Behold the new Ferrari 458 Italia Spider, the world’s first mid-rear engined convertible with a retractable hard top that was officially unveiled today ahead of its world premiere at the Frankfurt Motor Show in mid-September.

The Spider features a newly developed, single-piece aluminium hardtop that automatically tucks away just ahead of the engine bay with a tonneau cover that features two buttresses completing the design.

Ferrari says that the aluminium structure offers a number of advantages over the traditional folding soft-top, including a reduction of 25 kg in weight and a faster deployment time of just 14 seconds.

In addition, the company says that the small piece allowed the designers to include “a generous” rear bench for luggage behind the two seats.

The 458 Spider includes an adjustable electric wind stop designed to slow and diffuse the air in the cockpit, with the Italian company claiming that it enables “normal conversation to be held even at speeds over 200 km/h (124mph)”.

While the Spider sports the same powertrain as the coupe and which combines a high-revving, 570HP 4.5-liter V8 with a dual-clutch F1 paddle-shift transmission and Ferrari’s E-Diff, the Italian firm’s engineers recalibrated certain features such as its accelerator pedal mapping, the damping of the multilink suspension and the exhaust to improve feel with the top down.

The new Ferrari 458 Spider will go on sale early next year.

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