2025 Ferrari 12Cilindri is a 9500rpm love letter to the V12

If the seemingly relentless push towards electrification and downsizing has you feeling glum, we suggest you wrap your peepers around this.

It’s Ferrari’s all-new V12 flagship; a futuristic and surprisingly different-looking replacement to the brilliant 812 Superfast that is so obsessed with its own, even more powerful 12-cylinder engine that it has named itself after it: the Ferrari 12Cilindri.

Italian a little rusty? Translation: the Ferrari 12 Cylinders.

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Revealed on the eve of the Miami Formula 1 grand prix at a swanky event on Miami Beach, the 12Cilindri is the latest iteration of Maranello’s iconic front-engine V12 lineage and, as you’d expect, it packs some serious performance numbers.

Power comes from Ferrari’s venerable F140 6.5-litre V12, an engine first used in the Enzo and later in the F12, 812 SF and Purosangue, but heavy modifications and fresh internals have lifted power to 610kW at a heady 9500rpm.

That’s a 22kW jump over the already obscenely powerful 812SF but it’s the higher rev limit that promises to truly elevate the driving experience.

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While the 812 SF made peak power at 8500rpm, the 12Cilindri still has another 1000rpm to go. Only the 812 Competizione can match the 12Cilindri for redline top trumps.

The trade off with a higher rev-limit is slightly less torque (678Nm @ 7250rpm plays 718Nm @ 6750rpm in the 812 SF) but Ferrari’s engineers have worked hard to ensure the 12Cilindri doesn’t only rev more cleanly but that 80 percent of its torque is available from just 2500rpm.

Straight line performance? About on par with a the 812 Superfast. 0-100kmh takes 2.9 seconds, 200km/h is dispatched in 7.9sec and, if you have enough space, top speed is 340km/h.

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A Spider version was also revealed and naturally it’s a little heavier (60kg to be precise) so it’s not quite as blistering. 0-100kmh takes 2.95 seconds, while 200km/h takes 8.2sec. Happily, the top speed is the same which should do wonders to your hair when the roof is down.

Underneath the 12Cilindri uses an all-new aluminium chassis that Ferrari says is 15 percent stiffer. The wheelbase is 20mm shorter than 812 SF, too, but the car itself is bigger. Overall length has grown by 76mm, width is now 56mm girthier and height is up by 16mm.

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Despite new aluminium chassis, which also employs a new 100 percent recycled alloy for the gearbox strut towers, weight has crept up slightly to 1560kg dry for the Coupe and 1620kg for the Spider. That’s an increase of around 35kg over the 812 SF.

Now, the design. Quite the departure from the sculptural, vent-infused 812 SF isn’t it? Ferrari says it was targeting a cleaner look and the great expanse of the monolithic bonnet (which is now a single piece and front hinged) is interrupted only by two small cooling vents. The wrap-round headlight treatment is another bold change — anyone else picking up strong 365 vibes there? — and coupe versions sport an enormous glass roof.

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Beauty is subjective but to our eyes the Spider is the prettier of the pair. It loses the giant section of black rear glass and instead features a pair of buttresses just ahead of the shrink-wrapped rear wheel arches. Speaking of, wheel sizes have crept up an inch over the 812SF to 21-inches.

As you’d expect, there’s a lot of aerodynamic wizardry at play, including a twin element active rear wing with two settings: low drag of high downforce. Below 60km/h and above 300km/h the elements stay hidden to reduce drag but between those speeds they rise and vary their height depending on the car’s speed and load.

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LONG LIVE THE V12!

If, like us, you had a fearful moment that calling this car the ‘12 cylinders’ means it could be a send off to the big 6.5-litre V12, rest easy. Ferrari has previously confirmed it will keep building the V12, without hybrid assistance, for as long as possible.

While it made its debut in the Enzo back in 2002, the F140 V12 has undergone hefty changes since then. The F140 GA used in the 812 SF, for example, was claimed to be 75 percent new and increased capacity from 6.3L to 6.5.

To help the big unit rev even harder in the 12Cilindri, where it’s known as the F140 HD, Ferrari has worked hard to reduce weight and free up the inertia of the internals. Titanium conrods deliver a 40 percent saving in rotational mass compared to ones made from steel and the crankshaft has been rebalanced and made 3 percent lighter. Aluminium alloy is also used for the pistons and the changes result in an engine that Ferrari says delivers “instantaneous pick-up for maximum accelerator response and a feeling of “never-ending power”.

Further underscoring that sense of bottomless performance is the inclusion of Ferrari’s torque staging software, known here as ‘Aspirated torque shaping’, which manipulates the torque curve in third and fourth gears for even more savage feeling acceleration.

A new exhaust system with shorter intake tracts and a ceramic catalytic converter also feature and the big V12’s cooling system has also been completely overhauled.

The 812 SF’s 7-speed dual clutch gearbox has been replaced with a new 8-speed DCT lifted largely from the SF90, although shift times have been improved and are now 30 percent faster compared with previous V12 applications.

As is the Ferrari way, there’s an armada of complex chassis and software control systems to help harness the performance. Four wheel steering, which can manage the movement of each wheel individually, has been lifted from the 812 SF Competizione and the brakes now feature the same brake-by-wire braking ABS Evo set-up found in the 296 GTB and SF90 XX.

Ferrari’s latest 6D sensor is used to manage all of the systems and there’s also the latest evolution of Side Slip Control 8.0 to hep turn mere mortals into power sliding gods.

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THERE ARE MANY SCREENS

Like the exterior, the cabin design ushers in a fresh look compared with 812 SF. There are now three information displays: a 10.25-inch central touchscreen, a 15.6-inch driver display and an 8.8-inch passenger display. Naturally you score Ferrari’s signature carbon-steering wheel, which incorporates multiple functions for the indicators and wipers into buttons on the wheel itself, and buyers can also option a 15-speaker 1600W Burmester sound system.

WHEN WILL THE FERRARI 12CILINDRI COME TO AUSTRALIA?

European deliveries of left-hand-drive cars will commence in the last quarter of 2024, while right-hand-drive cars should arrive between six-nine months later. That puts Aussie deliveries around the middle of 2025. Open-top versions will come after that, with first delivers kicking off in Europe in the first quarter of 2025 and in Australia later that year or possibly early 2026.

As for pricing, the coupe will have an Italian driveway price of EUR 395,000. The Spider is costlier at EUR435,000. Here in Australia, it’s likely those prices will translate to somewhere in the $800,000 bracket before options.