Everything in 2026 is engineered to remove effort. Dinner arrives, cabs arrive, the next song arrives before you knew you wanted it. Which makes it faintly absurd that a group of grown adults gathered in Greater Noida one hot morning to be handed a car whose only purpose is to be driven.

Over at the Buddh International Circuit, the morning had the right soundtrack. A handful of journalists were lapping the new 849 Testarossa. Customers were out in 296 Challenge race cars, and I got as far as sitting in one. As a boy, my idea of being a successful grown-up involved a Ferrari. More specifically, the Enzo, the Testarossa and the likes. This year the Testarossa name is back on a new Ferrari, and I watched other people drive it.

My Amalfi was headed the other way: out of Jaypee Greens, onto the expressway towards the airport and back, in a guided convoy, at someone else's pace. You do not spend a morning beside a Formula 1 circuit at a Ferrari event without forming expectations, so yes, the format stung. The car won me over anyway, and for the least glamorous reason a Ferrari has ever impressed me. It didn't mind the road.

So what exactly is the Amalfi?

It's the Roma's replacement and the entry point to Ferrari's range. The formula is the classic Maranello grand tourer: a twin-turbo V8 mounted behind the front axle, drive to the rear wheels, two proper seats and two occasional ones. Ferrari calls the layout 2+, which is honest. The rear seats are for children, bags, or adults you'd rather not be friends with.

The figures read 640 cv from 3.9 litres, 760 Nm, 100 km/h in 3.3 seconds and a top speed of 320 km/h. Quote them at dinner if you must. In 2026, none of them will stop a conversation. The more telling number is 50:50, the weight split front to rear, because it matters more to how a car like this behaves than anything at the top of the spec sheet.

The Roma's perforated grille is gone. In its place, a floating body-coloured wing sits above a dark recessed band that hides the headlamps and sensors, and Ferrari says every exterior panel except the glasshouse is new. Inside, two mirrored cockpits sit either side of a tunnel milled from aluminium, and the steering wheel has physical buttons again after the Roma's experiment with touch-sensitive ones. The aluminium start button is back too. Car companies rarely admit a mistake this cleanly, and it's the most welcome U-turn in the car.

What's a Ferrari doing in a convoy?

Manufacturer drives in India tend to be choreographed. There is a route, a running order, and a plan for making sure nobody does anything that ends up on the evening news. Ours ran from Jaypee Greens down the expressway towards the airport and back, with an instructor beside me and another car in the convoy. It was half past nine and already properly hot.

A convoy moves at the pace of its most cautious member. That's sensible policy for strangers in very expensive coupés, and terrible news for anyone who writes about cars. 

Then the convoy did me a favour. On a couple of occasions, the other car fell too far behind. Rather than slow down and wait for it, my instructor let me rip.

What's it actually like to drive?

The engine got to me first. With the other car well behind us, I let the revs climb, and the V8 sounded like it had been waiting all morning for permission. Then the road did its part. The Amalfi glided over the rumble strips and made easy work of the undulations. It finally felt like I was driving a Ferrari.

Ferrari has tuned this V8 to pull harder the higher it revs rather than deliver everything at once, and it now redlines at 7,600 rpm. On paper, that makes for a car that reels the horizon in rather than lunging at it, which is exactly what an empty expressway asks for.

Then the other car caught up, and we fell back into line. The revs fell, the V8 settled to a hum, and the Amalfi went back to being the most expensive way imaginable of following someone else's car.

Can it handle Indian roads?

This is the part I didn't expect to write. The expressway looks smooth from a distance, but isn't. There were broken patches of tarmac and long runs of undulations, the kind that make low-slung cars either scrape or float. The Amalfi dispatched all of it, and I never once needed the nose lift, which raises the front by up to 40 mm for exactly these moments.

Some of that is design. Ferrari kept the Roma's tyre sidewall height specifically for ride comfort, and the front overhang is short, so there's less nose to worry about in the first place. Some of it is the suspension: in Comfort mode, the car defaults to a damper setting Ferrari calls Bumpy Road. Someone in Maranello has met a road like ours.

Every Indian who has owned a low car knows the speed-breaker flinch, that half-second of dread before an expansion joint. On this road, the Amalfi never gave me a reason for it. For a buyer here, that matters more than its 0-100 time.

Why does Ferrari still build cars like this?

The track is where Ferraris are marketed. The road is where they're bought, parked, insured and lived with. The Amalfi was designed for the second place, and that is the smartest thing about it.

We have spent a decade sanding the effort out of everything, from dinner to directions. A car that exists to be driven is a small act of defiance in that world. The Amalfi makes the defiance comfortable: it will sit in a convoy without complaint, then remember exactly what it is the moment the road clears. It's a thoroughbred that has learned to walk on a lead, and on Indian roads, that's the more useful skill.

Would I buy one?

The catch is real, and it isn't the car's fault. I drove the Amalfi in a convoy, on an expressway, while the only circuit in India to have hosted Formula 1 was busy with other, more purpose-built Ferraris. If I could ever sign one, I'd want a weekend, a mountain road and nobody in front of me.

On what I saw, yes. If I were buying a Ferrari to live with in India rather than to photograph, this is the one I'd ask about first. Some Ferraris are built for the poster on a bedroom wall. The Amalfi is built for both, your wall and the road outside your gate, broken patches and all.

Ferrari Amalfi, from ₹4.08 crore (ex-showroom), ferrari.com, @ferrari