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What It’s Like to Drive a Ferrari as a Four-Seat Family Car

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Ferrari GTC4 Lusso Four Seat Family
Image used with permission by copyright holder
For reasons that are slightly beyond my comprehension — but into which I’ll not look too deeply, because why risk messing up a good thing? — over the past few months, I’ve gotten to enjoy a pair of different Ferraris. The first time, I got an electric blue Ferrari 488 Spider. The four days I spent with that car changed my perception of what driving an automobile could be like, and essentially spoiled me for life. It also rather spoiled my son (then three, now four), as we hooked his car seat into the thoughtfully-provided LATCH anchors there in the shotgun seat of the two-person convertible and drove around town for hours. (I kept it under light speed while he was in the vehicle, FYI.) For weeks after the 488 went back to the dealership, he asked when we would get our next Ferrari, a question I always had to answer with a wistful: “Well… probably never.”

But then we got another Ferrari.

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And if only for yet one more weekend, the John family’s second Ferrari was thoroughly enjoyed. You see, this time, the whole family could come along for a ride. At the same time. That’s right, Ferrari makes a four-seat sports car designed, not for use on the track, but rather for long drives through the countryside or the mountains, or for getting groceries after you drop the kids at school. The Ferrari GTC4Lusso T not only has four seats, but it also has more trunk space than many standard sedans.

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Ferrari GTC4 Lusso Four Seat Family
Steven John/The Manual Steven John/The Manual
Should you ever find yourself driving a GTC4Lusso T on a track instead of while running errands, though, don’t worry too much: The car has a 680 horsepower twin turbo charged V8 engine that propels it past 62 mph in fewer than 3.5 seconds, hitting a top speed of 199 miles per hour. (In fact, the car probably tops out at 214 mph, but that’s not entirely on the record.) I didn’t drive “my” Lusso anywhere near 199 mph, of course. Now, 130-plus? Well, maybe for a few seconds. But just a few.

My experience with the Ferrari GTC4Lusso T began with a briefing all about the car given at a lovely Manhattan hotel named The Surrey. (To put the place in perspective, the pair of Ferraris sparkling on the street out front didn’t look out of place. I probably did, but I played it off well enough, I guess, because they let me inside.) There, over a fancier breakfast than I’d eaten in months, I learned all about the graceful, ferocious family-friendly machine I’d soon be driving care of a brand representative in from Italy. After the morning briefing, I hopped into my Ferrari GTC4Lusso T and pressed the starter button. The engine came to life with a roar both savage and dulcet, and one that I had missed so very much since parting with the 488 over the summer.

Ferrari GTC4 Lusso Four Seat Family
Steven John/The Manual Steven John/The Manual
Let me tell you this: Driving a Ferrari in Manhattan’s morning rush hour traffic is not much fun. But let me also say this: Driving a Ferrari on upstate highways and around the winding roads of Harriman State Park is lots of fun. Except when you get pulled over. Which I did. (Fortunately I wasn’t actually going all that fast at the time. My disarming charm put together with stupid dumb luck saved me from a ticket, and I kept the car near the posted limit for a while after that.)

My weekend with the GTC4Lusso T began with a visit to the stunning new Valley Rock Inn, a property still in active development by entrepreneur and real estate developer (and genuinely nice guy) Michael Bruno. The Valley Rock Inn, located in Sloatsburg, New York, is a currently sleepy, likely soon-to-be happening town right next to Harriman State Park that deserves its own article which, hey, I’ll be writing soon enough. So enough about that for now.

Anyway. I drove the car all around the state park and the surrounding towns and roads for much of Friday afternoon and part of Saturday morning, then I headed back home around lunchtime. That afternoon, we put our son’s car seat in the back of the Ferrari and my wife hopped in beside me. For the next two days, the family spent most of our waking hours thinking of places to which we could drive and intentionally completing errands using the least efficient routes possible.

Because when you have a family-friendly Ferrari GTC4Lusso, you and the family spend as much time as possible in the car. And when the good folks from Ferrari take their car back at about 6:45 am on a Monday morning, you get a bit misty-eyed. Then you get some coffee and get back to the real world. Oh well, there’s always next time. Maybe …

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Steven John
Steven John
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Steven John is a writer and journalist living just outside New York City, by way of 12 years in Los Angeles, by way of…
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MINI Stunt Driving School: The most fun you can have on four (and sometimes three) wheels
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“It’s not your car.”
Those words ring in my ear as I prepare to do a reverse-180 in a MINI. When you hear words like those, it’s usually an admonishment. This time, a MINI stunt school instructor is reminding me to stop giving a damn about the car and just go for it.
It’s not my car. It’s not my concern. At the end of this, I will walk away and go learn how to drive a manual transmission (again). Hopefully.
The instructors taught us the basics of stunt driving in some of the smallest, coolest cars to learn. Even the larger Countryman MINIs we were driving are an absolute blast. The instructors were, too, a small team of characters with a passion for cars and deep knowledge of how to whip a MINI around a course.
We were all told to do unnatural things, but the instructors were patient. While doing frontside-180s, I tapped the foot brake, and the instructor admonished me over the radio. It does make you want to yell, “Calm down, this is all new to me, and it’s scary!” But you roll with it. (Slide with it? I digress.)
Stunt driving school had three components: a front-side-180, a backside-180, and a course designed to incorporate both disciplines with a new skill at the end: sliding into a parking spot at a 90-degree angle.
The frontside-180 was a brilliant, simple way to start the course. You get the car to about 25 miles per hour, and when you enter a cone “maze” you yank on the parking brake and jerk the wheel 180 degrees right-to-left. The trick is that once the front bumper hits the first cone in the entry, your hands go to work. The tricky part is leaving your feet out of it. I kept hitting the foot brake. It was a force of habit — and what I was admonished for.
It was here I learned that you can mentally prepare for g-force, but your body will do what it does when experiencing it. I wasn’t actively thinking about hitting the foot brake. My body reacted. In that scenario, my impulse was to hit the foot brake as that’s “normal” driving safety. Being embarrassed over the radio did allow me a little mind-over-matter for the rest of the event, though.
Second, we did a reverse-180. The aim was simple: mash the accelerator while in reverse and yank the parking brake and wheel 180 degrees (left-to-right this time), then stabilize the wheel once you’re facing the opposite direction at the end of the slide. Slip it into drive, and drive off.
I had more success here. I’d venture because I stopped caring about the car. While waiting in line for this stunt, the instructor looked me in the eye and said, “It’s not your car; just go for it.” So I did.

Once lined up and cleared for reverse entry, I stomped on the accelerator. Once I saw two marker cones in my peripheral vision and the car was whining while in reverse gear, I yanked the brake and pushed the wheel 180 degrees to the passenger side. As a lefty, this was unnatural, but I succeeded. Everyone in the class was nervous about this stunt — reverse is not a “speed” gear, after all — but it wasn’t as difficult as it seemed.
As the front side of the vehicle was less engaged in a reverse-180, my classmates and I began challenging ourselves to see who could get the car on three wheels. A MINI is too low to the ground to worry about rolling over, but we were pretty sure we could get at least one wheel off the ground. (Spoiler: Most of us did.)
Finally, we were asked to put it all together. A reverse-180, a small maze of cones, a frontside-180, back through part of the cone maze, through a sharp 90-degree turn, and finally sliding into a parallel parking spot, just like you see in the movies. The kicker: we were never taught the parking spot slide, only told how to do it for this specific event — right before the instructors had us queue up for the timed final.
This was a bit of a test on how fast you could think your way through new tests, too. We hadn’t faced the cone maze yet, or been asked to drive aggressively through any obstacles. And we had no in-car experience with sliding into a parking space.
Plus, I had to focus on the stunt at hand, then immediately jettison that knowledge and focus on what was next. When doing one-off tricks, you have time to talk it out with classmates and think about how you will do it on your next run (you get quite a few tries at each stunt). In the final test, we each had to do the stunt, focus on what was next, and try to get the best time.
We got a few runs here, too. Sliding into the spot is more complicated than it seems and requires a 90-degree wheel turn while pulling the parking brake. Simple enough, sure, but a new skill and uniquely odd when you’ve been turning the wheel 180 degrees all day. After two 180-degree stunts, a 90-degree slide is a clever way to measure how much control you have of the car and yourself.
It was rewarding to nail the final, too. I hit all my stunts and no cones, then nailed the last 90-degree slide. And when you attend stunt driving school, know your daydreams about The Italian Job or your invented cool-guy-spy-movie-scenarios are normal. You feel like James Bond because you’re driving like James Bond.
He had an Aston Martin, of course. I had a MINI. But you know, a MINI is just a lot more fun than any other car out there and is the perfect vehicle for this misadventure of mine. I’ve never wanted to take a used car home more than after MINI stunt driving school.
It wasn’t my car. But I wish it was.
 

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