Rent a Ferrari 296 GTB in Cannes

The 296 GTB sits low, wide, and slightly hunkered at the rear — a shape built around the V6 hybrid unit behind the seats, which puts out 830 hp and changes how the car behaves the moment you leave a straight line. Cannes doesn't offer much straight line. What it offers is the inland run through Mougins toward Grasse, a road that tightens and opens in quick succession, and this is where the 296 shows its actual purpose: not top speed, but the way it holds a line through a second-gear bend and puts power down cleanly on the way out. This is the 2023 model year, offered here as a single variant, so there's no trim decision to make — just the car, in the specification it was built to. Two seats, no rear bench, no pretence of practicality; it's a car for a driver and a passenger who came to Cannes for the driving, not for storage space. Starting at €1,700 per day, it sits at the performance end of the fleet rather than the luxury-cruising end, and it rewards a route chosen with that in mind — the Esterel corniche toward Théoule, or the hill road up to Grasse, rather than a slow pass along the Croisette where its width and stance are wasted on traffic. Handover can be arranged at a Croisette hotel forecourt, at the Cannes train station for arrivals off the TGV, or at Mandelieu Airport for private jet arrivals — the car meeting you on the apron rather than waiting in a depot. Given the demand this model draws during festival weeks in May and the MIPIM period in October, booking ahead matters more than for the rest of the fleet; outside those windows, from November through March, availability eases and the inland roads are quieter, which suits a car like this better than a crowded August afternoon on the coast road ever could.