Only three Ferrari Californias were ever built with a manual gearbox
Across ten years and 17,349 cars, Ferrari's California was sold almost entirely with a dual-clutch automatic; just three buyers, one of them in Britain, ordered a manual. The car was meant to lure newcomers to the brand, and it quietly introduced a string of firsts to Ferrari road cars.
Launched at the Paris Motor Show in October 2008, the California opened a fourth product line for Ferrari: a front-engined V8 grand tourer, alongside mid-engined V8 and V12 sports cars and a front-engined V12. The name recalled the 250 GT California Spyder of the late 1950s. Pininfarina styled it under Ken Okuyama, with a slightly taller ride than its siblings. It was the company's first front-engined V8 model, its first with a seven-speed twin-clutch transmission, its first folding metal hardtop, its first with multi-link rear suspension and the first to offer stop-start, an option some fans disliked but which brought tax savings in certain markets.
Its 4.3-litre engine, shared with Maserati, made 460 PS without turbochargers, an unusually high output per litre for a naturally aspirated unit. Although it weighed 180 kg more than the F430, quick gearchanges let it match that car to 97 km/h. Engineers spent more than 1,000 hours testing a model built at one-third size in moving air, arriving at a drag coefficient of 0.32, the slipperiest Ferrari road car until the F12berlinetta. The traction system improved acceleration out of corners by about 20 percent compared with conventional controls.
The California 30 of 2012 cut 30 kg from the body and added 30 PS, using Ferrari's first fully modular chassis made from aluminium alloys. An optional Handling Speciale pack brought magnetic dampers and a quicker steering rack. That May, Ferrari recalled some cars because badly machined crankshafts could seize the engine, a fault discovered when it happened during a critics' review.
The 2014 California T, unveiled online on February 12 and then at Geneva, switched to a 3.9-litre twin-turbocharged V8 making 560 PS, and was the first Ferrari with Apple CarPlay. About 8,000 cars were built from 2008 to 2012, from a new plant beside the Maranello factory, before the Portofino replaced the model in 2018.
Source: Ferrari California
