Better than being the best car Ferrari produces right now, the Ferrari 296 GTB has been judged the best production car in the world.
As if our own drive and review of the Ferrari 296 GTB was not enough of a clear indicator that it is one of the most ground-breaking models to have come from Maranello recently, the model has been judged Best Production Car of 2022, decided by a panel of 11 journalists from different publications.
The prestigious design prize has been running for almost 40 years, with the Production Car category first introduced by Italian magazine, Auto&Design, as part of its Car Design Award in 1984.
The award was announced yesterday by Auto&Design during Milan Design Week at the ADI Design Museum, and is given given to cars that have made a significant contribution to the evolution of car design. The 11-jounralist panel said: “Creating a form this beautiful and organic whilst still complying with all current regulations and giving the car an incredibly high level of technology and performance, is a truly impressive feat. The legendary sports prototype racers of the 1960s have informed the Ferrari 296 GTB’s design and the end result is a superb, contemporary interpretation of a classic design language”.
Indeed, in our own review of the 2022 Ferrari 296 GTB we awarded the supercar a full five-star rating, concluding: “Given the incredible level of power, the 296 GTB is so easy to drive quickly but, importantly, so much fun, too. The clever chassis electronics give it an approachability that means you can make the most of the glorious powertrain, which sounds superb. Yet again Ferrari has put clear water between it and its rivals when it comes to the clever integration of mechanical and electrical – both in terms of the powertrain and the software that controls it. If this is how Ferrari will approach electrification in the future, there’s nothing to worry about at all.”
But while some car makers focus on ‘mobility’, Ferrari feels that ‘driving’ shouldn’t be a dirty word, and its customers should have fun in their cars. So this is what the 296 has been developed to deliver.
At the car’s heart is an all-new 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6, and the first with a ‘hot vee’ turbo configuration, helped significantly by a 120-degree angle between its cylinder banks. This set-up reduces the length of the intake and improves throttle response. You can read our in-depth feature on the Ferrari 296 here.
Automotive Daily