Ferrari 12 Cilindri Manuale review – the fake manual is brilliant but not perfect
Ferrari's bringing back the manual transmission, albeit in a clever but not quite authentic way. It's brilliant in ways but not perfect...
This is the 12 Cilindri Manuale, Ferrari’s first three-pedal, manual-shifter car in about 15 years… only it’s not an actual manual. Instead it features a cleverly manual‑ised version of the regular model’s DCT (dual-clutch transmission). There’s a classic-look Ferrari open-gate shifter and a clutch pedal in the footwell, but their connection to the rear-mounted transaxle is by-wire only.
That said, you can stall the car or kangaroo away like a novice, though the big question is does the feel and feedback make you believe that the gearlever is physically connected to the gears, and the clutch pedal to a clutch plate? In short, is it convincing?
Customers were obviously confident that Ferrari’s engineers could deliver an authentic feel – all 1499 examples were sold before anyone outside the company had driven one, and Ferrari could have sold more, despite each costing £508,000. That’s a whopping 50 per cent more than the £336,500 of the standard model, and many examples are expected to be enhanced via Ferrari’s ‘Tailor Made’ programme, upping the price again.
The 12 Cilindri was chosen for the Manuale treatment as the purest of current Ferraris: a rear-drive non-hybrid with a naturally aspirated V12, and it will only be built in coupe form. It’s identifiable at a distance by its more simple, five-spoke alloys and, on closer inspection, by the ‘Manuale’ script on the front wings and pinstripe finish on the front splitter and active rear wings, an homage to the Daytona.
Creating and developing a real manual gearbox to pair with the 6.5-litre, 819bhp V12 would have been a big task, but creating a manual-by-wire 12 Cilindri was no walk in the park – in fact it took four years, two and a half of them occupied by software tuning. One benefit of manually controlling the Magna DCT gearbox is that the car can still be driven as an eight-speed auto so did not need new emissions homologation.
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Early on, it was decided that for ease of use the manual gate would offer six speeds, using the DCT’s first six ratios, which limits the top speed to 190mph, though the full 211mph is available in auto mode. The shifter looks like a classic Ferrari design, with an open gate and a ball-topped lever, and it’s beautifully engineered. It starts with a precision-engineered yoke into which the lever is mounted, with a sort of rocker switch to give the spring-loaded, cross-gate feel of the real thing. Then there’s a pivot and rocker arm for the fore/aft gear selection, delivering the ‘friction’ resistance and slot-home feel.
The new pedal box is handsome too, a three-pedal version of the regular car’s with a smaller brake pedal face and a mechanism to give the over-centre and bite-point sensations of a real clutch pedal. Though it’s clutch-by-wire, what happens at the clutches of the DCT gearbox is proportional to what happens at the pedal, so the driver manages the take-up. There are a number of safety systems, including one to ensure you can’t overheat the clutches, though they’re multiplate wet clutches and so pretty durable. It’s also impossible to select a gear that would over-rev the engine; there’s a solenoid on the end of the shifter pivot that locks the lever.
Chief test driver Raffaele de Simone says it was a unique project because ‘we didn’t have to imagine anything new’. Rather than developing a new technology and deciding how it should feel to the driver, this was a case of relying on memory to recreate a sensation. For Raffa, the tactile feel of the manual gearbox he set out to create was ‘40 per cent F355 and 60 per cent 599’, but the most vital objective was that the gearshift experience should feel wholly authentic, that nothing should prick the bubble of belief that it was a genuine manual gearbox.
It’s a real novelty to sit in a brand new Ferrari with an open-gate shifter. To engage manual mode from the start, depress the clutch before pressing the start button. An orange icon of the shifter gate appears in the instrument pack, and the gate pattern on the top of the ball shifter also glows orange. Dip the clutch, into first – sherr-clack! – find the bite point, raise the revs a fraction and we’re away. The clutch weighting is a little lighter than expected but the lever action is slick and feelsome and the combo is convincing as we navigate the connecting roads at a gentle pace at the Balocco test track.
Arriving at the ‘Alfa Romeo’ circuit, things are about to get more demanding. I’ll be tailing another 12 Cilindri driven by Luca, a Ferrari test driver, while trying to learn a track that is in places very slow, in others very fast; so fast, in fact, that they’ve added a couple of coned chicanes. By the third lap we hit almost 250kph (155mph) before one chicane, and I reckon I’ve learned about half the track. What I’ve also learned is that there’s quite a lot of leeway in the coordination of clutch and revs on heel-and-toe downshifts; I know that if this was a genuine manual there would have been a good deal more engine-braking-induced slip; it’s very tolerant of ham-fisted shifts.
It also shows what an incredibly tractable engine the 9500rpm, 6.5-litre V12 is. In the tight, slow corners I’d be paddleshifting into the most appropriate gear at the apex, but the manual requires better planning and I’m caught in too high a gear a couple of times. No bother; the V12 pulls strong and clean from hardly any revs, which is a joy.
Fast laps over and helmet off, working the V12 from unusually low revs in high gears and hearing the rich vocal character of the engine feels like a revelation unlocked by the manual shift. Indeed, bimbling about, batting the lever around the gate and discovering bits of the engine mapping you might never find in the regular car, even when selecting gears manually with the paddles, feels like the major gain of the Manuale.
But is it wholly convincing? No, for two reasons. First, it’s a very forgiving shift, particularly in high-stakes manoeuvres, smoothing any rough handling, flattering you and at the same time saving the mechanicals from harm. That said, while your blipped downshifts don’t have to be precise, if they are, the car will allow some of the high-rev engine braking to help rotate the car into turns.
Second, a couple of times when my hand was resting on the lever in fifth, ready to pull back for sixth, the lever popped into neutral and then sixth with a flare of revs. I realised that this was because I was unconsciously loading the lever ready for the shift, which you can do in a true manual because if you’re on the throttle the transmission is loaded, the gears locked together by torque, resisting the load on the shifter, whereas the by-wire shift load is always the same.
All that said, does it matter? The ‘manual’ definitely brings a new and appealing dimension to the 12 Cilindri experience, making loafing around with the magnificent V12 as appealing as chasing the red line. It’s very forgiving of imperfect driving, which I guess will please all but the hardcore driver for whom the lack of jeopardy will also temper the depth of satisfaction of getting every shift just so. I’ll also bet good money on it being not the only shift-by-wire 'manual' DCT we’ll see from Ferrari, or others.
