IMAGINE you are heading to your ski house in Aspen with a couple of friends and a weekend’s worth of luggage. The forecast calls for snow. Do you grab the keys to your practical family vehicle or climb into your Ferrari?

Trick question! You do both — if, that is, you have an all-wheel-drive four-seat Ferrari FF. Which you probably don’t, because the FF’s base price is $302,450. And you’ll never see one that cheap, because buying a Ferrari with no options is like building a Hamptons dream house without the outdoor kitchen.

Come on, man. Don’t be a skinflint.

Three hundred grand is a lot of money, but look at it this way: thanks to the 2012 FF’s beguiling mix of pedigreed performance and down-to-earth practicality, you can sell your fair-weather 458 Italia and your winter-beater Porsche Panamera Turbo S and just drive this.

Honey, according to my numbers, it makes solid financial sense to buy a Ferrari FF.

The FF’s mandate is to meld the performance of a Ferrari supercar with the four-season utility of an all-wheel-drive luxury wagon. Thus the hatchback body, which identifies the FF with a once-popular class of sporting wagon known as the shooting brake.