This Ryft-tuned Ferrari SF90 is... actually OK, somehow

We are at a loss.

Not in the usual, ‘Someone has tuned a Ferrari and we are at a loss as to any conceivable motivation for ruining an Italian supercar’ kind of at a loss, by the way. We’re at a loss because someone has tuned a Ferrari... and we don’t hate it.

After checking the usual things, like our eyesight (mild myopia that can be corrected by squinting like Clint Eastwood), we’re left with no other conclusion to draw. We must now admit that we actually like how an aftermarket tuner has mucked with a machine from a company that’s made some of the greatest sports cars in the world. And also the 348.

So, to this particular Ferrari SF90 – and Ryft, the company behind its embellishments. The first win for Ryft is what it calls a ‘functional aero approach’, which makes the whole process sound much more Gordon Murray than gaudy Mansory. What it also does it make us wonder exactly what Ryft knows that Ferrari, a company that’s hardly unfamiliar with aerodynamics, does not.

In any case, the car you see here has a new front splitter, rear diffuser, rear wing and side blades, which Ryft says reduces front-axle lift, increases grip and improves high-speed stability. According to its computational flow dynamics (CFD) testing on a scale model of the SF90, you can expect that rear wing to add ‘more than 800 pounds of additional downforce at 186mph’, or more than 360kg at 300km/h, if you’re metricated. However you measure it, we presume that at those sort of speeds, Ryft’s SF90 would slope down at the rear like a purebred German Shepherd. As for the 488 GT3 Evo-esque front splitter and echoes-of-F430-16M side blades, there’s no official figures, but Ryft a) acknowledges the inspiration for both of these parts, which is a huge tick in the trustworthiness stakes, and b) has tested it in scale-model CFD and says the additions reduce front-end lift and aero drag respectively.

So, an aftermarket aero kit that’s actually about the aero, seemingly outdoes Ferrari at its own game (the Enzo days of ‘just add power’ are long gone) and yet produces a car that doesn’t handily double as an emetic. Clearly, this will not be cheap.

And at $601,295 (£525,000), it very much isn’t. That said, the price does include a new Ferrari SF90, more than 20 proper carbon-fibre aero parts, and ‘OEM-compliant, hand-crafted titanium race exhaust’ that includes everything from the headers to the tips of the tailpipes.