Ferrari’s famous V12 engine continues to live on in the new 12Cilindri. James Baggott has been behind the wheel to see what it’s like.

The V12 is the heart of Ferrari,” said company founder Enzo as he talked of the earliest cars with their crackling, fire-spitting exhausts, and their dancing pistons as small as egg cups. Front-engined V12 grand tourers were what the company sold to its gentlemen drivers: “You buy the engine,

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.

On a track and country roads in Luxembourg, the 812 Superfast’s successor proved a potent yet polished homage to the marque’s heritage.

The 2025 Ferrari 12Cilindri replaces the 812 as the brand's new GT. The 12Cilindri has a classic front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, two-seat layout, and as its name implies, a V-12 engine under the long hood. The Ferrari 12Cilindri seats just two. The dual-cowl dashboard is a classic design.

It is so tempting to look at the 12Cilindri as essentially a rebodied Superfast, itself a heavily revised F12. For a start, when it comes to facelifting a facelift Ferrari has previous, and recently; was the F8 not a re-fettled 488 GTB, itself a cosmetically tweaked, twin turbo development of the 458? It was.

Versus its 788 hp predecessor in the 812 Superfast, the engine spins up 31 more horses and gets titanium connecting rods that are 40 percent lighter, a lightened crankshaft and pistons, and valve-train components derived directly from Ferrari’s F1 engines,

The 2025 Ferrari 12Cilindri features extreme cab-rearward proportions. The 2025 Ferrari 12Cilindri's similarity to the 365GTB/4 Daytona is clear. Ferrari quotes a zero-to-62-mph time of 2.9 seconds. Like the 812, the 12Cilindri has rear-axle steering, or Virtual Short Wheelbase in Ferrari-speak.

Yeah, the 2025 Ferrari 12 Cilindri is awful fast in a straight line. The speed is hardly surprising, perhaps, given the new 12 Cilindri packs the most powerful V-12 ever installed in a factory-built front-engine Ferrari,

And no Ferrari has made me feel more like a dad than the 12Cilindri I just drove in, of all places, the European grand duchy of Luxembourg. Officially the exterior paint is Giallo