When you’ve been making sports cars for as long as Ferrari has, you’re likely to have become quite good at it. However, the company’s pedigree in modern drop-top grand tourers is less convincing.

The task was to reconcile opposing requirements by creating a car with the dynamism and excitement of a Ferrari, but also the versatility, refinement and convenience of a car you’d use daily. However, the California’s story didn’t pan out well. Time to take a fresh swing at it, then.

Under the bonnet, the 3.9-litre, 90-degree, flat-plane-crank, twin-turbo V8 adds 29kW of peak power. And while Ferrari may only have liberated 5Nm of additional torque here, given that it has also saved 80kg in the car’s kerb weight, this thing isn’t hanging about.

The engine revs to a tremulous 7500rpm, it has a huge swell of mid-range torque, and it responds crisply at all times, feeling progressive in its power delivery for a highly stressed turbo. It’s very Ferrari. But is it very grand tourer? Perhaps not.

The gearbox, too, gives further impetus to the sense that the car’s identity is slightly muddled, and permanently at odds with itself.

In typical Ferrari convention, the Portofino has three driving modes which configure its powertrain, dampers, steering and stability control – but it also has a separate ‘bumpy road’ suspension override button so that you can have most of the systems set for optimum driver engagement, but the dampers set to soft.

Suffice to say, the car has a regular need for that ‘bumpy road’ button. Frankly, it needs it too regularly for a car that ought to be supple and fluent-riding as well as eye-wideningly taut and poised.

The handling also helps to rob it of the breadth of ability needed to make it suited to any journey; relaxing, at times, as well as exciting. The new electric steering’s very direct and while it has weight, doesn’t manage that weight cleverly enough to give you something to push against as the front wheels bite. Away from that there’s better news.

There’s no need for owners to worry: the stability controls work well to make the car feel incisive, but obedient when they’re active, and there’s plenty of fun to be had with them on. But Ferrari’s remarkable side slip control oversteer-tamer isn’t fitted here – and without it, you never feel sufficiently at ease with the car’s steering pace, or have the confidence you’d need in the predictability of the rear axle, to be inclined to get stuck into that final layer of the driving experience.

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In some ways this is a more versatile, better luxury sports car than a California, too. If someone asked me to drive 300km on normal roads, and in uninterested fashion, in one or the other, I don’t think I’d pick the new boy. And that’s not much of an invitation to go on tour.

Like: Pace from the boosted V8; hard-top design Dislike: Confused character; is it a step forward? Star Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars