector can also be deployed on the move at speeds of up to 170 kmph.

The move away from a fixed roof has meant greater reinforcements under the skin which sees the Spider gain 85kg in weight.

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Coming to the engine, the Spider carries forward the same 3.9-litre turbocharged V8 as the Coupe pushing out 612 bhp and 760 Nm. Power is sent to the rear wheels via an 8-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox. Ferrari claims that the Spider will hit 100 kmph in 3.4 seconds – identical to the coupe, and hit a top speed of over 320 kmph.