People with children miss out on a lot of things - sleep, sex and sanity, to name just a few - but at least owning a Ferrari is no longer on that long list.

A slightly unsightly four-seat Fezza called the FF was launched in 2011 to allow rich parents the opportunity to take revenge on their children by frightening them witless in what was then the fastest family car on the planet.

And now its replacement, the far prettier and even faster GTC4 Lusso, has arrived.

Disturbingly, Ferrari says it has made this V12-powered weapon quieter, so as “not to frighten the children”, and made its four-wheel-drive system more front-wheel biased.

On the plus side, it has the most modern and wonderful interior of any car the company has ever produced and, thanks to a bunch of hugely clever, Formula One-inspired technology, it’s capable of defying its hefty dimensions and weight to provide a truly invigorating driving experience.

If the thought of a 6.2-litre V12 engine with no turbochargers attached doesn’t make your heart sing a little, check your pulse - you might be dead.

With a top speed of 335km/h, it will also still scare the hell out of your kids, or any other passengers you’d like to hear screaming.

Design

“Elegance, hidden richness, surprise and delight, fluidity, mystery, lightness and movement.” Those are just some of the terms one of the Lusso’s designers, Adrian Griffiths, uses to enthuse us about the look of the company’s new shooting brake, displaying the kind of passion and Italian-ness Ferrari is famous for.

Making what is effectively a station wagon with two doors look good is a huge challenge for any design team, and hiding the bulk of a car that’s 4.9m long and a smudge over two metres wide is what they’ve set out to do.

Griffiths explained that the Lusso sets out to be the final suit of clothes that its “young, dynamic and family oriented” buyer puts on when they head out into the world, and there’s no denying it’s a classy looking car, from just about every angle.

Sitting behind one in traffic, there’s plenty of traditional Ferrari goodness with those twin brake lights, and elliptical lines. The goal was to make it round and smooth “like a rock you’d want to skim as a child” and to give the impression of “a small head on big shoulders”. Dropping the roof line at the back makes it look smaller, and sexier, and it’s only from the rear three-quarter view that the gigantic proportions become obvious.

Front on, the look is supposed to be “feline and fast, like a cheetah”, with a low, crouching bonnet and powerful lines. It’s fair to say the Ferrari designers have knocked this one out of the park, and improved hugely on the fuddy-duddy FF.

Things are even better on the inside, with beautiful looking and feeling seats, a rich and very modern iPad-style 10.5-inch central screen and a quality feel that finally matches the price tag.

The real highlight here, of course, is the new - and sadly optional, at $9500 - Passenger Display, which gives the person next to the driver a touch screen of their own, on which they can bring up speed, revs, music, satnav or various other information. The idea is to make the passenger feel more like a co-pilot, and it works, brilliantly.

Practicality

The large and fairly obvious problem with the Lusso as a family car is that it only has two doors, so entry and egress will always be something of a chore, but it’s so nice one you’re in that you won’t mind.

The rear seats are hugely comfortable for anyone under the old six-foot mark, but above that the roof will start to gently rub at your head. There’s a genuine feeling of being cocooned in luxury back there, and a sense of light and space that’s quite surprising, but it’s an effect you only really get with the Panoramic Sunroof, which measures almost two square metres and is, sadly and typically, also optional, at a staggering $32,500.

Ferrari’s research shows that FF owners did 60 per cent of their trips with all four seats occupied, so this really is designed to be a family car.

The boot space is quite handy - and comes as standard - with 450 litres with the rear seats up or 800 with them down. The front-seat passengers have to share one giant, American-sized cupholder under the dash, but there is room for bottles in the doors, and the rear passengers get one cupholder each.

Ferrari’s research shows that FF owners did 60 per cent of their trips with all four seats occupied, so this really is designed to be a family car, and it should work as such, as long as your children don’t have dirty fingers, or eat ice cream.

Price and features

Clearly, there are cheaper ways to move four people via road, in fact, just about all of them. The GTC4 Lusso is $578,888 before you start adding the extras that you surely won’t be able to live without, like paint or the Passenger Screen and Panoramic Sunroof. A value proposition this is not, but what price can you put on looking this good and feeling this special? Somewhere north of $600K, as it turns out.

Engine

If the thought of a 6.2-litre V12 engine with no turbochargers attached doesn’t make your heart sing a little, check your pulse - you might be dead. The Lusso’s gigantic, throbbing red powerplant (you really need to lift the bonnet and stare at it) churns out a mountainous 507kW and yet a relatively ordinary 697Nm of torque, although 80 per cent of that is, helpfully, available from just 1750rpm.

Turbocharging would no doubt push that figure closer to the Newton Kilometre, but then it wouldn’t feel as old-school, nor sound as epically fabulous, as this does. Sure, because we’re all used to turbo-fied torque now it takes some getting used to this kind of power delivery at first, but if you have to change gears a little more often that’s no problem, because the seven-speed gearbox is a joy to shift anyway.

The very latest and greatest software it uses is also so damn clever that you don’t even need the paddles. It quickly adapts to the way you want to drive and shifts up or down at just the right times, probably better than you could do it yourself anyway.

Fuel consumption

Yes, you will be consuming fuel, and quite a lot of it. Ferrari has worked hard on improving fuel economy, redesigning both the combustion chamber and the piston, and the engine can even detect whether it’s running on 91 or 98 RON fuel, and adapts itself instantly. Despite all the cleverness, the combined consumption figure is still a claimed 15.4 litres per 100km, and you’ll be very lucky to ever achieve that number because the temptation to plant your foot is overpowering.

Driving 

Belting a car like this in a straight line is exactly as much fun as you would imagine, and possibly slightly more.

The sensation of this giant, 1920kg beast tearing off the line on its way to 100km/h in just 3.4 seconds, and to 200km/h in a scary 10.5 (down from 3.7 and 11 seconds in the FF) is both rib-tickling and kidney walloping.

Ferrari describes it as “never-ending acceleration”, and it certainly feels like it, although it does end eventually, up around 335km/h, if your heart holds out that long.

All that pace feels somehow more impressive in something this big and is accompanied by a staggering soundtrack of operatic heavy metal. The more you rev it, the better it sounds.

You have to put the boot in to get that aural experience, though, because most of the time, this really is a surprisingly quiet and polite Ferrari, which is a bit of a shock.

Check out Ferrari's promo reel of the GTC4 Lusso:

Ferrari’s marketeers researched buyers of the FF and found that while they were younger and generally adventurous types who did more miles than typical Prancing Horse riders, they were also quite likely to have families and, as a result, they’d prefer an engine that doesn’t “frighten the children, particularly at start-up”.

So the goal of the engineers was to produce a car with “refined acoustics” for city driving and long-distance touring. A quiet car, in other words, but one that can still make a “stronger, very huge sound” on demand.

The result is that most of the time the Lusso merely burbles around, sounding a bit tractor-like and farty at low throttle openings. It can also be slightly snatchy through the gears at low speeds, but mainly it is a smooth, quiet and quite un-Ferrari- like city commuter when the Manettino is in comfort mode.

In this setting there’s also something slightly artificial about the steering, which feels rubbery and over-assisted. Switch to Sport, or bring the beast alive by whamming the accelerator, however, and wonderful things happen. The full chaos of an engine with more than 500kW is yours for the taking, and in Sport mode the steering weighs up perfectly, providing the kind of muscular but sharp feedback that makes cars like the 488 such wondrous things to drive.

Indeed, first impressions are that you are driving a proper Ferrari, because the seat set-up and steering wheel and the car’s handling feel familiarly fantastic at medium speeds.

Really throw it at some bends, however, and you’re suddenly reminded just how much car there is behind you. It’s a sense of bulk rather than weight, because there’s always plenty of power to overcome the kilograms.

At first, you feel like you shouldn’t be able to push too hard, because surely you’ll plow into understeer with all this mass on board, or spin into oversteer through all that power. But gradually you realise that this is one hugely clever car.

The GTC4 boasts an alphabet full of acronyms but it is its 4RM-S system - in combination with Side Slip Control, various traction systems, an F1 differential etc - that gives you a gripping advantage. Basically a combination of four-wheel drive that apportions torque instantly where it’s needed and four-wheel steering, all controlled by super computers, this clever tech allows you to drive the Lusso as if it’s smaller and lighter than it really is.

Indeed, the Ferrari folk speak of it having a “virtual short wheelbase”. In practice you just always feel like you have the grip, and the power, to do as you wish through corners. Huge amounts of fun on a winding road is yours for the taking, and at the car’s launch in the staggeringly beautiful Dolomites in Italy’s north, there were plenty of worthy roads on offer.

No, it’s not as perfect balanced as a mid-engined Ferrari sports car, but it’s a different beast, and no less invigorating, in its own way. We would happily make this our family car of choice. And, if you’re going to take it to the snow - which is largely what its design brief is, the all-wheel- drive system can apportion up to 90 per cent of torque to the front wheels, to make it safer and more stable on slippery surfaces.

This is one very, very clever super family car indeed.

Ownership

You'd want a good warranty when you’re paying this much money, and buying Italian, and sure enough Ferrari offers something called “Genuine Maintenance”, which covers scheduled servicing and labour along with original spare parts, engine oil and brake fluid for the original buyer and even any subsequent owners for the first seven years of the Lusso’s working life. Not bad, Kia-like even.

Safety

Remarkably, despite having a selection of electrical systems that would shame a Space Shuttle, the new Lusso does not have an Automatic Emergency Braking system, to save its occupants from expensive rear-endings of other cars. It seems a strange oversight when AEB is standard on many cars that cost one tenth, or even one twentieth of the price.

Also surprising is the fact that the Lusso comes with just four airbags, and no curtain airbag for the rear occupants. This is a car being sold as a family conveyance - indeed Ferrari’s own research shows that 60 per cent of all trips taken by FF owners were made with all four seats filled. You would expect more in the safety department from a car at this level, and price.