Ferrari 812 Superfast review: It’s brilliant, but too damn powerful

My credentials were questioned when I said the Ferrari F12 frightened me. Well, this new one is even scarier.

Ferrari B12 Superfast.

A few years ago I drove the then new Ferrari F12 in Scotland and emerged with a white face and what looked like the onset of Parkinson’s. Ooh, it was a scary thing. Yes, the weather was being all Scottish and, yes, the road surface was not ideally suited to a car with a simply enormous amount of power. But it was the size of the thing that worried me most of all.

It felt as though I was trying to steer an aircraft carrier with an out-of-control nuclear reactor up the Kennet and Avon canal. You didn’t drive this car. On roads like that, in the rain, you hung on for dear life and whimpered like a dog on bonfire night. Some questioned my petrolhead credentials when I returned and, after medication, said the F12 was a car with too much power. “Too much power?” they wailed. “That’s like saying your penis is too big. It’s impossible.”

I still feel, however, that I was correct. And I reckoned that what Ferrari needed to do next was go back to basics and make a small, 2-litre car. I drew it in my head and it was very pretty. It would have about 225kW, a fast gearbox, the lightness of touch for which Ferrari was famous and a price tag of about $175,000.

But instead, what Ferrari has done is replace the F12 with a car that’s even bigger and even more powerful. It’s so powerful, in fact, that it’s called the Superfast. And it’s so big that when you merge, you need to stick 2m of bonnet into the road before you can see if it’s safe to pull out.

Let’s start with the little things that are wrong with it. In the night it’s as paranoid as a cokehead, because every morning it flashed up a message on the dash saying a break-in had been attempted, even though CCTV said no such thing.

Then there are its seatbelts. My car was fitted with $3500 worth of optional racing harnesses that were nearly impossible to do up properly. What’s more, there were many sharp edges, which my girlfriend said, as she sat there like the star of an S&M movie, would play havoc if you were wearing a chiffon dress. I’m not sure that’d bother most customers, but you never know…

Of rather more concern is the turning circle, which is stupidly large, and the reflection of the yellow trim in the windscreen. Then there’s an astonishingly cheap wiper switch, the usual Ferrari problem of indicator controls on the steering wheel – which means they’re never where you left them – and a curious piece of string hanging in the passenger footwell. I pulled it, but nothing happened. Maybe it had something to do with the imaginary burglar.

There’s much to annoy, then, but there’s much, when you put your foot down, to make your eyes go wide and your girlfriend say: “As soon as I get this bondage gear off, I’m going to f..king kill you.” This is a car that can get from 0 to 100km/h in 2.9 seconds. And onwards to a top speed of 340km/h. It’s really, really fast and really, really noisy.

Suppliers were told to shed as much weight as possible from every component but this car still weighs more than 1.6 tonnes. You sense it. You also sense the size; the fact that I didn’t end up in a hedge is testimony to brilliant engineering. The lightness of the controls, the four-wheel steering system, the dazzling speed of the double-clutch gearchanges… Ferrari employed every trick in the book to make its oil tanker feel like a speedboat.

I did not drive the car in the rain, or Scotland, but I can tell you that somehow Ferrari’s managed it. It’s managed to get 588kW from the massive, gravelly 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12, through the gearbox and normal Pirelli P Zero tyres and onto the road in such a way that an ordinary driver with no astronaut training can keep it pointing in vaguely the right direction.

That cannot have been easy. And it will be even harder when the time comes to design a replacement, because that will have to be bigger and more powerful still. Which takes me back to my point that at some stage Ferrari will have to start all over again with a car that’s small and light.

Or will it? The fanbase wants a pure-bred Italian sports car. But the fanbase only reads about cars in magazines. The customers? The people who write the cheques? Hmmm. I’m not sure.

The Superfast is as brilliant as an Astute-class attack sub. But it is too big, too powerful and too flashily expensive for those who simply want a very nice grand tourer.

Fast facts

Ferrari 812 Superfast

Engine: 6.5-litre V12 petrol (588kW/718Nm)

Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, rear-wheel drive.

Average fuel 14.9 litres per 100km

Price: From $610,000

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars