Ferrari GTC 4 Lusso

It is a Ferrari and is essentially a station-wagon. Knowing Ferrari’s legacy of building superfast sportscars it may seem out of place. Meet the Ferrari GTC4 Lusso – the three door four-seater shooting brake from the Italian stable. The GTC4 Lusso is the next generation Ferrari FF which was built as a grand tourer to carve continents at breath taking speeds comfortably.

The front fascia is dominated by a wide single-piece horizontally slatted air dam that extends across the width of the car with the prancing horse emblem in the centre. The Ferraro 458 style headlamps are swept back on the contoured hood with flared fenders on the side. Moving on to the side, the Ferrari has the familiar low slung profile with large alloy wheels filling up the wheel arches. The long hood is complemented by the breathing gills on the fenders. The raked windshield means a low slung roof that almost extends to the back of the car – typical for shooting brakes. The tail is also as dramatic as the whole car with the tapering cabin, wide rear bumper with rear splitter and the quad exhausts.

Wrapped in leather the function-focussed interior of the Ferrari GTC4 Lusso is exquisite especially with the carbon fibre inlays. Like all grand tourers, it gets a touch-screen infotainment system, climate control, power adjustable front seats et al. The three spoke steering wheel gets the typical flurry of switches that can control everything from driving modes, car setup and gear shifts along with Bluetooth telephony. The instrument cluster has the rev counter taking centre stage while speed and other vitals are displayed on the two TFT screens around the tachometer. Even the co-driver gets a peek at exactly how fast you are driving through a screen embedded in the dashboard displaying rpm, speed and the gear you are driving in.

The GTC4 Lusso is powered by the massive 6.3-litre Ferrari V12 that produces 680bhp of power and 697Nm of torque. The naturally aspirated mill powers the Ferrari past 100kmph in almost 3.5 seconds to a top speed of 345kmph. It also gets an improved version of the dual-gearbox four-wheel-drive setup from the FF along with four-wheel-steering as well.

For safety, you are cocooned between four airbags – two upfront and two curtain airbags. It gets traction control, launch control, skid control and a host of other electronic aids as a part of its electronic stability program. As far as competition is concerned, there is the Aston Martin Rapide and the Porsche Panamera but none of them comes anywhere close to the Italian in terms of price as well as performance.