Back to archive

2018 / Italian

2018 Ferrari 488 GTB 70th Anniversary

2018 Ferrari 488 GTB 70th Anniversary

In 1957, Enzo Ferrari personally handed the Shah of Iran the keys to a bespoke 410 Superamerica at Maranello — a two-tone silver and burgundy coachbuilt masterpiece that Princess Soraya would eventually claim as her own in the couple’s divorce settlement. Sixty years later, that singular act of royal patronage would inspire one of the most evocative special editions in Ferrari’s modern history, a livery numbered 19 of 70 and known simply as “The Shah,” applied to the one car in Ferrari’s 2017 lineup capable of doing the story real justice: the 488 GTB.

The 488 GTB arrived in 2015 carrying a weight that would have buckled most cars — the expectation of succeeding the 458 Italia, an almost universally beloved naturally aspirated masterpiece that many considered the finest mid-engine Ferrari since the F40. Ferrari’s answer was radical and, to some, alarming: fit a smaller, 3.9-litre twin-turbocharged V8 in place of the 458’s 4.5-litre screamer, make it the first turbocharged mid-engine Ferrari since that very F40, and promise the world it would be better. It was a claim that took some believing, and one that the 488 spent the better part of two years actually proving.topgear+1

2018 Ferrari 488 GTB 70th Anniversary

The 70th Anniversary edition arrived in 2017 as Ferrari turned a corporate milestone — seven decades since Enzo signed the founding documents in Maranello — into a rolling exhibition of the marque’s history. The plan was elegant in its ambition: seventy heritage liveries, each drawn from a specific year in Ferrari’s past, applied one apiece across five production models — the 488 GTB, 488 Spider, California T, GTC4Lusso, and F12berlinetta — for a total run of 350 cars. Access was restricted to VIP clients, the cars executed through Ferrari’s Tailor Made personalisation programme, and each one stamped with a chrome 70 1947–2017 plaque. This was not a decal pack; it was a marque speaking directly to its own mythology.rmsothebys+1

The 488 GTB variants of the programme numbered just 70 examples worldwide, and of those, livery number 19 — “The Shah” — stands apart for the depth of its historical referencing. The tribute car in question was the 400 Superamerica Series II Coupé bodied by Pinin Farina, a car defined by its two-tone silver over burgundy scheme that became inseparable from its royal owner’s identity. Translating that 1950s grandeur onto a 2017 supercar required careful calibration: the 488 GTB wears Pure Metal Silver across its flanks and nose, with Rubino Micalizzato — a deep, metallic burgundy — reserved for the roof. Inside, Vaumol Burgundy Connolly leather sits against grey Alcantara carpet, the period-correct material choices grounding the cabin in a tactile conversation with the past.classicdriver+1

2018 Ferrari 488 GTB 70th Anniversary

Underneath all that heritage, the engineering is resolutely, gloriously modern. The 488 cc-per-cylinder displacement that gives the car its name hints at how seriously Ferrari took the architecture of this engine — 3,902 cc in total, all-aluminium, dry-sumped, and fed by two parallel ball-bearing twin-scroll turbochargers supplied by IHI and Honeywell. The turbine wheels themselves are forged from titanium aluminide alloy — a material borrowed from jet engines — specifically to reduce rotational inertia and make the turbos spool with something approaching the immediacy of throttle response that naturally aspirated engines deliver for free. The result is 670 PS at 8,000 rpm and 760 Nm of torque arriving at just 3,000 rpm, figures that translated to specific outputs of 171.7 PS and 144 lb-ft per litre — both records for a production Ferrari at the time.​

The seven-speed dual-clutch Getrag gearbox, evolved from the 458’s unit, manages all of it with shifts so rapid they feel almost violent in Race mode, though the system is smart enough to be genuinely civilised in everyday driving. Carbon-ceramic brakes derived directly from the LaFerrari feature discs of 398 mm up front and 360 mm at the rear, using new material formulations that bring them to operating temperature faster than before and reduce stopping distances by nine percent over the 458. The 488 hits 100 km/h in 3.0 seconds and keeps climbing to 330 km/h — numbers that were, in 2015, genuinely shocking for a road car accessible without a hypercar budget.topgear+1

2018 Ferrari 488 GTB 70th Anniversary

Flavio Manzoni’s design for the 488 is a study in aerodynamic storytelling, and the body earns its Red Dot “Best of the Best” award for Product Design in 2016 on engineering grounds as much as aesthetic ones. The scalloped side intakes reference the 308 GTB, their central partition dividing airflow between the turbocharger compressors above and the intercoolers below — a functional split that also creates a visual tension perfectly suited to the car’s character. Door handles shaped as “shark fins” channel air into the rear intakes. A double front splitter feeds both the radiators and the underbody vortex generators. The rear diffuser is so enlarged that the twin exhausts had to be repositioned higher in the bumper to clear it. Every surface is working, and the total package delivers 50 percent more downforce than the 458 while simultaneously reducing drag — a combination that aerodynamicists typically describe as impossible without active assistance, which the 488’s variable rear flaps duly provide.evo+1

Behind the wheel, the 488 GTB reveals a personality quite different from what its statistics suggest. The throttle response is “pure, linear, exhilarating,” as Top Gear noted on first acquaintance, with the turbo lag that sceptics predicted simply absent in meaningful form — the TiAl turbines doing exactly the engineering job Ferrari claimed. The steering is almost telepathic in its immediacy, though that quickness demands respect: Motor Authority found that “overshoot it just a bit and the 488 dutifully goes off in that ill-advised direction.” This is not a car that forgives imprecision, yet it is paradoxically one of the most approachable Ferraris ever built at lower speeds, its chassis electronics providing a safety net of almost embarrassing sophistication.motorauthority+1

2018 Ferrari 488 GTB 70th Anniversary

The chassis balance, in particular, drew consistent praise from every credible source. Evo described the 488 GTB as “incredibly forgiving” with “simply astonishing levels of balance no matter what the speed,” while the broader consensus across a car that won both Top Gear’s Supercar of the Year for 2015 and Motor Trend’s Best Driver’s Car for 2017 was that Ferrari had achieved something genuinely rare: a machine of extraordinary capability that ordinary talented drivers could explore and enjoy.evo+1

None of which silences the one persistent criticism that followed the 488 through its entire production life. The naturally aspirated 458 sang at nine thousand rpm; the 488, with its turbos muffling some of the intake howl and smoothing the upper-register drama, sounds more composed, more controlled, less wild. That composure is arguably a feature rather than a fault — it makes the car more usable, more manageable, more liveable — but for the generation of enthusiasts raised on the 458’s operatic soundtrack, the 488 represents a trade. More performance, unquestionably. Less theatre, undeniably. Ferrari’s engineers would argue they delivered everything that matters and left the romance intact; the 458 devotees would disagree, politely but firmly, over the course of the next several years until the F8 Tributo rewrote the argument entirely.​

2018 Ferrari 488 GTB 70th Anniversary

The 70th Anniversary programme arrived at the perfect moment in the 488’s commercial life to demonstrate what the car was truly capable of as a canvas. Other liveries in the series paid tribute to Le Mans winners, Mille Miglia heroes, and Hollywood legends — the Steve McQueen 250 GT Lusso, the Stirling Moss 250 GT SWB — but “The Shah” draws on something more intimate and more human. Two people drove to Maranello to pick up their Ferrari, had it fitted with a dual-height driving position so that both a tall shah and a shorter princess could command its performance equally, and in doing so wrote a small but unforgettable chapter in the history of the marque. The 2017 tribute does not merely borrow that car’s colours; it borrows its story, and the weight of six decades of royal patronage sits quietly beneath the Pure Metal Silver paint in a way no press release could fully articulate. That “The Shah” 488 GTBs were built at all reflects how seriously Ferrari took its own history in the anniversary year — seriously enough to excavate a livery associated not with a race victory or a world record but simply with two people who loved the cars and made the trip to Maranello to say so. The 488 GTB, for all the debate about turbos and temperament, proved itself worthy of carrying that legacy. It is the car that bridged Ferrari’s naturally aspirated past and its turbocharged future, the car that showed the trade could be made without losing what matters, and in its 70th Anniversary form, it is also one of the most historically layered production Ferraris ever built. Not bad for a car some people worried would never live up to its predecessor.

Related Notes

2018 Ferrari 488 GTB 70th Anniversary