I’ll be honest about my bias going in: I think displacement is the most overrated number on any spec sheet, and Ferrari just handed me the best evidence for that argument in a decade. The Ferrari 296 GTB carries a 3.0-liter V6 — smaller than the engine in plenty of family sedans — and it is, on balance, the most complete car currently sitting in the fleet.
The engine is the whole story
Ferrari’s mid-engine lineup ran V8s for nearly fifty years. The 296 GTB broke that with a twin-turbo V6 paired to a single electric motor between the engine and the gearbox, for 819 hp combined — more than the outgoing V8-powered F8 Tributo it effectively replaced, from an engine two cylinders smaller. Internally, Ferrari’s engineers reportedly refer to the layout as the “piccolo V12,” small V12 — not because it shares parts with one, but because the 120-degree cylinder bank angle and the exhaust tuning were both chosen specifically to fight the flat, humorless drone that turbo V6s are usually stuck with. It’s a car engineered to sound like it’s lying about what’s actually under the hood.
What the hybrid part actually does
The plug-in hybrid system isn’t a green-credentials footnote — it’s doing real work. Below about 4,000 rpm, the electric motor fills in the torque hole that would otherwise exist while the turbos spool, so the car pulls hard from idle instead of building boost the way a purely combustion turbo V6 would. There’s also a genuine EV-only mode for roughly 25 km, which matters more than it sounds like it should if your route runs through a city center with combustion restrictions — Monaco itself increasingly among them at certain hours. The battery adds real weight, and Ferrari’s own numbers put the 296 GTB close to its V8 predecessor despite carrying an extra motor and a battery pack — most of that gap closed through smaller radiators, a shorter wheelbase, and packaging the electronics tighter than the outgoing car needed to.
On the road
What surprised me most wasn’t the number on the dyno sheet — it’s the throttle response below 3,000 rpm, a range where turbo V6s have historically felt hollow and where the electric assist genuinely changes the character of the car. There’s no perceptible lag hunting for boost; the response is closer to what you’d expect from something naturally aspirated, right up until the turbos properly spool and the second half of the powerband arrives like a different engine entirely. Ferrari markets this as the most “everyday usable” car in the current exotic range, and for once the marketing copy undersells it slightly — the ride quality on the standard setup, not even the softer bumpy-road mode, is genuinely tolerable on real Riviera streets, not just a smooth private test track.
Where it fits in the fleet
The 296 GTB sits in the Ferrari half of the Supercars Rally Monaco’s rotating lineup, alongside cars from Lamborghini, McLaren, and Bentley — which car you get on a given tour day depends on group size and what’s available that week, and it’s also bookable on its own as a standalone rental out of Monaco, Nice, Rome, Milan, Munich, or Paris. Compared to the Ferrari SF90 Spider one step up the hybrid range, the 296 GTB trades roughly 180 hp and the SF90’s AWD security for a genuinely lighter, more agile car — for a driving road rather than a straight-line number, that’s usually the right trade.
Curious how it compares to the rest of the current Ferrari V8 and V6 lineup on an actual road, not a spec sheet? That’s a road test for another day — for now, get in touch if you’d like to put one on your own itinerary.