Ferrari 12Cilindri Silly Name Crazy 820bhp V12

Hope you've been practising your Duolingo, because you've got a new prancy horse to pronounce. Meet the Ferrari Dodice Cilindri. Twelve cylinders. And since they've named the entire car after the engine, we should probably have a look at it. Just open up the clamshell bonnet or, another bit of Italian pronunciation for you, the cofango. What a piece of metal that is. And look what we find underneath it, because here at Ferrari, when it comes to front engine V12s, hybrids not even in the conversation. You say turbochargers, they throw you out of Fiorano. This is still normally aspirated, six and a half litres, 820 horsepower, which takes all of this from 0-60 in 2.9 seconds. 0-125 is about 7.8, and it will cream its way past 217 miles an hour. And if you're thinking, those numbers are quite similar to the 812 superfast, you're exactly right. It feels like the most important thing with this car wasn't a headline acceleration number or a top speed. Ferrari's done with that. It's just about keeping 12 cylinders under the bonnet. So what else was it about the design that grabs you first? Was it these wheels? These are milled from a solid block of aluminium. They are 21 inches. These are actually a bit heavier than the 812's wheels, but solid block? I mean, don't even think about curbing those. I thought this was a little bit Aston Martin. I should really be careful about saying that out loud. I think the most controversial bit, I don't know about you, this black mask along the front, it is supposed to evoke a bit of a memory of the 365 GTB4, the Daytona, that kind of snouty, wedgy nose that came along in the 70s and looked ever so futuristic. In fact, it was the late 60s, wasn't it? Wow, that car was ahead of its time. And they brought it back for the Dodici Cilindri. I'm just about getting the hang of that. Now, I did ask Flavio Manzoni, he's the boss of this whole building, the Ferrari Design Studio. So can you have this body colour, if you like? And he said, quote, over my dead body. The bits that you see on this car that are black, so this front mask, the bit of the roof, and the active aero around the back, we're going to come to, it has to stay black, or you are excommunicado from Ferrari. It might take some getting used to. It might be a bit spec-sensitive. Obviously, if you have a black car, you're not going to worry about it. Still kind of growing on me, but I'm sure you'll let us know what you think in the comments. Let's come with me, and we'll go and have a look at a few more details. Ah, there you are. Let's have a walk down the back, and along the way, admire this bulge, this horn. Check out the power being beamed out of the metal there. That is fantastic. This is the controversial bit, I think, of a Dodice Cilindri. It's not very traditional Ferrari Berlinetta at the back, isn't it? No more round taillights, no more round exhaust even. And it does make me wince slightly that your rear crash bumper, the first bit that absorbs an impact, is a giant lump of carbon fiber diffuser. That just looks expensive, doesn't it? So what they've tried to do here, I guess, is to reimagine how a Berlinetta is designed at the back. Thrown away the tradition here, added this delta wing motif that cuts into the top. That's quite interesting. And then this is not actually solid. This is a glass window. It's just very heavily tinted. So you don't have that all blocked off like you did in the 812 Competizione. And then there's this. You see this section here? Again, more black, like at the front. You can't have it body color. Why? What's so special about this? Well, this behind the ducktail, this section, that is active aero. This will pop up 10 degrees between 60 kilometers an hour and 300 kilometers an hour. And it adds about 50 kilos of downforce once you're going 155 miles an hour. It's the first time that a V12 front-engine Ferrari has had active aero on the top. My question was not, why have you done it? But not, why haven't you done more? Why just do the sides here? Why make these the air brake that pop up when you stand on the ceramic brakes? Why not have it all hinged and all of this could pop up like you get on a McLaren, maybe? And the answer for that is, well, it's not as technical as you might think, actually. The answer behind that is to go in here. Here's the boot. Here's the space for your golf bags. And if all of this was hinged active aero, well, it would be really tricky to put stuff in the boot and it would eat up the space. So they've left the active aero on the side. They've kept it practical in the middle. And it's a sort of a mix, really, between utilitarian and cutting-edge aerodynamics. Is it the usual for Ferrari? Is this traditional? No. I think this is going to be the view that I'm going to take some getting used to. If you're not liking the Daytona vibes and the slight aero weirdness of the outside, then hurry up and climb inside here. Because things are a lot less radical inside the Doddy. It's familiar modern Ferrari in here. From the driver's seat, it looks like a Pura Sangue or an SF90 with the annoying touch-sensitive controls on the steering wheel. The passenger gets their own smaller second screen. And there's now a big 10-inch touchscreen for both occupants to share in the middle. Which, you've guessed it, is where the heater and the seat comfort controls have all gone to live. Great. As you'd expect, specking one of these is like a lie detector test for your sense of taste. There is endless choice. Comfy GT seats or Dominatrix-spec hard-backed carbon buckets with less padding than a stiletto heel. You can have gloss or matte finish carbon trim. Any colour of stitching your heart desires. And Apple CarPlay or Android Auto comes as standard. Right, busy old day here at Ferrari. And to make sure that we don't leak this car or show you anything before we were supposed to, I took away all the phones, all the cameras, all the electronic devices. And I've been trusting the good old-fashioned paper notepad. We've had a good old chat with loads of engineers and designers today. So I thought I'd splurge all the little factoids I've learned about this car. So what should we start with? Ah, we've not mentioned the gearbox yet. Eight-speed now, dual-clutch, still at the back, perfect weight distribution, which is 51 rear, 49 front. And that gearbox shifts 30% faster than the 812 Superfast. How have they done that? Why is it not all-wheel drive? Someone asked earlier. They say it doesn't need it. If you want all-wheel drive and V12, go and have a Pura Sangue now. The Berlinetta, the traditional GT car should always be rear drive. They've not fitted the Multimatic dampers from the Pura Sangue SUV, you know, the ones with the little electric motor on the top that stabilises body roll. Why not? Because the car's lower down. Central gravity is much lower. It doesn't need it. It's a little bit heavier than the 812 Superfast was. They're claiming 1,560 kilos dry for this car. So 1,650, 1,660 wet and ready to go. What's added the weight? Well, it's the active aero, the bigger wheels and the cofango. So your beautiful bonnet does add a little bit of weight. How much? €395,000, including tax, but before all the options that you're definitely going to add. However, if you would like to spend €435,000, you can have the car next door, which we'll show to you now, the Dorice Cilindri Spider. Yeah, they've already taken the roof off. They've not waited a few years down the line to add the retractable hardtop that drops in 14 seconds. They've done it straight away. And doesn't it look fetching in that nice green? The thing that annoys Flavio Manzoni, the designer of this car, the design boss of Ferrari, the most adding that radar to the front. He is absolutely campaigning for the companies that make those radars to make them smaller. So it invades the design of his car less. I think we can all agree that's a good idea. But he also insists that the interior, which we've just had a look at, all the touch sensitive stuff is great, needs to carry on. It makes it so minimalist. I did make the point that, yeah, it looks minimalist until you cover it in fingerprints. And he looked like he was going to bury me under the Fiorano finish line. So I left him alone. But whatever you think of the looks, the technology, the performance, we can probably all agree that it's yet another example that the Italians do pronunciation of mundane things better than anyone else. I mean, Quattroporte, Puro Sangue, and now Dodice Cilindri. I'm still going to call it Dodi. Naming the car after the engine is interesting, though, because Ferrari don't really do that very often. The last time they did, the F8 Tributo paid tribute to the V8 before the mid-engine car dropped down to a V6. So is this the last V12? Don't put me on a downer. Just enjoy it while it's here.