Ferrari 12Cilindri 2024 review | First Drive

If a Martian fell to earth and asked you what this thing called a Ferrari was, what would you show it? A 296GTB, the most broadly capable Ferrari in history? Probably not. An F40, still the most viscerally exciting. Doubt it. A four door, four seat Purosangue? You’ve got to be kidding. No, whatever you showed said little green person, be it a 250 GTO, Daytona, 550 Maranello, F12 or anything else, two things are certain: it would have two seats and a V12 engine, whether angled at 60 or 180 degrees.

Because, when it comes to it, that’s where the heart of Ferrari lies, and has done so since the first. All the others are mere satellites whirling around that central, pulsating core.

So, even by Ferrari standards, a new V12 berlinetta is a very big deal indeed at any time. In this era, where a naturally-aspirated V12 is one of the most endangered species left on the planet, it is especially so. Perhaps in recognition of this very fact, Ferrari has decided to call the car ‘12Cilindri’, which, like almost every other term, sounds a heck of a lot better in Italian than English. It is a direct replacement for the 812 Superfast, is launched (for the first time for such a car) simultaneously in coupé and Spider configuration, and is priced at £366,500 or £336,500 depending on whether you want yours to be open or closed. 

And that’s before anyone heads for the options sheet or atelier personal commissioning department. The average actual sale price is likely to begin with a ‘4’. If that list price sounds like a wild price hike over the 812 Superfast (priced new at £253,004 in 2017) you reckon without the effects of inflation. In real terms, and probably quite admirably, the list price has scarcely moved.

It is so tempting to look at the 12Cilindri as essentially a rebodied Superfast, itself a heavily revised F12. For a start, when it comes to facelifting a facelift Ferrari has previous, and recently; was the F8 not a re-fettled 488 GTB, itself a cosmetically tweaked, twin turbo development of the 458? It was.

And look at this car: its engine is a 6.5-litre V12, free from any form of forced induction or hybrid power, located in the front of the car from where it drives an eight-speed double clutch gearbox positioned between the rear wheels to which its power is fed. This powertrain sits in an aluminium structure clothed in aluminium panels. Dig deep enough and you’ll find double wishbone front suspension, a multi-link rear axle and standard carbon ceramic brakes.

Saddle up, engage launch control and it will fire you front rest to 62mph in 2.9 seconds, to 124mph in 7.9 seconds and ultimately on to a terminal velocity 211mph. Sounds familiar? Well, if you own a Superfast it should because that specification and those figures are not merely similar, but identical to those of the car it replaces.

Except it’s not the same at all. Ask Ferrari to name all the common parts and its spokesperson will point to the suspension uprights, and that’s it. All its dimensions, wheelbase included, are different, too.

As for the looks, you might take one glance and conclude Ferrari has rekindled its once long-standing relationship with Pininfarina. Not so. The 12Cilindri was designed in house by Ferrari, but you won’t struggle to spot the car’s inspiration. Ferrari wants you to think of this car not as the natural successor to the far more aggressively styled Superfast, but a rather more aged, even more vaunted antecedent – the fabled 365 GTB/4, never named but universally known as the Daytona.

Despite the similarities on paper, the appearance of the 12Cilindri suggests there might just be something rather different about the way this car goes about its business. And for, once appearances are not deceptive.

The first clues appear almost at once. Fire it up and note that the V12 has been tuned to provide a more mellifluous tone than that heard in the Superfast. Select a gear and ease gently into the traffic. You’ll spot at once the ride quality is superb, and you’ve not even hit the ‘bumpy road’ setting on the manettino which relaxes the damping still further.

The steering seems more linear, with less than ever a sign of the violent off-centre reaction that so characterised (and spoiled) Ferrari steering systems of old. After a few miles you might feel inclined to look over your shoulders to see if Ferrari hasn’t snuck some rear seats in there, too, so much like a traditional Grand Tourer does the 12Cilindri feel. So, you set out to find the dark side of its character; such extraordinary power and performance number insist a savage beast must lurk within. But here’s the thing: it’s not there.

Which is not to say it’s not fast because it is, incredibly so. But the performance is meted out in so silken and even a fashion, across such a wonderfully wide rev range, that the sense of unhinged mania the numbers suggest is nowhere to be found. It just fires you, quietly and comfortably, across dozens of postcodes at a seeming blink of the eye. Indeed, you might well find yourself thinking the car has too much wind noise, only to look down to the speedometer, recognise the unspeakable number being displayed and realise the problem may actually in your right foot.

In default ‘Sport’ mode, you could regard the response of the engine as even a touch too sluggish. No problem; for the moment you select ‘Race’ the powertrain map becomes wonderfully sharp and responsive. The only problem there is that the gearbox wants to play, too, and starts banging the shifts through with proper intent, the jerk as each new ratio engages offering a true sense of occasion, the price being to punctuate your progress with a series of usually unwelcome jolts.

In cars costing a tiny fraction of this kind of money – quick Mercedes, BMWs and the like, you can separate out all the different functions and choose individual settings not just for the engine and gearbox, but suspension and steering, too. Why not on Ferrari’s V12 icon?

In better news, the 12Cilindri handles beautifully so long as you keep it in its preferred environment of fast, open roads. The steering is accurate, the damping beyond reproach and the overall spring rate of the car soft enough to feel it settle on its springs as you angle into the apex. Cranked over, throttles wide open, feeling the grip of the rear axle just start to give up, while the V12 piles on the power is as much an inimitably Ferrari experience today as it was for those who drove Daytonas this way over half a century ago.

This is not a car aiming for a lap time, and the fact that it’s the first V12 two seat Ferrari of the last 35 years not to have an official Fiorano lap time ascribed to it tells you all you need to know about what its true purpose is. Owners who still insist on taking their 12Cilindri to a circuit will find a car that’ll circulate amiably enough but without great conviction. It rolls a little, understeers quite a lot and while it can be provoked into easily held oversteer, it is something it can be persuaded to do, rather than being a natural condition.

If you’re familiar with the more recent Ferrari cockpits, there’s only one aspect of the HMI (human machine interface) that will surprise, of which more in a minute. The driving position is excellent with enough legroom for a 6ft 3in driver and a decent range of steering wheel adjustment.

The steering wheel is as overloaded with buttons and controls as it has been on all Ferraris for quite some time. And you’ll only appreciate how complicated it is when you realise there are areas on the front whose existence you’ll only become aware of when you press a button to light them up. There are other controls you’ll never see whatever you do, because they’re behind the wheel itself.

The instrument screen comes in Ferrari’s usual dazzling definition and is acceptably easy to navigate your way around once you’ve invested a reasonable amount of time learning its ways. But it’s better to look at than to use, and by a distance.

The big change is the inclusion of a brand-new screen on the centre console between the seats where all infotainment and navigation functions now reside. This is a feature even the family-friendly Purosangue lacks, forcing you to display CarPlay on the main instrument panel and denying you gauges once as instrumental to a Ferrari as a rev counter. Clearly a mistake Ferrari has moved fast to rectify. Just bear in mind that this one-third of a million-pound car has no baked-in navigation, so if you leave your smartphone behind, lose it or simply don’t have one, you’ll be stopping at the nearest service station to buy a strange looking book once known as a ‘map’.

You might think there’s not much to see, with a very traditional naturally-aspirated engine driving the rear wheels alone. No complex hybrid or clever turbo tech to explain here. But you’d be wrong. Traditional in look and on paper (at least at first acquaintance) though it may seem, the 12Cilindri brims with state of the art technology, from its engine at the front to the back axle at its rear.

The motor is probably the ultimate evolution of the F140 engine first seen all the way back in 2002 under the engine cover of the Enzo. In that time, it’s had three different capacities (6.0, 6.3 and the current 6.5-litres) and seen its power vary from as little as 620PS (456kW) in the 599 GTB to the extraordinary 830PS (610kW) it now possesses in the 12Cilindri. It’s an evolution of the motor seen in the limited edition 812 Competizione and comes with titanium rods, lightweight pistons, finger followers and a lightened crank to allow it to spin all the way to 9500rpm, a quite exceptional if not quite unique velocity for a V12 of this size.

Ferrari says it is also the first naturally-aspirated engine that allows its torque curve to be electronically curated in each gear. Ferrari has been doing this with its turbo engines for years to give them a more natural feel, but in the 12Cilindri the electronics artificially restrict torque at low revs to create that feeling of a rising crescendo of power, beloved of fans of Ferrari V12 powerplants.

The suspension is conventional but ruled with a rod of iron by Ferrari’s mind-meltingly complex electronic control systems. These include the eighth generation of its Side Slip Control software, which uses a dizzying array of sensors to manage exactly how the car behaves when the limit approaches, with different strategies employed according to which mode on the ‘manettino’ steering wheel control is selected.

Even if you push past ‘Race’ mode and into ‘CT off’, which disables the traction control, a layer of defence to save you from yourself remains, which should enable you to hold extravagant powerslides with the car making up for whatever talent you may lack. Only if you then also disable the stability control will you be left truly on your own. And good luck with that.

The 12Cilindri also has the four-wheel steering system first seen on the 812 Comp. Unlike others where rear wheels steer in unison, the Ferrari system allows them to operate independent of each other and according to need.

We have to ask why Ferrari has decided to rip up the rulebook and, where everyone expected a car even faster and madder than the 812 Superfast, has instead created one that’s quieter, more comfortable and far, far easier to use and enjoy.

It seems those looking for that answer would be well advised to look at the two other cars in the Ferrari range that have made this possible. The first is the SF90 with its near thousand horsepower output. With twin turbos and hybrid assistance, it was always going to be able to provide a bang in the back bigger than that a naturally-aspirated V12 could likely offer. So, if it’s a wildly fast and equally impractical Ferrari you’re after, that’s what you buy.

In completely the other direction, the Purosangue, with four doors, far more weight and considerably less performance than the GTC4 Lusso it replaced, has created a gap for a user-friendly GT of far more traditional character, just like the original Daytona.

It’s a brave move to make a new V12 berlinetta softer, quieter, more sober in presentation and no quicker on the road, but it’s a stroke of genius, too, for it has allowed Ferrari to make a car unashamedly in the image of those which made it great all those years ago. In short, the 12Cilindri is a car you could never tire of being aboard, something that could not always be said of the Superfast, and if that’s not the mark of a truly great V12 berlinetta Ferrari, it’s hard to think what is.