Ferrari has decided the Ferrari Purosangue needed sharpening. Which is faintly hilarious when you consider the standard car already corners with the sort of aggression that makes passengers grab door handles and question basic physics.
This is the new Purosangue Handling Speciale. Same four doors. Same naturally aspirated V12. Same rear-hinged back doors that still feel slightly odd in a Ferrari, even after three years of pretending we’re all comfortable with the idea. But now there’s less body movement, faster gearbox calibration and, according to Ferrari, a more “compact” dynamic feel.
You know what? I can believe that.
Because the really annoying thing about the Purosangue — if you’re someone who enjoys moaning about modern Ferraris becoming lifestyle objects — is that the damned thing is properly good to drive. Not “good for a big SUV.” Just good. Annoyingly, genuinely good.
The numbers still look absurd on paper. A 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 with 715 horsepower in a family car sounds like the final act of a civilisation that peaked sometime around 2004. It weighs 4,481 pounds dry, does 0–60 mph in 3.3 seconds and pushes past 193 mph. There are lightweight sports cars with less performance and less engine. Plenty of them.
And the engine matters here because it defines the whole thing. Most super SUVs now feel turbocharged into submission. Massive torque, dead-eyed throttle response, synthetic noise pumped through speakers and gearboxes calibrated by people terrified of upsetting customers. The Purosangue still feels mechanical. You feel combustion events through the seat. Past 7,000rpm the V12 develops this hard metallic edge that reminds you Ferrari still knows how to build engines with proper emotional violence in them.
That’s the bit nobody expected.
The first time I drove one properly, what struck me wasn’t the speed. Everything fast is fast now. It was the front axle. The thing actually wants to turn. There’s real bite on entry, and because Ferrari has that trick active suspension system working overtime underneath you, the body stays eerily calm while the chassis still moves enough to feel alive. Most high-performance SUVs isolate you from the process because their engineers know the mass will eventually embarrass them. Ferrari seems oddly comfortable admitting the Purosangue is heavy while simultaneously daring you to find the limit anyway.
So now they’ve tightened it further.
Ferrari says the revised suspension calibration cuts body movement by ten percent. That sounds tiny until you remember how sensitive humans are to roll and pitch. A small reduction can completely change your confidence in a car like this. Especially one sitting this high. The standard Purosangue already shrinks around you after twenty minutes. Initially you climb in thinking you’re driving something enormous. Then the steering wakes up, the rear axle starts helping rotate the car and suddenly you’re threading it along a difficult road with completely misplaced confidence.
It still weighs two-and-a-bit tonnes, obviously. No amount of Italian sorcery changes that. But Ferrari gets closer than anyone else at disguising it.
The gearbox has also been recalibrated, which probably matters more than the suspension tweaks if I’m honest. Fast SUVs live or die by transmission response because they spend so much time transitioning weight fore and aft. Ferrari says shifts are quicker and more decisive, with manual paddle inputs feeling sportier. Good. They needed to. The standard car occasionally felt a touch too polished in automatic mode, almost as though someone in the calibration department worried customers might spill expensive coffee during upshifts.
And then there’s the sound.
Ferrari says the in-cabin acoustics have been “optimized,” which is wonderfully vague corporate language. Hopefully it means more engine and less insulation. Modern luxury performance cars spend millions muting the very sensations enthusiasts actually want. The Purosangue deserves noise. Proper noise. You buy a V12 Ferrari because you want the theatre of it — the slightly rough idle, the induction resonance, the sense that twelve cylinders are doing something extravagant inches ahead of your feet.
Visually, the Handling Speciale treatment is subtle enough that only deeply tragic Ferrari people will notice. New wheel design. Diamond-cut finish. Black exhaust tips. Black rear badging. That’s about your lot. Which is fine because the standard car already looks surprisingly cohesive in the metal. Photos still don’t quite capture how low and cab-rearward it sits compared to most SUVs.
And yes, we now live in a world where the Bentley Bentayga Speed drifts and the Aston Martin DBX S has become completely unhinged. Every manufacturer wants its giant family bus to behave like a sports car. Most end up feeling deeply impressive but slightly remote. The Ferrari doesn’t. That’s why this car matters.
Because underneath all the practicality, all the luxury trim and all the inevitable Instagram nonsense surrounding it, the Purosangue still feels like it was engineered by people who fundamentally enjoy driving.
Which remains a very Ferrari trait. Even here. Especially here.
