{"id":2154646,"date":"2026-09-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2154646"},"modified":"2026-09-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T21:00:00","slug":"ferrari-849-testarossa-vs-one-of-the-worlds-best-kept-driving-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2154646","title":{"rendered":"Ferrari 849 Testarossa vs one of the world’s ‘best kept driving secrets’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s at about 11.30pm that I begin to think this truly was a terrible idea. The Spirit of Tasmania \u2013 an old Greek ferry \u2013 lumbers out of the relatively calm Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne, Australia, into the notoriously tempestuous Bass Strait. Suddenly, as we enter open ocean, the great vessel begins pitching fore and aft. Dogs in travelling kennels below deck start howling and one car alarm, deep in the ship\u2019s hold, starts joining another in a great cacophony of sirens and horns bellowing up the stairwells.<\/p>\n

Lying in bed in my cabin, I can\u2019t help imagining a half million quid Ferrari 849 Testarossa<\/a> pinballing back and forward between lorries and Toyota Hiluxes somewhere deep below.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Only hours earlier, this trip was making a lot more sense. That\u2019s because if you love driving and you live in Australia, no matter where you are in the country, there\u2019s a gravity-like tug pulling you southwards \u2013 to Tasmania. An island the size of Scotland with the population of Liverpool, Tasmania sits about 155 miles south of the Australian mainland. A living remnant of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, and a Mecca for drivers.<\/p>\n

Words: Dylan Campbell<\/em>
Photography: Alastair Brook<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A quick browse on Google Maps reveals road after intestinal road, snaking through largely untouched wilderness, where you might not see another car for hours, making this one of the best kept driving secrets in the world. The only problem with getting to the world\u2019s secret driving nirvana is you can\u2019t actually drive there. You have to go by sea. Hence the Hail Marys while reaching for life jackets.<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t deterred some of the best drivers to have lived from answering its siren call, taking part in Targa Tasmania \u2013 a tarmac rally inaugurated in 1992 and one of the world\u2019s last great motorsport events held on public roads, inspired by the Targa Florio. Think Walter R\u00f6hrl, Sir Stirling Moss, Jochen Mass and Sir Jack Brabham.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When organising a car for such a trip \u2013 to a remote island, often with no phone reception \u2013 logic suggests an all-wheel drive SUV with a full-size spare wheel, sat phone and enough drinking water to last six people until next February. But that wouldn\u2019t befit a pilgrimage, so instead we\u2019ve got a car with almost no ground clearance, no luggage space and tyres that require airfreighting in should one go pop. Its name also starts with T and ends in A, which is all the justification we need.<\/p>\n

Named for one of the most iconic supercars of the 1980s, the Ferrari 849 Testarossa replaces the somewhat unloved SF90 Stradale<\/a> as the brand\u2019s hybrid era series production flagship. At \u00a3407,617, our Tassie-bound Testa in Rosso Fiammante red has more than a bit of 1960s Ferrari 330 P3\/4 about its devilish front and rear winglets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inside, the contrasting Alcantara Blu Elettrico interior is every bit as flamboyant. Sitting in the middle, a dry-sump 4.0-litre twin turbo V8 teamed up with three electric motors \u2013 one for each front wheel, one on the rear axle. The engine alone produces 819bhp at 7,500rpm and 621lb ft at 6,500rpm. Total combined power \u2013 hydrocarbons and electrons \u2013 is a dizzying 1,036bhp.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s nearly two per cent of the 56,600bhp of the boat that\u2019s just made landfall. Having boarded in Melbourne \u2013 and after 10 hours wishing I hadn\u2019t \u2013 it\u2019s hard not to rub one\u2019s eyes upon arriving in Devonport on Tasmania\u2019s north coast. We drive off the ferry at about 7am (the car mercifully in one piece, same my nerves) and head west, skirting Tasmania\u2019s north coast. Alastair the photographer and I are here for just three days, and to get to the first of the good roads requires driving approximately 19 miles to the seaside town of Penguin, then due south and inland.<\/p>\n

First impressions of the Testarossa come flooding in. Funnily, the engine hasn\u2019t piped up yet as we navigate our first few miles using only electricity. A plug-in hybrid, the 849 has a small 7.9kWh lithium-ion battery granting about 16 miles of front-drive, saintly, EV-only range.<\/p>\n

In coastal Penguin, the morning sun beats down on Bass Strait and gives it a metallic shade of deep blue, but we\u2019re drawn towards Tasmania\u2019s interior. We turn off south and it doesn\u2019t take long before we\u2019re on a winding strip to ourselves. Hellyer Gorge is one of 35 public roads closed for Targa Tasmania each year, which covers over 1,200 miles across the state, and it\u2019s easy to see why they picked this one. As the road ahead begins to visibly bunch in the satnav, I switch the 849\u2019s eManettino from Hybrid to Performance, and there\u2019s a burst of fizzing revs as the V8 awakens.<\/p>\n

Tumbling down into a gorge, crossing a bridge over a fast flowing river flanked by damp, leech-infested forest, Hellyer Gorge is a 21-mile warm up in the truest sense. A foreboding blue tyre icon in the digital instrument cluster reminds us that the Pirelli P Zero R tyres \u2013 265\/35R20 front and 325\/30R20 rear \u2013 aren\u2019t yet up to temp.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On these cold, wet, 8\u00b0C Tassie roads, the 849 feels a little unsure. The gorge leads you into Guildford, after which the roads straighten slightly like someone\u2019s pulled it taut. Despite being just 31 miles from the coast, it still feels like a place they\u2019d drop Bear Grylls by helicopter \u2013 spookily quiet, only the distant caw of a cockatoo and I can hear the blood pulsing in my ears. First opportunity then to ignore the warning symbols and find out what a thousand horsepower feels like.<\/p>\n

Switching the Manettino to Race, I select Manual mode using the little metal throwback shift lever, flick down into second and plunge the throttle pedal. There\u2019s an instant reaction as electricity surges to all four tyres before the V8 pulls rank. Turbochargers whistle as an angry flat-plane induction note takes over towards 8,300rpm, blue and red LEDs frantically illuminating across the top of the steering wheel.<\/p>\n

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\"Ferrari<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Ferrari claims 0\u201362mph in \u201cless than\u201d 2.3 seconds, 0\u2013124mph in 6.35, quicker than a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, so full throttle in this car requires planning. Even then, you can only take little swigs of it. A sustained depression makes you feel like your right foot is mixing liquid hydrogen and oxygen into a great nozzle somewhere aft of the tailpipes. It\u2019s every bit as ferocious as you might imagine.<\/p>\n

The bruised skies have merely threatened so far, but it\u2019s not long before the roads are doused \u2013 time to quit while we\u2019re ahead and find our motel in Tullah. We meet the cleaner Jody who silently studies the jutting front of the 849. We assume she\u2019s about to make some comment about the gopping underbite. \u201cThat wouldn\u2019t go over an echidna,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

What follows is a 25-minute lesson in the best strategies for avoiding the various native animals inclined to leap in front of your car on the surrounding roads. \u201cIf there\u2019s an echidna, toot your horn, they\u2019ll curl up in a ball and you can go right over them,\u201d she says. \u201cWallabies, you can\u2019t do anything. Wombats continue the way they\u2019re going. Tassie Devils usually keep running or stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

She looks at us, concerned, making sure it\u2019s all going in. The next morning, we\u2019re heading to Tasmania\u2019s proudest ecological disaster, Queenstown, about an hour away. The best route is to Zeehan via Rosebery past Montezuma Falls. A road that would make the list of The Best Drives On Earth, but a mere transit leg in Tasmania.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Queenstown feels like a Swiss mountain village surrounded by naked hills, giving it an otherworldly feel. In the late 1800s, all the trees were cut down and fed into copper smelters, which belched great clouds of sulphur into the local atmosphere, killing much of the remaining vegetation. Anything left was finished off by acid rain and erosion.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re here for a road called the 99 Bends. Images of helicopters chasing Porsche 911 GT3s on this road as part of Targa Tasmania come vividly to mind \u2013 today, it\u2019s a drone and 849 Testarossa. Ascending about 250m in just three miles, the 99 Bends clings to the side of a Martian landscape with just a thin guardrail between you and an unwelcome feeling of weightlessness. It\u2019s a road to sort of nowhere, meaning it\u2019s mostly empty… and bone dry.<\/p>\n

The Testarossa transforms into a different animal as the sticky Pirellis finally get some heat into them. With just 1.9 turns lock-to-lock, the super-fast steering means you can turn with thought alone and there\u2019s a vertical wall of grip at the apex of each corner. Ferrari has never fitted larger turbos to a road car than it has in this one and it\u2019s reason alone to put the windows down.<\/p>\n

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The turbos hiss like a bathtub full of snakes<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Under load, right beside your head, the turbos hiss like a bathtub full of snakes; shut the throttle down quickly and you can hear fluttering and whooshing. It might not produce the eargasm wail of a nat-asp V8, but there\u2019s enough going on for it to feel like a living, breathing thing, with smoother conversations going on between each axle than the SF90.<\/p>\n

And like that our Tasmanian odyssey is over, three days gone in three minutes, but an 88-mile, two-hour \u2018touring\u2019 stage back to Devonport and the ferry gives us plenty of time to ponder. You could spend weeks exploring all the roads this island has to offer. Place names like Devil\u2019s Gullet, Skullbone Plains, Hellfire Bluff, Dismal Swamp and, er, Middlesex, reflect the impression it made on the first European visitors. But what might stay with me most are the locals.<\/p>\n

There must be more Italian blood here than I thought because in some towns, we\u2019re literally chased down the road. If ever a small municipality needs to do an accurate census, they could just park a Testarossa in the middle of it and wait about 15 minutes. The born-again Testarossa is a freak of four-wheeled nature. Of course, bringing it to Tasmania\u2019s mostly wet roads in winter felt like taking a wrecking ball to a game of conkers, but it offers more than just furious, brain melting speed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s actual ride comfort, especially in \u2018Bumpy Road Mode\u2019, where the entire car floats over imperfections as if suspended on a cushion of air. But then there\u2019s the menu scrolling noises, which sound like a man gulping, and makes me want to gnaw my own fingers off. The dashboard creaks incessantly over crappy surfaces like HMS Victory in a stiff squall, and the 849 drinks like it couldn\u2019t afford a psychologist.<\/p>\n

As we close in on Devonport, we pass a locality called Promised Land, and Google Maps inexplicably wants to take us back south towards Mount Roland \u2013 another Targa Tasmania stage. Even modern technology isn\u2019t immune to the gravity-like tug towards Tasmania\u2019s best bits. It\u2019s patently the wrong way, a 36-mile detour, but for another hit, we take it anyway. We\u2019re running early, one last swig can\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s at about 11.30pm that I begin to think this truly was a terrible idea. The Spirit of Tasmania \u2013 an old Greek ferry \u2013 lumbers out of the relatively calm Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne, Australia, into the notoriously tempestuous Bass Strait. Suddenly, as we enter open ocean, the great vessel begins pitching fore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2154646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2154646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2154646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2154646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2154646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}