2016 Ferrari F12tdf: First Drive
The fastest, most expensive front-engined Ferrari available today has to deliver enough driving pleasure to justify its $490,000 price tag.
What is it? Ferrari’s wild redux of the F12, the otherwise mild-mannered front-engined grand touring coupe.
Starting price: $490,000
Competitors: Lamborghini Aventador LP750-4, McLaren 675LT
Alternatives: A big house with a white picket fence, 2.5 children, and a dog named Sparky.
Pros: Gloriously excessive 769 horsepower V12 is the stuff of dreams; exquisitely sharp handling; driving dynamics so thrillingly extreme, you’d overuse the adverbs, too.
Cons: Blur your eyes and you could mistake it for a Corvette; prospective F12tdf owners must have at least five Ferraris in their garage for starters; besides, all 799 are sold out anyway, so there go our Powerball-fueled dreams.
Would I buy it with my own money? In a heartbeat. It may not be the most beautiful Ferrari ever built, but it’s arguably one of the most compelling—a fierce, engaging, and unrelenting expression of motoring madness.
Though it looked absolutely ludicrous on paper when it debuted in 2012, the 730 horsepower Ferrari F12 turned out to be a shockingly drivable sports car. Perhaps that’s why the Maranello manufacturer cranked it to eleven when they spawned the 2016 Ferrari F12tdf, a track-focused special edition of the V12-powered grand tourer.
Those three lowercase letters are short for Tour de France, a now defunct endurance race that earned Ferrari a pile of trophies over the years and inspired the track-focused engineering behind this special edition.
The standard F12’s naturally aspirated V12 has been coaxed to produce 769 hp and 520 lb.-ft. of torque, making the 6.3-liter mill the most powerful twelve-cylinder in a serially produced Ferrari. Shorter gears and quicker shift times from the 7-speed dual-clutch transmission also aid acceleration, while brakes pulled from the seven-figure LaFerrari hypercar help bring the proceedings to a swift stop. Complementing the added muscle is a reduction in body fat to the tune of 242 lbs., thanks to the generous use of carbon fiber throughout (including the form-fitting bucket seats, which hug your ribs like a long lost kid). Ferrari says their overall goals were to boost the F12’s absolute performance (which is reflected in lap times), while enhancing its driving dynamics through overall agility and “response time” (i.e., how long it takes for the driver inputs to translate into body movement).
Millionaire Doors, Billionaire Motivation
While its outwardly visible scoops, vents, spoilers and gills are the stuff of pure flash, the F12tdf’s doors open conventionally, unlike the upwardly sweeping “billionaire doors” found on competitors from Lamborghini and McLaren. Inside, the cabin is more serious and purposeful than the standard F12’s. Carbon fiber, Alcantara, and contrast top stitching abounds, as does that big, centrally positioned Ferrari tachometer—which, in this case, spins to an astounding 8,900 rpm.
Lest you forget the big V12 is the star of this show, the powerplant announces itself with a stirring hum, which only gets more inspirational as the revs rise. Tickle the throttle and the engine immediately reveals itself to be a marvel, with 80 percent of its available torque available at a mere 2,500 rpm. Click into first gear via the tall carbon fiber shift paddle, and the breadth of the engine’s powerband becomes astounding enough to make the most disaffected driver break out into giggles.
The rush of torque is smooth and leads to a sonorous crescendo. Despite the F12tdf’s mind-boggling numbers, it’s hard to fully comprehend the emotional magnetism of this twelve cylinder song. Sure, forced induction is revolutionizing the way we view performance, and new releases like the turbocharged Porsche 911 make a strong case for themselves, but there’s still nothing quite like a good old fashioned naturally aspirated engine.
Fiorano Fury
Ferrari’s private test track in Fiorano, Italy, is a circuit that includes a little bit of everything— low speed kinks, medium speed bends, and higher speed sweepers. Though there’s an inherent temptation to keep the steering wheel-mounted manettino in Sport or Race modes (after all, this is a nearly 800 horsepower car), those settings have a surprisingly stifling effect on the F12tdf’s traction and stability control systems. It took half a lap to realize that precious track time would be wasted in these misnamed modes, as the F12tdf’s power delivery in corners was too bottled up for fun. With the intimidating (but ultimately liberating) “CT Off” setting engaged, the Ferrari becomes uncorked, sending considerably more power to the rear wheels.
The setting is nothing short of thrilling, enabling heroic power slides and graceful drifts that seem to go on forever. Where the standard F12 was deceptively easy to drive fast, the F12tdf ups the ante by delivering an amplified impression of everything—not only the V12’s awesome power, but the chassis’ ability to translate the driver’s intent into forces that quickly and effectively alter the car’s path.
If you think CT Off is challenging, try twisting the manettino further clockwise and holding it for several seconds. With no safety net in ESC Off mode, several low-speed photo passes reveal a hair-trigger responsiveness to that unbridled power, and a startling tendency for the F12tdf’s body to yaw. When performed with a tad too much enthusiasm, ends are swapped with predictable violence. These tire-shredding photo passes are a fun but eventually fruitless endeavor, so I take to the hills surrounding Modena to explore the F12tdf’s road manners.
Born to Thrum
Miles away from the ideal surfaces of the Fiorano track, the real world reveals an even edgier side to the F12tdf’s personality, transmitting the nuances of road irregularities with crystal clarity through the steering wheel. It lunges ahead with an expensive sounding snarl, it commits to corners with an involving sense of eagerness, and it even jumps around a bit on uneven pavement, as though to say it’s far too antsy to conform to everyday driving conditions.
Whereas the F12tdf seems tailored to the track, it sometimes struggles with the road; it’s as if it simply can’t be bothered with such pedestrian tasks as conforming to traffic speeds. But that level of focus also makes it a compelling experience at any speed, requiring the full attention of the driver in much the same way a motorcycle demands complete involvement from the rider. Every input, from steering to shifter to throttle and brakes, produces a swift and immediate response. Whereas most Ferraris feel mechanically lively, this particular specimen manages to come across as feral, ready to bite those who disrespect its power and prowess.
Behind the Scenes: Extreme Measures
Ferrari took extreme measures to elevate the F12tdf’s athleticism. Beyond the more potent power-to-weight ratio, one of the F12tdf’s targets was sharper, more racecar-like handling—a trait that belies the original F12’s long wheelbase and rather hefty footprint. But as Ferrari engineers began tightening the F12’s suspension and weeding out its tendency to understeer, their work-in-progress became too much of a handful, becoming twitchy at high speeds. The solution? Incorporate Ferrari’s first ever four-wheel steering system, which turns the rear wheels in phase with the front wheels in order to increase stability.
Another way to aid high-speed handling is to create downforce, and the F12tdf’s visual cues reveal small hints at the car’s dramatically different aerodynamic profile. While the visible ground effects conspire to help the F12tdf hug the earth more effectively, the car’s reconfigured underside reworks the airflow pattern to help keep it more planted. In addition to those passive measures, the F12tdf uses active flaps beneath the tail that adjust to fine tune downforce and lift levels, depending on driving conditions. The net sum is a considerable 507 lbs. of downforce at 124 mph (the most of any production Ferrari), which still manages a lofty top speed of 211 mph.
Net Sum: Excess is Best
If the F12tdf seems like a bit much, it is. This wound-up Ferrari is an ebullient expression of automotive excess, a lively, entertaining, and shamelessly extroverted way to attack your favorite road like it was your own private test track. It may not be for everyone (or nearly anyone for that matter, considering its limited production run), but this Ferrari’s not-so-secret weapon is how it distills sporting characteristics into a relentlessly pure driving package. Thanks to its dialed-in skillset and staggering level of driver focus, the Ferrari F12tdf proves itself a uniquely capable and charismatic creature, even within the rarified context of half-million dollar exotics.
