Ferrari Roma review

If you ask Ferrari what the Ferrari Roma is all about, it'll tell you 'La Nuova Dolce Vita' – the new sweet life. In other words, it harks back to the carefree pleasures of Rome in the Fifties and Sixties. 

To that end, the Roma is unlike other modern Ferraris. It doesn’t have the fussy and harsh body angles that come from designs sculpted in wind tunnels for maximum performance.

Instead, there are visual echoes of the 1950s Ferrari GT cars that had long, uninterrupted and simple lines flowing from front to back. The Roma is elegance on four wheels.  

The return to simple design doesn’t mean this 2+2 coupé is all form over function, though. It has a 3.9-litre twin-turbocharged V8 under that curvaceous bonnet for a start, giving you more than 600bhp to play with.

You get similar suspension to more performance-focused Ferraris, but controlled by a different software set-up. In fact, the Roma ends up being a half-way house between the sports-honed F8 Tributo and the softer Ferrari Portofino.

To live up to that, it needs to be easy to live with if you drive it every day, but deliver driving thrills to match its looks when you're in a more exuberant mood. So, how well does it do that?

Over the next few pages of this review, we’re going to investigate that very question, rating the Ferrari Roma for performance, comfort, usability, practicality and more. We'll also compare it with the best sports car rivals.

As you'd expect, the Roma keeps glamorous company, so those rivals include the Aston Martin DB11, Bentley Continental GT and the (very tough to beat) Porsche 911.  

Remember, when you next buy a new car, we can often help you get it for the best price – although you won't find discounts of the rarified likes of the Roma. Simply search our free What Car? New Car Buying service to see if you could save money on your chosen make and model without haggling.

Enzo Ferrari once said: “The fact is, I don’t just drive from A to B. I enjoy feeling the car’s reactions, becoming part of it.” That’s something Ferrari seems to have taken to heart when designing and building the Roma – it truly is a wonderful car to drive. 

For starters, you have the 3.9-litre twin-turbocharged V8 engine that sits at the sweeping front end. The Roma’s beating heart puts around 612bhp at the mercy of your right foot. It responds so immediately to your inputs, even at low revs, that you’d be forgiven for forgetting that it has two turbos strapped to it. 

Then there’s the symphony of noise that accompanies you as you’re shoved into your seat, flying from 0-62mph in 3.4sec and up to a top speed of 199mph. It’s not quite the high-pitched wail the 458 was revered for, but it’s still glorious enough that you’ll find any excuse to drop down a gear to enjoy it, over and over again.  

While you’re being enveloped in V8 noise, all the power is being fed to the rear wheels through an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox that’s derived from the one in the outrageously powerful SF90 Stradale. In manual mode, the large paddles behind the steering wheel give you access to smooth and near instantaneous gear changes that don’t have the jarring ferocity of other sports cars.

In automatic mode, the gear change feels a little slower but gains even more smoothness. It makes sedate driving remarkably easy, allowing you to sit in traffic or retain some semblance of efficiency, running in eighth gear at as low as 1000rpm. If you need a sudden burst of power, it’ll happily oblige and drop you down a gear. 

When you aim the Roma at a corner, it grabs its chance to prove that it's more sports car than GT coupé. The steering is deliciously direct and sharp, seeming to turn into corners as the thought enters your head, rather than waiting until you actually turn the wheel. It can take a moment to get used to the lightning fast steering, but it’s one of the best in its class once you do. 

Compared with the Bentley Continental GT, the Roma’s ride and suspension are leagues harder. That can make it a little busy on normal roads and it doesn’t deal with potholes and imperfections in the same effortless manner as the Continental GT. However, the stiffness is ultra-purposeful, and means there’s almost no body lean and plenty of grip, giving you loads of confidence to place the car exactly where you want it.

For extra confidence, even in bad weather conditions, the Roma comes with all the usual Ferrari driving modes: Ice, Rain, Comfort, Sport and – if you're an experienced performance car driver – ESC Off, which deactivates electronic stability control. Alongside those modes, there’s a plethora of other systems designed to keep you safe, including Ferrari’s latest V6.0 side-slip control (to help you manage oversteer).

It's fairly easy to get comfortable in the front of the Ferrari Roma, with electronically adjustable seats and plenty of steering wheel adjustment. The seats themselves are comfortable, if a little hard, and offer lots of support regardless of whether you’re on a twisty road or the motorway.

You sit much lower in the Roma than in direct rivals, making it feel sportier before you've even fire up that V8 engine. In fact, if you like the low-slung driving position of more focused sports cars – the McLaren 570GT or Lamborghini Huracán, for example – it'll be right up your alley.

As good as the low driving position feels, it does cause problems when it comes to visibility. The wing mirror blocks your view when you try to see out of a junction, and the high beltline means it’s near impossible to see low-level obstructions.

Rear visibility isn’t much better and, even using the standard parking sensors and rear-view camera, reverse parking is a challenge, especially in bad weather or at night. The surprisingly open McLaren GT is much easier to see out of, but that car will beat most of the Roma's rivals for visibility, too. 

The interior as a whole is a wonderful place to be, with sculpted design that replicates the simple lines found on the outside of the car. The Bentley Continental GT is more luxurious, but the uncluttered dashboard and wrap-around design of the Roma is arguably the best in the current Ferrari range. As you’d expect, there are swathes of carbon fibre and leather throughout, with none of the plastic you’ll find in the Aston Martin DB11.  

The uncluttered dashboard comes at a price though. Pretty much every button you’d normally find there has been converted from a physical control to a touch-sensitive one, then placed either next to the driver or on the steering wheel. The only exception is the selector you use for reverse, which has been designed to look like an old Ferrari manual gearbox gate.

This is where we run into a problem. Touch-sensitive buttons might look cool, but we find them a nightmare to use. That makes the Roma’s interior annoying and goes against the ethos of the chilled-out grand tourer lifestyle. Even the big red start/stop button on the steering wheel – once a lovely tactile highlight of the Ferrari experience – has been converted into a touch-sensitive button that is not always visible. 

Infotainment-wise, the Roma comes with an 8.4in touchscreen display that features built-in sat-nav, bluetooth and DAB radio as standard. As with many of its rivals, including the Porsche 911, the system can only be operated through touch. Again, we'd prefer physical controls – the iDrive system in the BMW 8 Series Coupé, for example, is far better. 

As a whole, the infotainment system is frustrating to use, responding to your prods slowly and flicking through menus jerkily. Little things such as the delay as you turn the stereo volume up or down are irritating. Similar gremlins affect the generations-old system in the DB11, but the Roma is a far newer and more expensive car, so it's particularly disappointing here.

There’s an impressive amount of space in the front of the Ferrari Roma, and even if you're six feet tall or more, you won’t struggle for head or leg room. You also get a sufficient number of small cubbies for you and your passenger to store your phones or a drink.

Rear space isn’t so good. While Ferrari calls the Roma a 2+2 and there are indeed seats in the back, they’re more for show than anything else. It’s questionable whether you could actually ever use them for anything – let alone seating an adult. In fact, there’s even less space back there than you get from the tiny rear seats of the Porsche 911.

The seats do come with Isofix fittings, but you probably won’t be able to fit a child seat back there unless you have one that’s specially designed by Ferrari, which is usually an expensive option. A Bentley Continental GT will serve you much better if you plan to use the rear seats. 

Boot space in the Roma is a little more inspiring, offering you around 272 litres of space with the rear seats up. In real world terms, that should be enough to fit a couple of carry-on suitcases or a decent weekly shop. If you need more space, the rear seats can be folded down to give you a total of 345 litres, which is almost the size of the Continental GT’s boot but much smaller than the 420 litres the vastly cheaper BMW 8 Series Coupé offers. 

The Ferrari Roma will cost you vastly more than less rarified rivals such as the BMW 8 Series Coupé or Porsche 911 GTS. Even in the context of its direct rivals, it’s more expensive than the Aston Martin DB11 or Bentley Continental GT V8.

As with most cars with eight cylinders, this will not be a cheap car to run, either. If you use your Roma as your daily driver, you can expect around 25mpg and CO2 emissions figures of around 255g/km – although that’s hardly the point of a V8. Besides, those numbers are similar to what you can expect from the Roma’s rivals (and better than V12-powered rivals).

Ferrari wasn't included in our 2021 What Car? Reliability Survey, but you can expect your Roma to come with a four-year manufacturer warranty and a seven-year genuine part maintenance plan, to give you a little peace of mind.  

For all the latest reviews, advice and new car deals, sign up to the What Car? newsletter here.