1981 Ferrari Mondial 8: The Legend Always Lurks

From the November 1981 issue of Car and Driver.

It must be hell trying to design new Ferraris. Over the years the legend has thickened, becoming a Jell-O inhibiting every stroke of the pen, every flight of the imagination. How can a new model live up to expectations? Too many twelve-cylinders have shrieked down the autostrada pumping too much adrenaline along the way. Too many road testers have fired too many salvos of hyperbole. For years we car critics have re­viewed the world’s finest sporting cars, pronounced them nice, even exciting, but not Ferraris. Ferrari was always atop the pedestal, and that pedestal was al­way being jacked up a bit each year.

Now the altitude is such that even new Ferraris can’t measure up. A Ferrari owner of our acquaintance drove the Mondial 8 a few miles and judged it nice, but definitely not a Ferrari.

So how are we to decide the truth of this latest product of Maranello—by measuring its stifled snorts and screams against the legend (in which case it will inevitably fall short) or by holding it up to the sporting requirements of the Eighties? Were it of any other brand, we would unhesitatingly do the latter. But with a Ferrari, the legend always lurks. Perhaps, by starting with the basics, some appropriate yardstick may evolve. The Mondial 8 is a transverse V-8 mid-engined coupe with an upholstered section in back that appears to be a rear seat. So you would expect this to be a two-plus-two. And you would be wrong. Ferrari has built models in the past offi­cially designated two-plus-twos, and they always had sufficient leg and head room back there to accommodate the occasional occupant of adult dimen­sions, but only Venus de Milos need ap­ply for the rear compartment of this car. Such a configuration has precedent in the 308GT4 that was discontinued two years ago, so the Mondial 8 must be ac­cepted as consistent with past Ferrari practice. Still, it is a dumb way to build a car—okay in a hatchback where the trunk space can be extended forward by folding the seats, but essentially useless in a mid-engined design.

The Mondial 8 is also a rather unat­tractive lump. Pininfarina is known for soft shapes that approach the zaftig, but this one just came out vague: Except in the side view, that is, where air-intake grilles the size of storm sewers ruin even the fundamental blandness. Apart from the Lusso Berlinetta, the 1964 GTO, and the current 308s, Ferraris have always looked sort of ehhhh—and the Mondial 8 continues the tradition. We therefore cannot deny its Ferrari­-hood on this count either.

But what about the way it drives? Ob­jectively, Ferraris have always been a pain in the butt in this regard, a quality appreciated only by those who thought the very definition of a man’s car was that nobody else could even get it out of the driveway. Ferraris have been uni­formly balky of shift, stiff of clutch, and hard of steering for as long as anybody can remember. Here the Mondial 8 may not be a true-red Ferrari. The steering is not bad, the brakes no sweat, the clutch so grad­ual in action that nobody would ever kill the engine and so moderate in effort that there should be no complaints. The five-speed shifter is still genuine Fer­rari, however—maybe not quite as hard to stir as some past models, but a purebred for notchiness. No other brand has so many traps in the pattern waiting to catch the lever.

But maybe it’s time to stop beating around the bush. People buy Ferraris neither for the mazelike qualities of the shifter nor for the hospitality of the back seat. Instead, they seek the essential prancing-horse rip and snort, and if the Mondial 8 can deliver that, no question, it’s a Ferrari.

Here we may be in trouble. The rip is subdued—a velvet purr, more song than shriek, that sweetly changes pitch as the engine climbs through its broad rev range. It’s a splendid sound, but it soothes rather than incites to riot. That’s not very Ferrari.

And, sadly, there is no snort whatso­ever. The Mondial 8 will barely get out of its own way, or, more correctly, out of the way of other Ferraris. It’s the lowest one in memory. Weight is large­ly the cause. The Mondial 8 shares the same Bosch K-jetronic-injected three-­liter V-8 with the GTBi and GTSi, but the car weighs in at 3560 pounds, 280 more than the GTBi that we tested in October 1980. This extra mass burdens it down to the point of being dog meat for the turbocharged Porsche 924 and Datsun 280-ZX. A Ferrari that slows is certainly an enigma and maybe even a contradiction in terms.

It’s not much fun to drive either. The Mondial 8 doesn’t make you giggle, doesn’t goad you into trying some fool­ish feats of antigravity. Instead, it sug­gests serious grand-touring transporta­tion. It whispers, “C’mon, let’s head for the coast.” And it’s not kidding. You could go anywhere in this car; it wouldn’t fry your nerves in the manner of past Ferraris. No zingy noises, no jouncy ride, no hang-onto-the-wheel­-with-both-hands-lest-it-get-away-from­-you feeling. Just get in and go. How much more un-Ferrari could it be?

You may think, since the Mondial’s back seat is worthless, that it ends up merely a slower and uglier GTBi. Actu­ally, the two are much different. The GTBi is a full-time sportster. It’ll never let you forget. Its roof presses down against your forehead, the door against your elbow, the console against your thigh—it’s tight. And noisy. And de­manding. The Mondial, in contrast, is relatively roomy. The front wheel arch takes a bite out of the spot the driver would like to have for his left leg, but that’s the only encroachment.

The Mondial is also more relaxing. It doesn’t have the low cowl of the GTBi (or the old GT4), so you can’t see the road streaming directly under the nose. You are forced to take a longer view, and that’s less dynamic, less stimulating. The suspension doesn’t batter you ei­ther. The Michelin TRX tires are nota­bly resilient, and the shocks have been calibrated to merely damp ride motions rather than prevent them. Except for some expansion-joint kawop, the ride is very pleasant. Nor does the Mondial make you keep your guard up. It doesn’t kick back through the steering like the 308s. You may have noticed that the Mondial’s wheels have an uncom­mon amount of “inset” to reduce the scrub radius. This is a new idea at Ferrari, and it takes much of the twitch out of the steering.

You add all of this up—the twitchless steering, the elbowroom, the friendly (if not quiet) acoustics, the low-effort con­trols, the civilized ride—and you find a pretty nice sports car, not a Ferrari in the traditional sense, but not bad either. The real question at this point is, Are there enough drivers in the Eighties who would buy a real Ferrari if it were available? It’s easy for all of us sitting around wondering how we’re going to cover the next Visa-card bill to say yes. But those who make their livings in the car business have noticed that by far the majority of those with resources to buy a Ferrari go for a Mercedes 450SL or SLC instead. Fiat, which now pulls the strings at Ferrari, is in the business of making money (or at least of trying to), and it’s very tempting to dilute the Fer­rari rip and snort in favor of some prov­en-in-the-market M-B civilization. We even hear oblique references in that direction from Fiat of North America, which imports Ferrari.

It sounds sacrilegious. Be assured that the Mondial is still a whole lot more Ferrari than it is Mercedes, but at the same time there is a conspicuous drift away from the joyfully mechanical per­sona that made up the traditional Fer­rari. It shows up particularly in the use of electronics and electrics—maybe we should call it electricks—in the interior. Somebody decided that remote trunk releases are nifty, so the Mondial has an array of solenoid buttons on the dash to open the front hood, the engine cover, the trunk, and even the gas-filler door. This is harmless fun, but it gets a bit silly when applied to the glove box, the door of which is neatly devoid of any latch—the effect is spoiled by a big black button poking out below the dash that remotely releases the door from a full six inches away. The “computer” early-warning system, which tells of trouble with liquido raffredd or lavacristallo or any of eight other possible men­aces, is similarly misguided, because the signal lights are on the tunnel down by your hip, where you’d never see them until the problem became apparent any­way. These gimmicks are certainly typi­cal of cars of the Eighties. Maybe we should even be reassured that Ferrari is less adept at them than other automak­ers; maybe this is proof that Ferrari has not wholeheartedly embraced electricks.

In any case, Ferrari spokesmen antici­pate some redesign of the interior be­fore full-scale production begins for American models. The console will be less conspicuously plastic, the air-condi­tioning controls below the dash will be relocated, and the brow over the instrument cluster will be reangled. This lat­ter will be a mixed blessing. Right now it is both flat and level, the perfect place to clamp your radar detector. But the semigloss vinyl surface also reflects a shiny spot onto the windshield right where you’re supposed to be looking at the road, so some alteration would be appreciated.

But enough of this minutia. Return­ing to the original question, is the Mon­dial 8 truly a Ferrari? We say yes, albeit the most democratic one ever built. Anyone with the price of admission can drive it. Maybe that’s not the way Fer­rari cars were built in the past, but this is the Eighties and things are different. For one thing, people aren’t buying anachronisms.

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com