2025 Ferrari 12Cilindri First Drive Review: Worthy of Worship

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 intent, but tuners and resonators bring more of the rich sound into the cabin.

Could it be louder? Yes. Do I want it to pop off like a Revuelto on overrun? Leave the peacocking to the Lamborghinisti. I’ll be here in my sage green leather comfort seats (Hard sport seats are an option, but, why?) performing Wealthy Older Gentleman Cosplay while your computerized off-gassing disrupts your weave and splooshes a rooster tail of alienation in its wake. Want more noise? Open the windows. Also, a convertible version is coming.  

I did have the chance to drive the car on a small test track as well, but my helmet comms from the lead driver cut out as soon as we started our first of three laps, it was pouring rain, and I was blind-driving someone else’s $500,000 two-seater. Choose your own adventure. I sat through a pair of hot laps with the lead driver after, a rally drift king, and he made the car perform astounding feats of Olympic-level synchronized swimming. So, it’s apparently capable of that. But if I had to draw the path we took through the twisties, it would look like a fractaled Spirograph. My vestibular system is still recovering. 

Quibbles? I always have them. The fiddly transmission controller, while paying homage to the gated shifters of yore, still feels underdeveloped; if you’re going to do a callback, why not delight us with a proper knob on a stick instead of some half-hearted Marantz graphic equalizer sliders? One can’t manually activate the batwing spoilers that unfurl from the trailing edges of the rear hatch and fenders that produce downforce under hard cornering and braking between 37 and 185 mph, though a spoiler deployment button is kind of tacky anyway. The name is at once generic, on-the-nose, and absurdly unpronounceable. And the haptic buttons on the steering wheel are still utter shit, though now there’s a crisp central touchscreen that runs Apple CarPlay, so you don’t ever really need to touch them, except when you sometimes accidentally do.

I can be contrary—my therapist once diagnosed me with INR: initial negative reaction. So I can’t help but wonder, is it a betrayal of my cunty essence to simply worship a Ferrari? The short answer, I’ve determined, is, no.

The brand has a vision for its current suite of cars that allows it to simultaneously return to gorgeous and tractable (and occasionally track-able) GTs, avant-garde ultra-supercars, an ability to cash in on its heritage in high-priced limited-editions, a quixotic embrace of sort-of SUVs, and (soon) its release of an all-electric something—and every single one of these vehicles excites and entices me. Moreover, every one makes me feel transcendent, beyond my limited capabilities behind the wheel. This is not only enviable but it’s also derived from an admirable intentionality in making the best-driving cars in the world.

I flat-out love the 12Cilindri. If that makes me an apologist, a sucker, or a suck-up, I’m fine with that. If that makes me not hardcore enough, I’m fine with that, too. If I had Lotto Scratch, might I be more compelled by a 296 GTS or a Roma Spider? I’m a tacky bitch who likes to floss, so a convertible wins for me every time. But I haven’t driven the 12Cilindri Spider yet. Either way, just make sure it’s painted Giallo Raccolto to match my fondue set.

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