The Ferrari FF is an interesting car for a few reasons. It’s the first four door or four wheel drive car to come out of Maranello. The Shooting Brake wagon body style is fairly hideous, but everybody says the car drives amazingly. This is due to the unique all wheel drive system that Ferrari invented for the FF. The rear wheels are driven through a standard Ferrari 7 speed transaxle, but the front of the car is driven by a separate two speed transmission connected to the front of the 6.3 liter V12 through a torque vectoring differntial. The layout that Ferrari conceived eliminated the need for an external transfer case and an extra drive shaft for the front axle. The gearing also ensures that a larger majority of the engine’s power is going to the rear wheels for sporty driving dynamics. Check out this animation from Ferrari showing how it works:

Sure this all makes for some interesting engineering talk, but what does it mean in the real world? How about the immature but all important question of, “Will it drift?” Autocar’s Steve Sutcliffe finds out for us.

Sources: GT Spirit and Autocar on YouTube