Ferrari 12Cilindri review

New flagship Ferrari GT arrives with an 819bhp V12 engine, a two-seat interior and sci-fi looks

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According to Ferrari itself, no other current model epitomises the brand quite like the new Ferrari 12Cilindri, a sleek grand tourer with a V12 in its front, driven rear wheels, and two seats inside.

Replacing the 812 Superfast, the 12Cilindri (pronounced 'dodichi chilindri') is tasked with doing a similar but not quite the same job as its predecessor. They called the 812 ‘Superfast’ because it was meant to be a GT with shades of hyper sports car.

The existence today of the SF90 Stradale in the sporting area means that Ferrari has opted to relax its new coupé’s remit. The 12Cilindri is supposed to be a more rounded GT, which I don’t think is a bad thing. Depending on conditions, the 812 could feel hairy.

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DESIGN & STYLING

Ferrari 12Cillindri review side

The fundamental idea and layout of the new V12 GT remain similar to its predecessors. There’s an aluminium chassis, albeit a new one, stiffer particularly around suspension towers and the A- and B-pillars, with a naturally aspirated 6.5-litre engine tucked so far back under the huge bonnet that it’s behind the front axle line. It’s mated to an eight-speed transaxle (rather than the 812’s seven-speeder), biasing weight distribution 52% to the rear.

The car is 4.73m long, some 76mm longer than its predecessor – a stat that surprised me when I saw it, because the wheelbase is now 20mm shorter, at 2700mm, yet to me the overhangs look no bigger. That the wheels are now 21in rather than 20in diameter is probably why. The height (1292mm) is barely changed but the body has been widened from 1971mm to 2000mm.

You can make up your own mind about how it looks (I like it a great deal), but it’s meant to call upon, as you might tell, GTs from the 1950s and 1960s, which Ferrari thinks were the best-looking (no disagreements here).

Most obviously, there’s a nose reminiscent of the 365 GTB/4 'Daytona'. That’s meant to remove any ‘face’, so there’s no emotion expressed, which in the 812’s case was a pretty angry front.

This isn’t: what it and the glass areas and black roof (body colour isn’t an option) remind me of is a small die-cast toy car whose one-piece plastic window and light moulding sits snugly inside the shell.

And I do buy Ferrari’s line that there are sci-fi hints, that this is how we imagined the future would look. In that respect, it’s a bit like the Morgan Super 3.

At each rear three-quarter, there are active aerodynamic flaps, which only rise at certain speeds and accelerations – and you can’t manually raise them.

Most of the aerodynamic work happens beneath the car. Ferrari doesn’t make any claims for lift or downforce except to say that the winglets provide an additional 50kg of negative lift at 155mph. They also, because they don’t extend across the whole tail, allow the bootlid to be lighter and its load lip to be lower.

INTERIOR

The 12Cilindri has a neatly designed two-seat cabin, elegant and showing less flamboyance than, say, a Lamborghini (this is not a criticism).

Fit and finish are very good and material quality high, although it’s less solid-feeling inside than something like a Bentley Continental GT Speed – unsurprisingly, given the weight differences between the two.

You can pick from luxurious-feeling materials or something like the carbonfibre that adorns our test car. The driving position itself is good, low, straight and roomy, and there’s a reasonable amount of oddment storage and a 270-litre boot.

The steering column has paddles that stay where they are, which relegates the indicator buttons to one each side of the steering wheel. Lights and wipers are there too – a little fiddly, but you get used to it. Driving modes are adjusted from the steering wheel too, while there are haptic buttons for other driving controls. The only driving-related function controlled off the central touchscreen is for the nose lift.

That screen, incidentally, links to a smartphone to handle infotainment - Ferrari offers no sat-nav, for example, because sensibly it figures that owners with a third of a million quid have a phone that will do the job better.

When you have nothing on the touchscreen, the blank black screen is meant to have been installed discreetly enough to meld into the rest of the design. 

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

Lifting the huge one-piece bonnet not only reveals how far back the engine sits but also exposes the tyres, to make the car look a little racy.

The engine hardware is extreme itself: its last outing was in the 812 Competizione and it makes the same 819bhp at 9250rpm, with a 9500rpm redline, although minor installation changes have reduced peak torque by 10lb ft to 500lb ft, made at 7250rpm.

Having eight speeds rather than seven has added a few kilos, although Ferrari claims the centre of gravity is lower. It quotes only a dry weight, of 1560kg. We put an 812 Superfast on the scales, fuelled, at 1725kg.

The internal gear ratios are the same as in the SF90 and 296 GTB, but a lower final drive means 5% shorter ratios in low gears than in the 812 Superfast or 812 Competizione – not cars unendowed with performance.

The acceleration figures, then – 2.9sec to 62mph and 7.9sec to 124mph – remain the same as the 812 Superfast's, because there’s a limit to what rear tyres can do with 819bhp that they couldn’t with 789bhp.

And the character and delivery remain every bit as special as in the 812 Competizione. In a world where not many manufacturers can be committed to naturally aspirated V12s, any that are left are fabulous.

It’s smooth because all engines with multiples of straight six cylinders are smooth, and it has to have light internals because it’s a 6.5-litre engine that revs to 9500rpm without tearing itself apart.

You can’t use it all on the road, clearly, and Ferrari’s engineers are aware this car needs to be enjoyable at speeds where it’s not breaking sweat. So they’ve modified the torque output in third and fourth gears between 2000rpm and 5000rpm, which is where they think drivers spend a lot of time on country roads. It has had peaks reduced in places flatten it, to be more linearly responsive in those areas.

It will still make peak torque in those gears. This isn’t a move like in the turbocharged 488 GTB, where only seventh gear made full torque, so that it still built up to something; it’s just management of the responses. They’re still as exceptional as anything not electric.

It’s bassy at low revs, resisting being a constant drone, tuneful through the mid-range where you will spend most of your time. The only disappointments about how it sounds and how it responds at high revs are how hard it is to find places where you can get there. Accelerative bursts last fractions of a second.

The gearbox is a dual-clutch unit, maybe the smoothest and fastest, and there’s an electronically controlled limited-slip differential, plus drive modes and ECUs to meld the whole caboodle together, which adjust not only those but also the by-wire braking system, active rear steering, variable stability control and slip control.

RIDE & HANDLING

The 812 Superfast had lightning handling responses. Ever since the F12tdf, to which Ferrari fitted very wide front tyres to improve agility to near mid-engined levels, then set about finding ways to sort out the resulting drama, Ferrari’s big V12 GT has been ultra-mobile.

Each iteration since has got on top of the issue better, but none so much as the 12Cilindri, allowed as it is to not be so sporting.

For the first time since the F50 30 years ago, Goodyear is a tyre partner, developing an Eagle F1 Supersport bespoke for the car. I had a brief go on them in the wet on a circuit. There’s also a Michelin Pilot Sport S5. I had them fitted for an extended road drive.

The steering is the same ratio as the 812 Superfast’s. It's quick, at less than two turns between locks, but that doesn’t translate to it feeling nervous or hyperactive. There’s a measured calmness to both its weight and its smooth, light-medium weighted response.

And although with the 20mm wheelbase reduction the driver’s seat has moved closer to the rear, rather than the front axle, it doesn’t feel that way. Perhaps it’s partly that you can see the front wing tops, but Ferrari engineers also say the pivot point feels more centered around the driver: you don’t feel like you’re sitting at the back of the car with a wildly responsive front end veering around some way in the distance. It’s more centred around the driver and, with a more chilled front end, this makes it a better, more relaxing car on a long-legged run yet also a more intuitive car on back roads.

We’ve become accustomed to Ferraris riding well, and no exception here. There are magnetorheological dampers and a simple push of the manettino dial puts them into a soft ‘bumpy road’ setting, which is one of the best features of any driver’s car this complex: one button to pick a mode you will like, where body control is always good but it’s really absorbent, given the 275/35 front and 315/35 rear tyres.

The better thing is how it manages more than 800bhp and one of the fastest-responding powertrains in the world with it. On the twisty bit of road I sought out for myself, I found the car was in those areas of third and fourth gear where the engineers had brought down the torque curve to suit just this kind of driving, and I found it an incredibly rewarding groove.

It’s a bit like a faster Roma with an unbelievable engine, almost with hints of mid-engined Ferraris in the speed yet control with which it turns. 

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

Ferrari 12Cillindri review front

At the time of writing, fuel consumption figures haven’t been finalised, but you can imagine that the 12Cilindri will do an MPG figure somewhere in the high teens.

Running costs will be fairly large too, but we're talking about a car that costs £336,500 before options, and I don’t suppose they will want your order unless you tick a few of those boxes.

VERDICT

In becoming a less extreme sports car than the 812 Superfast, the 12Cilindri is a better car all around, and yet for me it’s no less rewarding to drive.

It has an eminently agreeable interior, an engine to die for, one of the best transmissions in the world and a blend of ride and handling that gives it the right amount of agility coupled to a ride sufficiently absorbent that you could happily spend lengthy hours at the wheel.

I mean, it’s a V12-powered Ferrari, and I don’t think I’ve met a bad one of those, but I thought this one was particularly lovely. 

Matt Prior

Matt Prior
Title: Editor-at-large

Matt is Autocar’s lead features writer and presenter, is the main face of Autocar’s YouTube channel, presents the My Week In Cars podcast and has written his weekly column, Tester’s Notes, since 2013.

Matt is an automotive engineer who has been writing and talking about cars since 1997. He joined Autocar in 2005 as deputy road test editor, prior to which he was road test editor and world rally editor for Channel 4’s automotive website, 4Car. 

Into all things engineering and automotive from any era, Matt is as comfortable regularly contributing to sibling titles Move Electric and Classic & Sports Car as he is writing for Autocar. He has a racing licence, and some malfunctioning classic cars and motorbikes.