Does Ferrari’s latest supercar mine Miami, neon and bling, or is it more classically trained?

Fans of Phil Collins, Ray-Ban Wayfarers and Hawaiian shirts are in for a treat: another new Miami Vice movie is in development. Helmed by Joseph Kosinski, (Top Gun: Maverick, F1: The Movie) and slated for the summer of 2027, it’s understood that Austin Butler and Michael B Jordan are in talks to play Crockett and Tubbs. That’s an inspired bit of casting, but the actors were never the stars of Miami Vice. It was the cars that had marquee billing. Were I a Hollywood producer rebooting this seminal 1980s TV classic, I’d be on the phone right now to the Ferrari 849 Testarossa’s agent.

The new Ferrari 849 Testarossa is the 2026 reboot of the car I had on my duvet cover back when Jan Hammer’s theme came out of the speakers of my parents’ faux-wooden television. The show’s white Ferrari Testarossa was unspeakably glamorous. It was the definition of 1980s excess rendered in aluminium and steel.

The cheese-grater side-strakes, the silver star wheels. A generation of kids stared at its black-grilled derrière for hours playing Out Run at the arcades. Miami Vice’s Don Johnson and its original show-runner, Michael Mann, both owned Testarossas. So did Rod Stewart, Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson and MC Hammer. The Testarossa was a bigger celebrity than them all.

In fact, the Testarossa’s lineage goes back much further than the 1980s. It was first applied to the ultra-rare Ferrari 500 TR in 1956. The achingly pretty 250 Testa Rossa followed in 1957. Testarossa, Testa Rossa, TR, they all point to the same thing: the scarlet cam covers atop their feisty full-throated engines.

‘Testarossa’ is the Italian for ‘redhead’. So while it may refer to painted alloy parts, what you’re actually picturing is Isla Fisher or Domhnall Gleeson. That, in a nutshell, is what supercars are all about. Take something really technical and compromised and turn it into a pin-up.

Now, having been retired for 35 years, the name is back. As you can see, the 849 Testarossa isn’t a nostalgia trip. Not a cheese-grater in sight and, alas, no pop-up headlights. The spirit of attention-seeking is alive and well, but everything about this car is rooted in the future.

The car was designed by Flavio Manzoni’s team before being named, so the moniker is really just marketing. Manzoni has had a few flops, but for the most part, he’s done a brilliant job in exploiting the DNA of Ferrari without rooting around in the retro parts bin – something brands that need to reach for the Viagra might do. The message is, Ferrari is still virile.

Many mourn the loss of Pininfarina. It drew some very pretty cars – including all of the past masters mentioned – but its partnership with Ferrari ended in 2013 and everything was brought in-house. The reason for that was that aerodynamics and cooling have become so central to engineering that the clothing could no longer be outsourced.

In the battle between style and performance, performance won out. The Roma and its successor, the £200,000 Amalfi, have soft beauty, but above that, the Ferrari range is much more visually aggressive than it was in the 20th century.

The 849 Testarossa (from £407,617) tops Maranello’s production model range, though it sits below the £3.1 million limited-production F80 hypercar with which it shares some facial characteristics, namely the black bonnet band. This Zorro mask disguises the headlights; Manzoni’s take on the 1984 model’s iconic pop-up lamps.

The rear haunches have hints of another seven-figure modern Fezza the SP3 Daytona. The twin-tail winglets at the back have echoes of the marque’s 1970s Le Mans-smashing 512 sports prototypes, which is really this car’s only retro nod, and is more directly linked to the much more recent and extreme FXX-K – a track-only machine that deliberately sounds like it’s banned from pre-watershed broadcast.

Elsewhere are details never seen before. The deeply scalloped doors required a new forming process to make, and act as a chute to feed the intercooler with air. Those intakes are highlighted by a vertical black element that looks like a No.1 and divides the visual volume.

The design has a Lego quality. I had my reservations when I first saw renderings, but in the flesh, I’m won over. Certainly, it’s the most extroverted cavallino we’ve seen in years. It’s so brash you might confuse it with a Lamborghini. The 849’s immediate predecessor, the SF90, was quite nerdy and inelegant. Contrastingly, its replacement is a jock in catwalk couture.

Inside, it’s less lairy but retains a strong sense of occasion. Body-coloured Alcantara keeps the inside bright, if you order it in blue, white, yellow or red. A curved loop runs from the dashboard down to the central armrest, which delineates the driver and passenger zones and gives it an airy architectural quality.

The transmission selection pad, rendered in brushed aluminium with three levers, apes the famous manual H-gate, which Ferrari discontinued in 2014.

On the steering wheel, there’s a big red starter button, the patented Manettino dial that scrolls through the different traction modes, and other real buttons as opposed to haptic surfaces. Ferrari has seen the light and acknowledged that customers want their Ferraris to be more analogue and less iPhone. The SF90 was infuriating when you wanted to do something as simple as change the radio station. However, the forthcoming Ive and Newson-designed Ferrari Luce’s interior suggests the prancing horse is still willing to make concessions when it comes to catering for Silicon Valley’s superrich high-performance yummy mummies.

Under the skin, the 849’s got the same skeleton as the SF90, but the chassis, brakes and V8-hybrid powertrain have been substantially reworked. It now has the biggest turbochargers ever fitted to a Ferrari, as well as the biggest V8. Together with its three electric motors, overall thrust has risen 49bhp to a breathtaking 1,036bhp. Eight hundred and 19 of that comes from its internal combustion heart.

The ride, grip and feel engage every sinew. The 1980s Testarossa (known internally as the F110) never actually drove particularly well. If you went too fast into a corner and lifted off the throttle mid-turn, your white linen suit trousers would require urgent dry cleaning. And it certainly wasn’t quick by today’s standards – a new Range Rover would eat it for breakfast.

The 2026 Testarossa is, however, ferociously fast: 0-60mph takes under 2.3 seconds and the car doesn’t let up till the needle passes 205. It has a bewilderingly complex suspension system that uses 6D sensors to read every input and direct torque expertly. Most of the time it’s rear-wheel-drive, but when needed it’ll power the fronts too. The all-new braking system uses something called ‘anti-jerk’, which might reject the lion’s share of Ferrari’s customers.

On public roads, you’re never going to get close to the edge of its abilities. For that reason, you’ll have a lot more fun driving its smaller sister, the 296 (from £240,000), which is just as clever and almost half the price. Where the 849 is also a little lacking is that spine-tingling roar you get when you put your foot down, due to the electric motors taking a dominant role at the start of the rev range. When the cylinders get pumping to the tune of four or five thousand it’s loud and its combative, but emissions legislation has chipped away some of the aural soul.

Apart from that, it’s perfect. Stick it on a racetrack and it’s relentless. Ferrari booked the Monteblanco circuit near Seville so we could unleash the beast. Even then, it felt too fast and powerful, but not intimidating. The different Manettino settings allow the driver to ease themselves in, get familiar with the car’s dynamics and trust that it won’t bite. Sport, Race, CT (traction control) Off: each mode trims away the hand-holding as you get more confident with the way the car rotates through corners, flexes its muscles via the throttle pedal and rips through the gears.

The experience is even sharper if you have the Assetto Fiorano pack, a £42,115 option which strips out 30kg via things like carbon-fibre seats and wheels, and will further reduce your lap-times through enhanced aerodynamics, race-bred shock-absorbers and bigger, stickier tyres.

The 849 Testarossa is capable of so much more than posing, but it’s good for that too. Don those Wayfarers, roll up the sleeves of your pale suit jacket, and cruise. And maybe bust some drug dealers while you’re at it. ‘How do you go from this tranquillity to that violence?’ Don Johnson’s Sonny Crockett was asked. His answer? ‘I usually take the Ferrari.’

Ferrari 849 Testarossa, from £407,617, Ferrari.com, @Ferrari