We Drive Ferrari’s New V-12 Supercar with a Manual Transmission, but There’s a Twist

Ferraris have always been defined by their engines, but never in so literal a fashion as the 12Cilindri. As you probably guessed, cilindri is Italian for “cylinders.” If you don’t want to pidgin it, the name is Dodici Cilindri. Literal as it may be, though, 12Cilindri describes two Ferraris: the brand’s flagship grand tourer and its vaguely SUV-ish four-door. The name is less ambiguous than if Toyota were to dub a vehicle the 4Cylinder, but still not exactly definitive.

Enter the 12Cilindri Manuale. Now you know we’re talking about the two-seat Ferrari, because that’s the only Ferrari available with a manuale transmission. But the manual is a bit of smoke and mirrors. Rather, it’s solenoids and Hall-effect sensors, the 21st-century equivalent of smoke and mirrors. Mechanically, the Manuale’s eight-speed dual-clutch is the same transaxle you’ll find between the standard 12Cilindri’s rear wheels. But here, a third pedal gives the driver electronic control of those clutches, and a dainty aluminum shifter juking through a machined aluminum plate lets the driver select among the first six ratios. The car’s computers do the work of rods and levers, communicating the motion of those components to the clutches and shift forks in the transaxle.

One look at the shifter tells you it is not meant to be manhandled. (Decades ago, one of our editors managed to snap the lever clean off the gated shifter in a V-12 supercar from some other Italian automaker; he sells insurance now.) Both the clutch pedal and the shifter are light in their action, less tactile than we’d hoped. It’s hard to discern through your foot where the friction point is but easier to pay attention to when the car starts moving. Given the 12Cilindri’s light-switch throttle, be extremely judicious lest you overrev that big 6.5-liter, make noob noises, and/or smoke a clutch creeping away from a stop.

But be careful you don’t stall it, which is a real possibility. Drive it poorly, and the 12Cilindri Manuale allows the driver to make all manner of stick-shift blunders in the interest of rewarding deeper engagement. Let the clutch out too quickly while underway, and you’re punished with jerky engagement. Downshift without blipping the throttle and you’ll be thrown against the seatbelt—there’s no automatic rev matching here. Grab the wrong gear, and you’re in the wrong gear.

The exception is if your shift would zing the engine beyond its 9500-rpm redline. Do that, and the stick will hang up halfway into the gate, like a normal manual waiting for the synchros to engage but without that horrible grinding noise. The 12Cilindri Manuale will punish the driver, but it will not punish itself.

Walking us through the shifter’s operation, an engineer winces at this phrasing. “Perhaps ‘punish’ is a harsh word,” he corrects us. “It gives you lessons.” In other words, unless you endanger the machine, the Manuale acts exactly as if it has a normal manual transmission. Clutch-dump burnout? Sure. Grab second gear to keep the Michelin Pilot Sport S5s spinning past 70 mph? You bet.

Judged against other cars with a gated shifter between the seats flicking forks in a gearbox on the rear axle, though, nothing about the Manuale suggests artificiality. And while you don’t get the sense that you’re feeling gear teeth engage through the lever, the metallic snick-snick that accompanies each shift is precisely what we’d hoped for. The shifter gates appear to be more tightly spaced than they are; you don’t need to worry about grabbing fifth when aiming for third. Move too conservatively upshifting from second, however, and you will end up beached on the aluminum isthmus delineating first from third.

The Manuale’s light clutch pedal and low-effort shifter are consistent with the 12Cilindri’s other controls. Feathery steering and brakes are central to the car’s light and playful demeanor, belying its 186.3-inch length and estimated 3900 pounds (some 10 inches longer and 400 pounds heavier than the commoner’s front-engine sports car, the C7 Chevrolet Corvette). The 12Cilindri floats through turns and dances in response to driver inputs. Get on it, and the delicate clutch and shifter action fit in perfectly with the other controls. If your clutch leg starts to cramp, you encounter traffic, or you’re cruising on the highway and want seventh and eighth gear, push the “D” button on the center console and the Manuale will revert to automatic operation. When you’re ready to reengage, just step on the clutch, slide the shifter into an appropriate gear, and the fun begins again.

Ferrari will only build 1499 copies of the 12Cilindri Manuale, an homage to the cubic-centimeter displacement of the V-12 in the very first Ferrari. We’re guessing the brand decided to build roughly 1500 and then someone connected that figure rather than the initial production target being “however many cc’s the 125 S’s V-12 was.” Luckily for Ferrari, there are lots of numbers in its past, so it can hang a historical reference on just about any integer. A number Ferrari didn’t explain is the more than $200,000 upcharge for the Manuale variant.

Speaking of numbers, the Manuale is not as quick as the regular 12Cilindri. Ferrari chief test driver Raffaele De Simone says he can just about match the standard car’s acceleration times while working the clutch and shifter. Of course, he’s been involved in the development of every Prancing Horse for more than 20 years. You will be slower. But you will not care. A couple of tenths are a price well worth paying for the lost joy of working a gated manual shifter.

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