By 8.30am, we were already on the road, leaving Thornbury Castle behind and heading west towards Wales, with the morning still cool and quiet and a Ferrari 849 Testarossa underneath us, which felt like a fairly perfect way to start two days of driving through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country.
This wasn’t going to be a typical test drive, and that was probably what made the whole trip so memorable. Over the next two days, Lewis and I would swap between the 849 Testarossa and 296 Speciale, making our way from Bristol to Aberaeron, Portmeirion and eventually into the Welsh valleys towards Brecon, following winding country roads that would give us the opportunity to experience two very different expressions of a modern Ferrari.
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After breakfast, we headed outside for the car handover before setting off at 8.30am, beginning our first day in the 849 Testarossa, Ferrari’s new 1,050 cv hybrid super sports berlinetta and a car whose name immediately carries a certain weight.
Its twin-turbo V8 produces 830 cv on its own, with the hybrid system taking the combined output to 1,050 cv, while 0–100 km/h takes less than 2.3 seconds and the top speed exceeds 330 km/h. Those are enormous numbers on paper, but what struck me on the road was how accessible the car felt despite the performance available underneath you, particularly as our route moved away from the faster roads and into the quieter Welsh countryside.
The further west we travelled, the quieter the roads became and the more dramatic the scenery felt, and this was where we could begin to appreciate the 849 Testarossa beyond its headline figures, with the car feeling remarkably composed as the roads became narrower and more technical.
By lunchtime we had reached Aberaeron, a colourful coastal town on the Ceredigion coast, where we stopped at Y Seler for lunch before getting back into the Ferrari and continuing towards Portmeirion.
Somewhere along the way, we came across wild horses, standing freely against the Welsh landscape as we drove past, and seeing them from behind the wheel of one of Ferrari’s newest cars made an already surreal road trip feel even more extraordinary.
Portmeirion
By late afternoon we had arrived at Portmeirion, which has always felt like one of those places that shouldn’t quite exist where it does, with its colourful buildings, Italianate architecture and gardens overlooking the Welsh coast making it feel more like somewhere you might discover in the Mediterranean than North Wales.
After checking into the Portmeirion Hotel, we had drinks before dinner in the hotel’s private dining room, and after a full day behind the wheel it was lovely to slow everything down for the evening, knowing that the following morning we would be doing it all over again in a very different Ferrari.
The next day started with a private tour of Portmeirion Village before we climbed into the 296 Speciale and set off towards Brecon, and it didn’t take long to realise just how different the character of the car was.
The Speciale takes the already formidable 296 platform and turns everything up, with its 120-degree twin-turbo V6 and electric motor producing a combined 880 cv, while a dry weight of 1,410 kg in Ferrari’s specified configuration gives it an extraordinary power-to-weight ratio of 1.60 kg/cv. It will reach 100 km/h in 2.8 seconds and 200 km/h in seven seconds, although on the Welsh roads it was the agility rather than the outright numbers that stood out most.
There was an immediacy to the 296 Speciale that made the winding sections of our route particularly memorable, with the car feeling incredibly responsive and connected as the roads tightened and the landscape became more dramatic. Despite all of the hybrid technology working beneath the surface, the experience from behind the wheel still felt wonderfully visceral, and the sound of the V6 reverberating through the valleys was something else entirely.
Then came one of the biggest surprises of the weekend when we reached the Mach Loop and watched fighter jets making their low-level training runs through the Welsh valleys.
We heard them before we saw them, with the sound echoing through the mountains as the jets appeared overhead and disappeared through the valley almost as quickly as they had arrived, and Lewis was absolutely buzzing as we watched them from the road. There was something wonderfully ridiculous about the whole scene, sitting in the 296 Speciale with fighter jets flying through the landscape around us, surrounded by mountains and with another stretch of incredible road ahead.
The long way home
After lunch at the Old Barn Inn in Brecon, we began the journey back towards Thornbury Castle, with one final stretch of Welsh roads ahead of us and, more importantly, more time behind the wheel.
Over the two days, we’d experienced the 849 Testarossa and 296 Speciale across an incredibly varied route, and it was only after spending meaningful time in both that their different personalities really became apparent. The 849 Testarossa felt immensely powerful yet remarkably composed, with that extraordinary 1,050 cv powertrain always waiting beneath the surface, while the 296 Speciale felt lighter, sharper and more immediate, encouraging you to enjoy every bend and every change of direction.
Both use Ferrari’s eight-speed dual-clutch transmission and sophisticated electronic control systems, including the latest generation of Side Slip Control, but the experience from the driver’s seat was noticeably different, which is precisely what made being able to drive them back-to-back so interesting.
We spend so much of our lives travelling for work, often flying somewhere, checking into a hotel and trying to fit as much as possible into a few days, so there was something particularly refreshing about a trip where driving wasn’t simply the means of getting somewhere, but the entire reason for going.
By the time we arrived back at Thornbury Castle on Friday afternoon, we’d experienced both cars on open country roads, through tighter mountain sections and across hundreds of miles of changing Welsh landscape, giving us far more time to understand them than a conventional short test drive ever could.
The keys were handed back and, just like that, two days behind the wheel of two very different Ferraris had come to an end, although I think what stayed with both of us was just how distinctive each car had managed to feel despite sharing the same modern Ferrari philosophy.
The 849 Testarossa is the car that overwhelms you with the scale of its performance, combining 1,050 cv with the drama and presence you expect from a Ferrari carrying the Testarossa name, while the 296 Speciale delivers its excitement in a different way, feeling incredibly agile, responsive and alive on the twisting roads where we spent much of our second day.
For us, that was what made the trip so memorable, because it wasn’t simply about driving two of Ferrari’s newest cars for a few hours, but having the time and space to properly experience what Ferrari has created, from the first start-up at Thornbury Castle to the final miles of Welsh road before handing back the keys.
Two very different Ferraris, hundreds of miles of Welsh roads and two days that gave us a much deeper appreciation of both – it’s difficult to imagine a better way to experience them.
KeiKei is a London-based award-winning journalist and videographer with a degree in Broadcast Media and Journalism from the University of the West of Scotland and an extensive reporting background in news, entertainment, travel, and lifestyle.
KeiKei has travelled the globe interviewing, reporting and reviewing. Her work has been published in worldwide media outlets including, The New York Post, The Guardian, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, National Geographic and Conde Nast publications.
