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How Ferrari is going to make the V12 engine live on in the face of tough new government emissions laws

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Ferrari 12Cilindri.
Ferrari 12Cilindri.
Stephen Corby
Contributing Journalist
9 Oct 2024
3 min read

Ferrari’s just-launched 12 Cilindri will be the last naturally aspirated vehicle of its kind, and indeed the last naturally-aspirated Ferrari of any kind, with the brand set to turn to hybridisation to keep its enormous V12 engine alive, and legal under increasingly challenging emissions regulations.

The new 6.5-litre engined 12Cilindri reportedly emits just 353g of CO2 per km, which means it just squeezes under the 2026 Euro-6-E standard and thus can be legally sold in Europe, a quite remarkable feat.

Surely it would have been easier, even this time around, to use hybrid technology to reduce that number - and its claimed fuel economy of 15.5 litres per 100km?

One of the Ferrari engineers who worked on the car, Marco Bonetti, admitted to CarsGuide that, yes, this would have made his life a lot easier.

“Yes, but now, this time, we don’t think to do that hybrid system on this car,” he explained.

Ferrari 12Cilindri.
Ferrari 12Cilindri.

“We have a differentiation of product; we have naturally aspirated, like this, and we have the hybrid (Ferrari 296 GTB and GTS, SF90) and in the future, we have the electric one (a Ferrari EV is coming).”

In that case, it would seem likely the next V12-engined Ferrari, if the company manages to make another one, would need to feature the kind of hybrid technology that allows the V6 hybrid Ferrari 296 GTB to claim CO2 emissions of just 149g/km, and theoretical fuel economy of 6.6 litres per 100km, while also being half a second faster to 200km/h (7.3 vs 7.9) than the 12 Cilindri.

Bonetti agreed that “in theory” using hybrid technology would allow the V12 to continue to be sold for longer, under even stricter emissions laws. And that “it’s possible” the car that replaces the 12 Cilindri - or Dodici Cilindri as Bonetti magnificently pronounces it - will be a hybridised V12. The visual cues that an Italian speaker like Bonetti gives off, however, suggested that this is almost a certainty, and something he is already working on.

Obviously, the more sensible thing to do would be to stop making V12 engines altogether, but that is something Ferrari feels strongly it must resist, because the 12-cylinder layout is both the heritage and the heart of the brand.

Ferrari 12Cilindri.
Ferrari 12Cilindri.

As the great Enzo Ferrari himself said: “The 12 cylinder will always be the original Ferrari. So everything else is a derivation.”

Stephen Corby
Contributing Journalist
Stephen Corby stumbled into writing about cars after being knocked off the motorcycle he’d been writing about by a mob of angry and malicious kangaroos. Or that’s what he says, anyway. Back in the early 1990s, Stephen was working at The Canberra Times, writing about everything from politics to exciting Canberra night life, but for fun he wrote about motorcycles. After crashing a bike he’d borrowed, he made up a colourful series of excuses, which got the attention of the motoring editor, who went on to encourage him to write about cars instead. The rest, as they say, is his story. Reviewing and occasionally poo-pooing cars has taken him around the world and into such unexpected jobs as editing TopGear Australia magazine and then the very venerable Wheels magazine, albeit briefly. When that mag moved to Melbourne and Stephen refused to leave Sydney he became a freelancer, and has stayed that way ever since, which allows him to contribute, happily, to CarsGuide.
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