Official Ferrari F12 Berlinetta Picture Thread

Life is good!

 

Fantastic spec Mark. Congratulations. I agree with you that the black shields and caps removes a few bright eye catching elements to the car so it is a little bit more stealth, but, just my opinion since you asked: I don't like the black caps nor the shields. IMHO they should be yellow. Yeah the yellows are not quite a match but the wheel caps from 2008+ are a much better match to the calipers. So thats just my take. Really gorgeous car you have there. Enjoy all the miles!

 

I hear you. I like the yellow too as they are more classic. If oem black calipers didn't cost $10k, I night have changed the calipers and left the shields yellow. Oh well. This is what I like to call a high quality problem!

 

Oh yeah- don't misunderstand- the car looks fantastic. Are they really asking 10k for black calipers?!!! Thats one serious daily driver you have there. Enjoy it.

 

Sorry I meant $10k if you want to buy new OEM calipers after your car has arrived. I think if you spec them, there is no additional cost.

 

Did the commute this morning in torrential rain, first time driving in weather that bad. Car did pretty well, kept it in WET setting and took it easy. It was pretty good I thought. Windshield wipers in the automatic setting worked perfectly. I noticed there is no warning light for empty winshield washer fluid.

 

Ok I have a question on the F12 - if Ferrari are going down the road of wanting to pack as much technology as they can in the car, should they also have all the creature comforts and saftey measures that say a top of the line Porsche has? I have a Cayenne which is 1/4 of the price of the F12 and it has airconditioned ventilated seats (my seats have heater but no AC), a blind spot montioring system, an emergency braking monitoring system, the abilty to superimpose traffic info on the navigation map etc. Actually as I mentioned above it doesn't seem to have an empty washer fluid warning and maybe it's right in front of me but I can't even find the time. Thoughts?

 

Small comment on F12 indicators - I don't mind them being on the steering wheel as I am getting used to it, but the tick tick is too quiet and the flashing green light is at the top of the right or left screen depending on which one is on. The way I have set up my driving position and the height I have the wheel at, the green lights are obscured by the top of the wheel so unless I duck down to look, I can't tell if the indicators are on. Duh.

 

I think if you are going to daily drive a Ferrari you do accept some of the tradeoffs. Yet, your points are all valid. I think Ferrari is typically 1/2 - 1 full generation behind the others when it comes to things like nav, blue tooth, heads up display, blind spot and or lane departure warning. To my mind the F12 is somewhere in between a hard core sports car and a GT you can drive every day so I can see it both ways. Your criticisms are actually mine as applies to the FF. They made a car you could drive every day but some of the aforementioned things that make daily driving life easier are not included.

 

Mark,
Nice color combo. How far are you from Glastonbury? It would be nice to see two F12's parked side by side some Sunday morning.
Phil V.

 

About an hour from Glastonbury. Will probably go to cars and coffee in New Canaan next month on June 15th. I took the F40 there last week and it was fun.

Caffeine & Carburetors ? The official website

 

Smartphones and apps have pretty much made installed Nav systems irrelevant (not to mention iPod connectors, hard drives etc. for music).

 

That is true and actually with the F12 (and I am sure the same for the other new cars in the range) you can connect to the phone via bluetooth, play music from your phone over the stereo system and it mutes automatically when google maps gives a direction.

 

I really like the contrasting T shaped carbon panel in the back of the car. It looks like this one is carbon fiber, I've also seen it in matte black.

Is this an option? Is it aftermarket? I guess the easiest way to get this would be a wrap. Are there other ways to achieve this look?

thanks everyone...

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I don't like looking down at the phone and I don't like having something barking directions at me. I prefer the installed systems. The real breakthrough will be when they mirror on to the in car screens. Heads up displays are also very useful.

 

Been driving the F12 mostly in the rain this week.
Here it is in a NYC garage being put away wet after being driven hard (ok not that hard in the rain)
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Couple of random F12 thoughts:

Wet driving impression:
Actually pleasantly surprised by how well behaved the car has been in the (often torrential) rain this week. Car is pretty civilized, I continue to get used to the direct steering, now it only feels slightly too direct. That being said, there were no records being beaten in the wet, driving with manettino in WET and most of the time trying to leave the gear in auto. I say trying because it's tempting with some clear road to engage in unecessary downshifts and acceleration - woo hoo. What's the fun in keeping it in auto I hear you say, actually I like learning the car's character in all conditions and it's fun to be in an F12 whatever the weather. I also figure the auto setting will keep me in a higher gear than I would select myself which probably makes the wet driving safer.

On the plus side I think I have mastered the windshield wiper button. At first, the graphics on the button made me think that different things happened if you pressed different sides of it, which is not the case. Simply 3 forward settings, press once for automatic sensor (works really well), again for medium speed and again for fast speed. pull towards you to reverse any of these steps and pull and hold for the washer. Actually pretty easy to use and on the bar at the top of the left screen it shows you which of the settings you are in.

Gear changes:
Driving the car in auto made me realise the changes are really not that smooth. I am comparing to Porsche PDK which is silky smooth in auto and quick (especially in "super sport" setting) when shifting manually. Once I realised the changes were not that smooth I really concentrated on trying to figure out which part of the gearchange was the problem and actually the shifts themselves are pretty good, but because the engine feels like a racing engine i.e. when you take your foot off the gas the revs drop very quickly with little inertia, it may have more to do with the abruptness with which the revs change once the new gear is selected. Also surprisinginly there is no real percetible throttle blip on downshifts which also leads the downshifts being abrupt.
Ok don't get me wrong, being super critical here and banging up thorugh the gears is one of life's great joys but it just seems like they might have spent little time trying to get the gear changes to be smooth in everyday driving.

 

A little heavy-duty velcro does wonders to eliminate the "looking down" problem. I know some will be aghast at the idea of sticking a patch of Velcro somewhere on the dash of your Italian sports car, but I kinda like it -- particularly since it does no actual damage to anything.

Heads up displays are nice but aren't they kind of science fictiony at this point for nav? The actual one's I've seen bear no relationship to the great transparent displays you see in the movies, they barely manage to get up an alphanumeric or two, nothing like the kind of sophisticated graphics you see these days on the better nav programs (e.g. waze).

Right now, I'm not aware of a car-installed system that competes with the functionality of something like waze, at least if you drive in an area with significant traffic, because it not only provides real-time traffic but also real-time reports from other users (traffic, accidents, cops!) that I find invaluable.

 

Somehow I'm not surprised to hear that it's not as smooth as a PDK. What is? You always think you're going to drive in manual but the more you actually use the car on the road, e.g. as a DD, the more you appreciate a really good auto.

 

As you were driving yours in the rain, here in the UK coincidentally I was doing exactly the same in my Grigio Silverstone F12 en route to a Ferrari track day at Silverstone and interestingly drawing a similar conclusion on the gearbox but also deciding that I quite liked the fact it had a bit of a snap in some circumstances.

On track in the wet it proved slightly slower in the turns than a 458, but on the straights gobbled up anything, 458 Speciale included. After some laps in the Speciale, driving home I realised the F12 is the place I want to be and nothing currently would tempt be back to 8 cylinders at present, unless I wanted a pure track car.

 

and you already have a pure track car of sorts to...

It seems Ferrari really does understand there 12 cylinder customers; especially with the way they have developed the new F12 model. Aside from some paint quibbles of course!
CH

 

This is becoming a familiar sight - good news (sort of) - I got 12.75 miles per gallon with the last tank, that's driving sensibly most of the time.
The consumption of my 575 with similar driving was around 15.5 mpg. So I'm not sure if it's disappointing that consumption is worse for a similarly sized V12 engine that is essentially 15 years more modern, or incredible that an engine with 730 bhp does more than 5 mpg!
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I love Silverstone, remember doing a track day in the 90s when I lived in London in my blue tdf 355 spider. Maybe this is a dumb question but is Grigio silverstone named after the track? Please post pics of event and/or car.

 

I think it's a tailored option as there are some other pics of the same treatment in different colours. Not sure.