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Listen to the new Ferrari California

Published: 16 Apr 2012

According to irrefutable Top Gear Maths, a big shouty, raspy, overly noisy and gloriously loud V8 adds, at the very least, 100bhp onto any car's performance statistics*.

And thus, watching the video of the new, 2013 Ferrari California reveals that Ferrari has lied: that reworked 4.3-litre V8 hasn't had an extra 30bhp extracted from it, boosting power from 460bhp to 490bhp and 372lb ft. It sounds like at least 590bhp.

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Ferrari has released this video of the latest Cali, which gets new exhaust manifolds and a remapped engine management system, along with a whopping 30kg hacked out of its kerbweight thanks to aluminium fabrication and so forth.

0-62mph takes a tenth of a second less - and anyone who watches GP racing will realise that it's all about the tenths - at just 3.8 seconds. There's a ‘Handling Speciale' package too, which speeds up the Magneteorheological dampers by 50 per cent, features stiffer springs and quicker steering.

But enough with the theory - listen to the Cali in action below. Like it? Design is still a tad busy for our eyes, but that V8, well, it is fruity. Though nowhere near as fruity as the old F40 LM's twin-turbo'd 2.9-litre eight-pot. That car sounds like armageddon...

*Entirely false

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