Ferraris are typically red. But for the launch of the new 12Cilindri—pronounced Doh-DEH-chi Chi-LIN-dri—the prancing horse brand elected to slather its cars in a stunning, tawny golden-metallic they call Giallo MonteCarlo.
The origin of this Monaco reference was unclear. Given the obvious design influence of the storied marque’s 365 GTB/4 “Daytona,” an exemplar of early-1970s rarified sleaze, I think the color should be called Giallo Raccolto, harkening back to the cheerily dreary Harvest Gold color that, along with Coppertone Brown and Avocado Green, dominated industrial design in the Malaise Era of my youth.
Whatever you want to call it, the car, sharply angular and muscularly curvaceous, looks resplendent in this hue, as auric and encapsulatory of human potential as the golden record we sent into the universe on the Voyager spacecraft—a disco disc distillation of the diversity of life on earth—in the ’70s, when the Daytona’s influence reigned supreme.
This new car looks like a spaceship, like a Syd Mead movie prop fantasy come to life, like an alternative automotive path, bridging, as Ferrari design head Flavio Manzoni told me, “the past and the future,” eliding the present. The grand-offspring of a Modulo and a Daytona, carried to term in some intergalactic liquid time surrogate and beamed to earth literally out of order.
This was evident as I drove the car through the hills and cornfields and cow pastures and small towns of rural Luxembourg. A surprising number of road repair workers labored to fix the already perfect pavement. And while they didn’t catcall or wolf whistle or applaud, like the Italians often do when one passes in an exotic, they stared at the car and mouthed the universal linguistic/gestural equivalent of “What the fuck?”
This is, precisely, the intended effect of the 12Cilindri. It is a stunner. With its scimitar nose, comically long hood, wraparound canopy, blacked-out roofline, and mollusk rear, it is meant to astonish onlookers. And, after a day behind the wheel, I can confess that it is effective at astounding drivers too.
The car it replaces, the 812 Superfast, was also a stunner but in a very different way. That vehicle hosted the same classic Ferrari configuration, with a front-mid-mounted, naturally-aspirated, robust and revvy 6.5-liter V12 and rear-wheel drive. But that car, oddly enough, was from a time when Ferrari had a different, more limited, product strategy. That minatory two-seater was meant to be at the pinnacle of the brand’s pyramid, one constructed upon a base of pure capability.
Now, the marque has more models, and a more divided (but not, in my opinion, divisive) personality. Technically sophisticated implements like the SF90, featuring hybrid powertrains and all-wheel drive, can now better occupy that peak, peaky position. Though the 12Cilindri packs 819 horsepower, a 2.9-second run to 60, and a 211-mph top speed, this liberates this Trad-GT from, as a Ferrari spokesperson said, “Embodying ultimate performance.”
Personally, I say, amen to that. I drove an 812 all over Southern California a few years back, and it never didn’t feel like too much car, a massive engine nominally outfitted with seats. The 12Cilindri, while still intensely potent, feels like a proper Ferrari GT.
The 12Cilindri is long. With a trick four-wheel-steering system, it shrinks a bit on tighter turns. Still, hairpins, especially the slick ones I encountered on Luxembourg’s greasy rain-soaked pavement, are not exactly its métier, though its 275/35/21 front and 315/35/21 rear Michelin Pilot Sport S5 or Goodyear Eagle F1 Super Sport tires, giant perfect brakes, and stability control—defeatable in the top settings on the steering wheel-mounted manettino—do a fine job of keeping things from going off or through the guard-rails.
What it loves, what it devours with vultrine zest, is open road and long sweepers, the kind on which you can wind the engine out to its 9,500-rpm redline, and vibe, like Milt Jackson, in the intoxicating reverberations of that honking V12.
Ferrari engineers sweated to provide this engine with its deliciously linear power delivery, as predictable and repeatable in effluxing through its rev range as a key change in a Beyoncé bridge. They even went so far as to perform some “torque sculpting,” restraining maximum (though un-pavement-able) twist in the interest of the poco-a-poco crescendo. The new eight-speed’s 30% quicker shifts make every paddle press an intuitive vocoder exploit, yielding another predictable Every Good Boy Deserves Ferrari scale without any uncanny melisma. A proper GT is a bit more isolated, by…
Read More: 2025 Ferrari 12Cilindri First Drive Review: Worthy of Worship