Is the new Dodici Cilindri the last chance to celebrate Ferrari's glorious V12?

Obviously Italians are the undisputed world champions of making car related nouns sound poetic. Quattroporte. Testarossa. Scuderia and Competizione. But there’s something more nostalgic at play here, a sense that if Ferrari doesn’t celebrate the V12 now, it’s not a given it’ll get another golden opportunity. Later this year we’ll be presented with the first electric-only Ferrari. There are already two hybrids in the range, and downsized turbocharged engines have proliferated across the family. Meanwhile Bentley and Mercedes have abandoned their 12-cylinder engines. Nothing is sacred.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

So what we have here is a celebration of the 6.5-litre V12, not a new benchmark in speed and power. That’s not to say the engineers have been too busy with their wiring diagrams and lithium-ions to better the 812’s offering – the 12 Cilindri is the most powerful series production Ferrari ever made. Its mighty 819bhp matches the limited run 812 Competizione, while three quarters of the 500lb ft torque peak is on tap from just 2,500rpm.

Not that you’ll be dawdling about at such paltry revs for long – 40 per cent lighter rods, fractionally skinnier pistons and a shaved down camshaft have allowed a redline bump from the 812’s 8,900rpm to a searing 9,500rpm. And yes, that’s a long way below what a couple of Cosworth-engined British hypercars can burn into your eardrums, but they’re 100-off unobtanium. Ferrari will build around 2,000 of these 12 Cilindris a year, and so it must comply with Euro 6 emissions this, and California anti-smog that. Not to mention evermore stringent noise regulations. And because the readings are taken at a proportional percentage of max revs, the falsetto Ferrari has life a heck of a lot harder than a less highly strung Aston or Bentley.

As Ferrari pulled the covers off the 12 Cilindri it delved into detail about how it’d routed sonic channels from under the clamshell (sorry – cofango) bonnet toward the cabin to ensure what’s lost in exhaust howl is made up for with induction bellow. Tellingly, the engineers barely made mention of how fast the car accelerates, and to what vmax. I overhead one say something to the effect of “if you want to go fast, you go in an electric”.

It’s unlikely that 0-62mph in 2.9 seconds, 0-125mph in 8.3secs and a 211mph top whack is going to embarrass anyone, but the hints are piling up. Ferrari is no longer that company obsessed with drizzling as much racecar knowhow as humanly possible into a street car. It’s deliberately sidling back into a role as an emotional entertainer. Leave the lap times and drag races to the startups.

Perhaps that’s why the looks – unusually for staunchly anti-retro Ferrari – nod to the past while moving Berlinetta design into the future. The absolutely-never-body-colour strip between headlights as piercing as the stare of the man who drew them is a dead ringer for the Plexiglas snout of the 365 GTB/4 Daytona. So’s the cab back stance, fastback rear and sumptuously muscular haunch over the rear wheel.

The alchemy has been to balance this nostalgia with daring new ideas: the ‘delta wing’ motif of the roof and the stripped back interpretation of a Ferrari backside. Remember when you could sketch the back of a prancing horse with just eight circles? Four round lights, four round exhausts. Worked for the 550, 360, Enzo... for decades, in fact. But here we have the most controversial tail since the Testarossa. Split light bar lamps, oblong exhausts, and yet more black.

The outer sections of the tail are the 12 Cilindri’s party piece: active aero on the top side of a front engined Ferrari for the first time. Both winglets rise simultaneously at 37mph, only by 10°, and only to add 50kg of downforce. Pass 186mph and the car gets the message you’re reaching for the top speed and lowers them again. Chances are then, if you see a 12 Cilindri on the road, those flaps will be on the up. Why didn’t Ferrari simply hinge the entire rear wing, like a McLaren airbrake? Simple: that would’ve compromised access to and space inside the 270-litre boot.

So, the name is a banana skin, the looks are daring, and the straight line performance is pretty much as you were. But for your €395,000 (UK prices aren’t yet confirmed, but reckon on around £350,000) you get a huge dollop of unseen and perhaps unsexy fine-tuning. The axles are 20mm closer together than the 812’s were, which could tip agility into the realms of nervousness, especially once you tickle the typically sensitive steering. Ferrari says it’s reworked the 812 Comp’s rear wheel steering dramatically to both take advantage of sharper handling reflexes while promising to dial out any widowmaker tendencies.

The gearbox – a twin clutcher now sporting eight speeds to improve cruising economy – is claimed to shift cogs 30 per cent faster than the 812 did. Suspension is largely carried over wholesale from the predecessor, albeit with new software. Same goes for the traction control and Ferrari’s Side Slip Angle witchcraft – the most intuitive powerslide aid in the known universe. It’s a question of calibrating these fiendishly clever electronic ecosystems to peacefully coexist. Only this time, there’s brake by wire in the mix, which means if you manage to cook the carbon ceramic brakes, the car will automatically compensate for microscopic variances in pedal feel, so the driver doesn’t have a ‘cor blimey’ confidence fade, even if the brakes do.

Of course, Ferrari could have ploughed that furrow and lobbed in hybrid drive. The prepared response of the engineers feels well rehearsed. “You are looking at this from a European perspective. Ferrari is a worldwide company. Not every country is thinking about banning engines.” So the V12 – and any petrol powered Ferrari – is safe for as long as it’s economically possible to be. And small wonder the company is effusive in its enthusiasm for synthetic fuels.

Other titbits from the reveal melee: it’s not four-wheel drive “because it doesn’t need to be”. If you want a V12 and AWD, Ferrari will sell you a Purosangue. Actually it probably won’t because word on the strada is it’s sold out for two years. Lucrative ‘gamble’, that one. The 12 Cilindri doesn’t borrow the SUV’s trick Multimatic electronically actuated active dampers either, because its centre of gravity is that much lower and there’s less weight heaving around than the four-door. It’s certainly not a ‘superleggera’ though – the 1,560kg dry weight is up 35kg on the 812 Superfast on account of the active aero mechanisms, the cofango hood, and the larger 20/21in wheels, which are optionally milled from a solid block of aluminium.

Another sign that Ferrari couldn’t afford to procrastinate with the V12 is the immediate appearance of a Spider variant. Usually there’s a delay before a new Ferrari goes al fresco, and before the 812 GTS there hadn’t been a series production front-engined V12 drop-top for a couple of decades. But all €435,000 (£372k) of the 12 Cilindri Spider goes on sale alongside the coupe, complete with a folding hard-top that retracts in 14secs in return for an acceptable 60kg weight gain. Exceedingly tempting, should you live in warmer climes or in the vicinity of several tunnels.

Dropping the roof sheds light on an interior which, safely back in England away from the ire of Signor Manzoni, I can probably get away with calling ‘predictable’. If the exterior is a revoluzione, the cabin is evoluzione, with a driver’s view familiar from the 296 and SF90.

There are changes no owner would notice, but people like us appreciate

Behind the steering wheel, which remains smothered with touch sensitive controls Ferrari stubbornly clings to despite protestations (from us and customers), there’s a 15.6in digital dashboard. Paddleshifters stay on the steering column, and the often copied but never bettered manettino mode switch returns – notably not usurped by sterile haptic nonsense.

The passenger is optionally greeted by an 8.8in screen with infotainment functions they’ll ignore and a speedo/rev readout they’ll do well to overlook. In the middle, unusually for a Ferrari, a shared 10.2in touchscreen is where all the heater and seat comfort controls have gone to live. Manzoni adores this modernity and minimalism, and has likely had his fingerprints lasered off – with his own eyes perhaps – to avoid mucking up his beloved clean surfaces.

One day, the screens will age. The next generation of Ferrarista will smirk at what will look like primitive resolution and slow loading times, even though in 2024 they’re state of the art. And the way things are going there’ll probably be a mid-spec electric BMW 3 Series that’ll see off the 12 Cilindri in a traffic light showdown. But y’see, most cars are a machine for moving people. The 12 Cilindri is a vehicle for its soulful, trademark, touchstone engine. The most universal language, which never needs translation is, after all, music.