2015 Ferrari LaFerrari 

 What a year it's been for enthusiasts who love high-performance, higher-dollar automobiles. The past twelve months or so have been consumed with the three horsemonsters of today's hybrid hypercar enlightenment: the Porsche 918 Spyder, the McLaren P1 and theFerrari LaFerrari. Getting into just two of the three would be better than a lump of coal in one's stocking come holiday time, but for me, it'd still leave things feeling sadly incomplete, gnawing from within 'til the end of days.

Getting the call from Maranello, therefore, was even more fortunate and satisfying. The 918 Spyder – the only seriously green hybrid of the trio – shook me up with its sophisticated menu of technologies. The McLaren P1 remains more of a true hypercar than thePorsche, what with its e-motor designed to boost the lightweight beast to supernatural speeds above any terrestrial concerns like fuel efficiency. And now it's time for the Italian with the funny name, LaFerrari. No mistake about it: I've been waiting all year for this car a little more than I've been waiting for the other two.

This run of hypercars built up over the year like a famous three-part opera: The enthralling start of the drama sitting in the Porsche 918, tear-assing the heavier green dart around a track in Spain; then on to the UK with the lightness and quick heart of the biturbo V8 in McLaren's track-inspired P1, and it was all to be topped-off at Fiorano with the LaFerrari, fit for a Wagnerian finish.

Now having had seat time in all three cars, it's my contention that the 918 Spyder, sensational as it is, feels like a stand-alone proposition in its own right. The full-on hardcore hyperdrive combat will be between the 903-horsepower P1 and the 950-bhp LaFerrari. It's going to be interesting as hell, too. Maybe throw in aPagani Huayra and a Koenigsegg Agera just for kicks.

The name "LaFerrari" has seemed silly to me since the car's unveiling in early 2013. Yet it took just one answer from Ferrarihead of road vehicle development, Franco Cimatti, to have it all make sense and even not sound so weird anymore. "The name is a reflection," says Cimatti, "of all of the very best capabilities and most advanced technologies within Ferrari coming together to create a single model." So, by selecting the name LaFerrari, the company is telling all of us which model is the best or the most 'real.' Point taken.

It's still a little silly, though.

On a day blessed with perfect sun and temperatures, my first driving opportunity was off piste, up into the Apennine foothills south of company headquarters in a red LaFerrari. All of its onboard tech would mean nothing whatsoever without a good set of treads and a great chassis setup with commensurately powerful and telepathic steering and braking. To this end, Pirelli has formulated a winning set of P Zero Corsa tires – 265/30 ZR19 (93Y) front, 345/30 ZR20 (106Y) rear – to go with the Ferrari's lower-slung sprung mass. The point lowest to the ground on the LaFerrari is 1.2 inches lower than the same point on the Enzo. Its physical center of gravity is a good 1.4 inches lower than the Enzo. Width is diminished by 1.6 inches, but the driver hip point is down a full 2.4 inches, too, so the greenhouse does not feel pinched.

Again, while the stunning exterior shape of the glassy greenhouse is narrower than that of the Enzo, the interior has all the space a driver up to six-foot, four-inches could ever need. The two carbon composite swan doors are light, too, and hinged in the proper place for simple entry and exit. Between the doors' size and their integration of the rather wide rocker panels, LaFerrari is among the easiest of hypercars ever to live with, even for larger rich people.

Open one of those doors, and the cabin itself is not quite Spartan, but it is at least Etruscan in its simplicity. Everything looks efficient and wisely chosen for the dash and center console, but the climate control knobs at dead center appear to be swiped from the late 1990s. All the rest of the controls are as they should be. That's a 12.3-inch dash screen, by the way, and it is perfectly suited to holding the amount of information required for a serious track car. Everything is very intuitively arranged thereon as well, so there's little fumbling around with the eyes to see what you need to see.

Say what you like about the drivability of this car on the far-less-than-idyllic surfaces all around Maranello, Modena, and Bologna, but both this new hypercar and the old Enzo are simply not meant for ordinary public roads. The positive road-going remarks I have about LaFerrari's third-generation magnetorheological dampers are more like a pleasant surprise, because the 499 lucky owners of this model will be doing the 950-horsepower plug-in-able hybrid flyer few favors if they don't exercise it regularly at their local closed circuit. The interior was designed to accommodate the wearing of helmets, too, it must be pointed out.

There was much zipping around over the hilly, rough two-lanes with the manettino on the squared-off CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastic) steering wheel set variously to Sport, Race and ESC OFF modes. First, you notice the newly programmed, seven-speed, Getrag dual-clutch gearbox snapping your sense of awareness into the absolute present. With much of the LaFerrari's development done under the watchful eyes of Ferrari's F1 engineers, they know how to take this essentially ten-year old Getrag DCT gearbox and make it young again. From the manettino's Race setting on up, the upshifts and downshifts are simply as quick as your thoughts. The rev-matching is maniacally quick, too, so the sound out the back of the car is that of an F1 gear song of ten year's ago, according to Ferrari team boffins.

Then come the huge carbon ceramic Brembo brakes – 15.7-inch discs with six-piston calipers up front, 15.0-inch rotors with four-piston pincers in back – that allow you to brake as late as you dare with their addictive first bite. These are the same discs found on the 458 Speciale.