Maranello, Italy — I am absolutely thrilled. I built a Ferrari engine. A real, honest-to-God, no-it’s-not-a-plastic-1/8th-scale-model Ferrari engine or even a LEGO set. It was, in fact, an F154 V8, the same turbocharged monster that has powered the 488 these last four years and still powers the Tributo I will test in a few hours.Actually, the hardest thing I did was install a spark plug — a rare-as-hen’s-teeth NGK SILZKAR8HKS, by the way — but I did have to use a special tool. I also got to fit piston to cylinder liner — with the best ring compressing tool I‘ve ever sampled — and sintered caps to connecting rod. That may not sound like much and my specific engine may be just another abused class-demonstration block that will never internal combust in anger. But, I am completely taken by the moment nonetheless. I am in Maranello, I am in the Ferrari factory — in the very same classroom that all Ferrari techs learn their craft, no less — and I just torqued the rarest of rare double overhead camshaft head down. I am quite literally the kid in the candy shop, with minimal — after all, this is Italy — supervision. It might seem trivial. It is almost certainly pathetic. But I am tickled pink and I can’t wait to get back home to show off my “official” Ferrari meccanico overalls to my soon-to-be-jealous pals at Driving HQ. That is the magic of visiting Ferrari. No place in the automotive world is at once so thoroughly efficient and yet so steeped in history. Cloistered away inside a compound that holds the most modern of manufacturing plants is the little shop, well, let’s call it a hut in comparison to the new plant, where Mr. Ferrari and his small coterie of crazies assembled Testarossas. And what’s that over the there? Oh, that’s the barn he converted into an office to watch the F1 races he was too busy to attend. And, oh my Lord, is that… why, yes it is. A bust of Gilles Villeneuve — located on via Gilles Villeneuve, no less — that serves as a welcome to Ferrari’s famed Fiorano test track. Because, well, Gilles was reputedly Enzo’s favourite racer of all time. What I am trying to say is that, in a country that takes its legacy and heritage seriously, we are standing in its epicentre of hero worship. It’s impossible not to note that giants strode here.All of which makes the fact that the car we’re driving at Ferrari’s also-steeped-in-lore test facility — the F8 — is also called the Tributo. Quite literally, tribute. Officially, the new F8 is a tribute to Ferrari’s V8 — an engine that originated in the 308GTB — and the fact that it has now been the Engine Technology International magazine’s Engine of the Year four years running and, even more impressively, was voted the finest example of internal combustion of the last 20 years by the same organization. But — and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve just been elbows deep in a Ferrari engine block or because I like the new F8 so much — I can’t help but think that this new car is a tribute to Enzo and everything one man managed to create in the Middle of Nowhere, Italy.That’s because, after the sensibility of the 488 — a great car that made complete sense, but didn’t tug at the heartstrings quite as much as a Ferrari should — the F8 is a return to living large with eight Italian cylinders. It may be based on the same chassis and its engine a kissing cousin to the 488’s, but it’s louder, lighter and more than insouciant enough that it feels (almost) like the return of the 458.Steering, for instance, feels much sharper than the 488’s. Turn in is tight, no matter how tight the Italian switchback is, the front end, like the 458’s, sticking to a line like a 600-cc superbike. Try as I might — and, Lord knows, you know I tried — I just couldn’t get the front to understeer. That might have something to do with the tenaciousness of Italian tarmac or the tail-wagging nature of Fiorano’s turns, but the F8 stuck to the pavement like Donald Trump to inappropriate handshakes. Ferrari says the hardware isn’t changed — other than a smaller steering wheel that’s supposed to provide more feedback — and all the difference in feel is due to tuning changes in the suspension, steering and electronic differential. Torque vectoring at the rear, as we all know, has an enormous effect on steering precision at the front, which is why Ferrari engineers credit the e-diff with the greatest improvement. Whatever the case, if the upgrade — which, again, is substantial — is all tuning and finesse, where was this calibration engineer four years ago when the 488 was tamed into a benign McLaren.The engine behind is no less dramatic. What had been subdued is now overtly ferocious. Where the 488’s tone was an F flat, the F8 is an E major. Where other turbocharged V8s seem tamed — I’m looking at you, McLaren — and need, let’s call it aural augmentation, Ferrari’s V8 is all flat-crank, almost-as-vibrant-as-the-458 soul stirring. Sometime soon we will all be driving electric cars
Origin: First Drive: 2020 Ferrari F8 Tributo