Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in Volume 7 of B.H. Magazine, order your copy now.
Let me tell you something about automotive journalism that nobody in automotive journalism will tell you: the glamour is largely fictional. Yes, you fly to Portugal up the front, and yes, a new Ferrari is waiting. But between the two is a transit van full of Aussies in various states of jet lag, lamenting another two-hour drive with a laptop balanced on someone's knee streaming the final race of the 2025 Formula 1 season, on what appears to be a connection borrowed from a passing seagull. This is the job. Nobody feels sorry for us, nor should they. But they should at least know the truth.
We were on our way to drive the Ferrari Amalfi, the Roma's replacement, Ferrari's new entry-level grand tourer with an all-new body, even if the bones beneath are not, in the Algarve.
The Algarve in December is not the Algarve of postcards, but it is considerably warmer and more golden than most of Europe in winter. I made a mental note to come back. I make this mental note every time I go somewhere. I never come back anywhere.
At the Pine Cliffs Resort outside Faro, the Amalfis awaited, every example dressed in the same polarising colour, Verde Costiera. A deep marine blue-green created exclusively for this car, which tells you something about how seriously Ferrari takes the launch of a new model and something even more telling about how good they are at choosing colours.
The entire Australian press contingent agreed immediately that it was blue, but Ferrari insists it is green.
Across the two-day drive programme, this debate was not resolved. What was resolved, within about thirty seconds of seeing it in the golden evening light, is that the Amalfi is a stunning thing to look at. Every panel is new, every line considered, and the rear three-quarter view is close to perfect.
Inside, Ferrari has course-corrected from several other recent models, producing a cabin that is sophisticated without demanding your attention. The fact that you stop noticing it within ten minutes of driving is, counterintuitively, the highest compliment you can pay it.
They've also reinstated a full set of physical buttons on the steering wheel, including, following what must have been some rather vociferous customer feedback, the start button. A proper, tactile, red anodised button that fires the V8 with a cackle that makes the outgoing haptic touch panels shudder with embarrassment. Nobody liked the touch-operated steering wheel controls. Fortunately, Ferrari has offered to retrofit people's steering wheels, hopefully sweeping the haptic tech under the floor mats.
The roads north of Lagos are not famous roads. Nobody has named a corner after anyone. There is just very good asphalt winding through the hills, and on a Monday in December, it's absolutely empty. Somewhere near a one-shop village called Ribeiro de Baixo, you come around a corner, and the road of your actual dreams simply materialises in front of you. A long, sinuous climb through the pines, with enough visibility to entice and more than enough corners to humble you.
On this road, the Amalfi was a revelation. The steering talked to you in a way the Roma never quite managed, loading through corners with enough feel that you could act rather than react.
The recalibrated chassis followed your inputs rather than anticipating them, nimble where the Roma felt planted, willing where it felt nervous. And when you asked more of it, it delivered, without the hand-holding that ruins the moment in so many modern performance cars.
Then, on a long straight with a valley dropping away to the south, I put my foot down properly for the first time. I shall not be sharing the footage because, as I mentioned earlier, I would like to come back to Portugal at some point.
The 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8 produces 471kW, a redline of 7,600rpm, and turbochargers that spin to 171,000 revolutions per minute, fast enough that Ferrari had to develop entirely new calibration software just to manage them. Ferrari will tell you it is the most internationally awarded engine in automotive history.
What they won't capture is what it sounds like when you hit the rev limiter on an empty Portuguese road. For perhaps six or seven seconds, I was consumed entirely in that moment.
This is, when you think about it, what you're actually paying for, not counting the Burmester sound system and optional carbon fibre trims that make this $503,261 Amalfi cost closer to $650,000 before it resides in a Toorak garage.
The moments when the engine, the road, the chassis and the scenery are all operating at the level they were designed for, and the whole thing justifies itself completely.
We came back down to the coast as the sun was finishing with the Atlantic, the last of it catching the waves, and I made another mental note about coming back to the Algarve.
The Ferrari Amalfi is the finest entry-level car this company has ever produced. Not a mild upgrade on a good predecessor, but a genuinely great machine, one that rewards commitment with communication rather than intervention, and that, on the right road, makes a very convincing case that one simply must own a Ferrari.
The ride back to Lisbon Airport was quieter than the one coming in. The championship had been decided. The laptops were closed. Everyone was thinking about the road outside Ribeiro de Baixo.
