Frankfurt motor show: Ferrari 458

This is the Ferrari 458 Italia, one of the stars of the Frankfurt motor show.

The Ferrari 458 Italia draws inspiration from the Enzo and takes a new look influenced by the Mille Chili concept car. By supercar standards the shape is extremely slippery, with a drag coefficient of just 0.32.

Ferrari 458 driven on the road: read the first drive, see the pics, watch the Ferrari 458 video

Ferrari has confirmed that the car, codenamed F142 and long rumoured to be named the F450, will be called the 458 Italia. The name derives from the powerplant: a 4.5-litre V8 which Ferrari claims has the highest specific output of any normally aspirated car engine.

It certainly has more in common with superbikes than cars; at 127bhp per litre, the specific output is greater than that of many turbocharged engines.

The high-revving 4498cc V8 has very light internal parts and tiny piston skirts, resulting in low rotation inertia and a 12.5:1 compression ratio. It puts out 562bhp at 9000rpm, 500rpm higher than the 430. That makes it the highest-revving Ferrari road car ever.

It means the 458 Italia will be ferociously fast, and Ferrari claims it will sprint to 62mph in under 3.4sec on its way to a top speed of “over 200mph”. The 458 has lapped the Fiorano test track in 1m 25s, a fraction off the time of the Enzo hypercar.

While advanced engine electronics and lightweight parts underpin the extra performance, this will be the first mid-engined application of Ferrari’s direct injection fuel system, which appeared first on the front-engined California. It also runs Ferrari’s now-traditional flat-plane crankshaft.

The 458’s engine will be one of the most flexible in Ferrari’s history, too, with 398lb ft of torque arriving at 6000rpm. While that sounds peaky, it’s only two-thirds of the way through the 458’s rev range, and over 80 per cent (318lb ft) is available from 3250rpm.

The direct fuel injection has also helped cut CO2 emissions, producing a claimed 320g/km of CO2, even though it is faster and produces significantly more power than the 483bhp F430 and the 508bhp 430 Scuderia.

Dual-clutch ’box

Ferrari learned a lot developing the seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox for the California and it has had to do even more development to fit the unit into the 458 Italia’s engine bay, under the curvaceous glasshouse.

The dual-clutch unit from the California has been modified with different ratios and now shifts even faster than the 430 Scuderia’s 0.06sec. The gearbox’s shift style is likely to be slightly more aggressive than the California’s.

The E-Diff differential and the F1-Trac skid control system have long been the flagship carryover technologies from Formula 1, but the 458 Italia takes them even further and adds another piece of F1-derived technology to the brakes.