Business Insider/Jessica Tyler
The Ferrari 812 Superfast.
- The Ferrari 812 Superfast is the successor to the F12berlinetta.
- The 812 Superfast is the latest two-seat Ferrari GT car that is powered by a huge V12 engine.
- The 812 adds over 50 horsepower on the F12, bringing the output to 789 hp and making it the most powerful Ferrari ever.
- I drove a $474,000 version of the car for a weekend and was in Ferrari heaven.
Cars with just two seats but with massive motors are, to be honest, pretty rare. Once you've seen a Corvette and an Aston Martin, you've just about seen them all.
But there is, of course, Ferrari and its two-seater coupés that shelter immensely powerful V12 engines beneath the hood. Until relatively recently, that slot in Maranello's lineup was occupied by the F12berlinetta. But for the 2017 model year, the F12berlinetta was replaced by the more potent 812 Superfast - the most powerful production Ferrari ever created.
Casting around for a use-case for a such a machine is difficult, but there is one: drive extremely fast for a long time. At base, the 812 is a mega-grand-tourer, the highest expression of a genre that's not about practicality but rather is about the raw pleasure of getting someplace.
Clearly, the getting there will be done by no more than two people, and they'll be limited on what they can bring with them, besides their amazement at 812's power (luggage space is adequate for a weekend trip and little more).
As it turns out, the V12 GT was a lacuna in my Ferrari-driving experience. I had missed the outgoing F12berlinetta, so I was was primed for the 812 Superfast, which arrived in 2017. Ferrari kindly let me borrow a $474,000 example for a few days (the base price is $335,000). Here's how it went.