I haven’t reviewed a car for some time now mostly because there really hasn’t been a car I’ve been interested in, but also because I love my Lotus so much I’d rather be in it than any other car. But, since my Lotus isn’t with me at the moment (more on that soon), I decided to take advantage of the situation by test driving the Ferrari 488 GTB.
Driving off in a car for the first time that costs as much as a home is a pretty nerve-wracking experience. The fact the car is also super low, and the roads around the dealership in pretty bad shape didn’t help the situation either. But the Ferrari 488 I was driving had the option to raise the suspension to give it a bit more ground clearance, so I managed to make my way out onto the main road without too much drama. It was pretty early in the morning so the first thing I did was head to Arabica in the city for some coffee. I took the long way by going through a bit of traffic on the 4th all the way to the 30th, and then from the 30th exiting onto the Gulf Road. I spent most of my day taking the longest way everywhere I went. Instead of grabbing my usual acai bowl for example from Liquid near Arabica in the city, for example, I decided to drive all the way to Bida’a and pick one up from Be Cafe. After spending the day zigzagging across Kuwait, I headed out to the desert to get some shots before the sunset.
After driving the Ferrari 488 GTB for a day I’ve come to the conclusion that the car has just two speeds, fast, and I’m going to get deported fast. I’m being serious here. The Ferrari 488 hits 0 to 100km/h in just 3 seconds. That’s just 0.8 seconds faster than my Lotus but damn what a difference that 0.8 makes. But that’s not even the impressive part, if you keep your foot down on the gas for just one more tiny second, you’re suddenly in the getting your license revoked territory. The car is insanely powerful, so much so that there just isn’t enough road for it. Usually, when I take out a sports car to review, I tend to drive it like I stole it. The 488 is probably the first car that I drove decently just because stepping on it would get me in a lot of trouble. Ferrari 488 owners are really going to love our racetrack once it opens up, its the only way to really enjoy and take advantage of all the power the car has to offer.
Other than the speed, a few other things impressed me quite a bit. The brakes on the car impressed me more than the speed of the car, the pedal feel is just so on point and the car stops in an instant. The interior of the car is also a wonderful place to be in. The interior is covered in leather with beautiful stitchwork and lots of carbon fiber trimming. I never felt uncomfortable, and even on my long trip with my friend into the desert, we spoke about how great the car would be on super long trips. Even though the 488 is a sports car first, you’re not sacrificing with comfort or amenities. The sound system was impressively good and the car I drove even came with front and rear parking cameras. It’s a luxury car that just happens to also be crazy ass fast.
So are there any downsides? Well yeah, the car costs as much as a house. The 488 GTB starts at KD78,000 which means I’m not really going to end up owning one anytime soon. But on the bright side, the Ferrari 488 GTB does come with a 5-year warranty (that can be extended up to 15) and 7-years free maintenance. So really the only costs you’ll have to factor in down the line are tires and brake pads. Not bad.
If you’d like to find out more about Ferraris in Kuwait then you should follow the dealer on instagram @ferrarialzayanikuwait. You can also go ahead and build your own 488 by visiting the Ferrari online car configurator [Here]
19 replies on “The Ferrari 488 GTB”
Find a GL63 6×6 AMG next please Mark – I’m the dude requesting to be invited for its review for the past several years 😀
I never knew you would get free maintenance, that actually does make quite a difference, especially with a car like that
What’s up with the pics? very low res
Nothing is wrong with the pics they’re the same resolution as all the other pictures here. Maybe it’s something on your end?
Very low res on my side too. (488-4.jpg is 37KB 600 x 337 pixel @ 96dpi)
seems that even though data saver is off, chrome is doing something to your pictures. In MS Edge, I got the full res images.
hmmm cuz i only use chrome and looks fine here. I’m also on a retina display.
Nothing to do with the display. Your pictures are appearing to have artifacts as if taken from a video.
If everybody using chrome (who are the majority) is seeing pictures like that, you’re wasting server space!
Retina display means my resolution is more than double that of a regular display which means if the images were low res I would clearly see the issue on my end.
I use Chrome like the majority and the images are displaying fine so I’m guessing its on your end. You had data save turned on so the low res images are in your cache and just being reloaded again hence even with data saver off you’re still seeing the images in low res.
Probably the cache on my end, but again, nothing to do with your display even if it was 4K.
Yup didn’t realize I have data saver on, turned it off, still the same thing with chrome.
ALL the images on this blog are 600px wide and then displayed at 490px.
What road is that ?
It’s a random background I found a few years ago. I don’t tell people where just because I like keeping somethings for myself. Here is a view of it with a drone https://248am.com//images/2017/07/nowhere.jpg
Now you made me more curious that I tried looking for it on google maps, is it that one https://goo.gl/maps/kCp9M35aQ7L2 ? 🙂
no not that one but now i’m curious about the one you linked to. I think I took that road when I went looking for the shepherd in this old post https://248am.com/mark/people/from-ghana-to-kuwait-one-mans-story/
What about indicating a general area? The desert looks really good!
Kuwait: It does have to do with my display. The reason I now upload images with 600px width and yet still display at 490 is because of retina displays. Google retina to understand how it works. Basically its double the pixels in the same area of a normal display. So i’ll try and explain it in a simple way.
Regular display: 10″ screen, 1000px wide
Retina display: 10″ screen, 2000px wide
So when you visit my website and I have a image thats 400px, on a retina display its basically enlarging it to 800px. So a 400px image will look pixelated on a retina display because its doubling the resolution so that it takes up the same area on the 10″ screen as it would on the normal display.
So now my images on this blog are uploaded 600px because I found when its enlarging it to 980x, the 600px image isn’t showing as much pixelation as the 490px image is when enlarged to that size.
Preferably I should be even uploading my images with a 980px width but it will make the file size larger and the majority don’t have retina displays so not worth it for now.
Where can we find a property in Kuwait that costs only 78,000 dinars?!