Ferrari 488 – The exhaust that should have been

Your 488 doesn’t sound good.

There – we said it.

Sure, if this is your first Ferrari having had a series of 911 Turbos, you’ll probably think the toneless blare coming from the stock exhaust system is great.  Actually it’ poor (the Pista is even worse) – especially compared to V8 Ferraris of yesteryear (the champion being the lovely F355).

The fact is, you own one of the premier driving tools available in the world today…and we guarantee you it’s never made a noise that’s put a smile on your face. Or at least not as much of a smile as it has the potential to elicit…

The honest truth is that there is one system that is head and shoulders above every other exhaust system available for this car today – Novitec.

We describe it like this – want a 458 classic high pitched V8 howl with some whooshing turbo noises? Get a Novitec exhaust.

People will laugh and say that it doesn’t sound like a 458, that there’s no way on earth it could sound as good, that hell will freeze over before a 488 even gets close to sounding as good as a 458 – these people are wrong, and what they are actually saying is “I have never heard a Novitec exhaust on a 488”.

We have included a video at the bottom of this blog post that demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the 488 can howl, we installed a full system on a customer’s car and it absolutely transformed the thing. That video is the car sitting static, revving in neutral…can you even imagine what it would sound like under load?

So let’s get specific for a second, it isn’t just as simple as chucking on a back box and calling it quits, you will get some impressive results if you do the back box alone – but this is a £200k Ferrari, you’re obviously not looking to cut corners in terms of cost because your car deserves the best.

The recommended system is composed of the following items:

• Novitec back box with valves
• Capristo decat pipes
• Capristo OBD wizard
• Capristo remote control

A few of those items won’t immediately be familiar so let’s break them down a little bit. Firstly we have the back box/rear silencer with valves, this is paired with the Capristo remote control unit to control said valves. More on this in a moment…

Now the element that will totally set this system apart is what comes next – the decat pipes.

Installing decat pipes instils two main benefits – volume and power. By removing the catalytic converters we are significantly reducing backpressure which, in simple terms, is how hard the engine has to push to get the exhaust gases out of the car. Conservatively you can expect power gains of 20-30bhp and a significant increase in the volume of the exhaust note.

(Note: Sport catalysts are also possible for those of you worried about homologation in your country – these give you 80% of the sound and power benefits but are considerably more costly).

The worry some customers have is that this increase in volume will be untenable, and this is where the Remote control comes in to save the day. With the valves closed the exhaust note will only be 5-10% louder than the standard exhaust, however, with the valves open you can finally get that high pitched V8 howl that the car should always have had – the best of both worlds!

Removing the cats (or swapping to sport catalysts) will, of course, raise a check engine warning light as the car’s ECU will register a fault with the no-longer-present cats – the solution is to install a module that clears the specific code that arises in this case. Therefore, the  final item we will install is the Capristo OBD wizard which plugs directly into the OBD port within the driver’s footwell. We always emphasise that this unit will ONLY cancel the check engine light pertaining to this specific cat-related fault, other than this your onboard diagnostics will continue to operate as normal!

Have a listen below and hear what your 488 COULD sound like