Ferrari California to get more power and less weight for 2012

Ferrari are planning to give the California a power boost for 2012 and strip it of some weight. But expect the California to cost more too.

The Ferrari California has been quite the success story for Ferrari. It’s brought in a whole raft of new customers for Maranello and now accounts for the biggest sales numbers in the Ferrari range. Which should be no real surprise – by Ferrari standards the California is almost affordable.

But we’re three years down the line from the first Californias hitting the roads, and the time has come to give the California a nip and tuck for 2012 – and a bit more power – in a mid-life facelift.

That extra power should amount to around 30bhp extra, to give the California a quite impressive 483bhp. That is being achieved by tweaking the ECU and fitting a new sports exhaust and should give the California a decent performance boost

But Ferrari are planning on a bit of weight shedding on the California too, so that extra 30bhp or so should liven things up even more than just the power boost. The weight shedding is said to take the form of aluminium bits in the chassis and adds up to around 30kg.

It’s not expected that the California will get too much in the way of styling tweaks, but there will be some improvements to the infotainment system with a bigger hard drive and decent connectivity for both Android and iPhones.

There’s also expected to be a bit of a price hike for the California in 2012. Ferrari has had good sales from the California as the new entry-level Ferrari, but it seems likely that selling a big chunk of cars at a lower price point than in the past will have squeezed margins a bit.

We’d guess at pushing on for an extra £10k.

Source: Car