FIRST DRIVE： Ferrari 12Cilindri Spider – When A Car Review Goes Wrong!

So it's not ideal weather for testing a new spider version of the Ferrari Dodici Cilindri but what's the point in having a convertible if you don't take the roof off every time it stops raining? So in this video we're going to find out if chopping the top off Ferrari's ultimate GT has ruined the handling. Probably the best DCT in the world. We're going to see if Ferrari interiors are starting to get a little bit less annoying. No one does a mode switch better than this. And we're going to find out just how much noise you actually get for your money. And that money is £366,500 before options. Like the paint, the carbon, that badge, the leather. Enzo Ferrari once said that I sell you the engine, you get the rest of the car for free. Not anymore. All joking aside, the last thing you want when you head off to drive a folding roof roadster is torrential rain. So guess what happens next. Okay, just to show how absolutely biblically wet it is on this spider launch. It is unshootable. So sometimes this is just what happens. You can have everything right, come to southern Portugal, drop top, 800 horsepower Ferrari to drive. And mother nature just goes, no, not today boys. And you end up with what's easily the worst, wettest shoot day I've had in a very long time. So it has just started to ease off a bit and I'd love to put the roof down. Because normally once you go about 50 miles an hour, you can kind of outrun the rain anyway. It gets carried over the top of the cabin, but I don't think we're going to manage that in here at the moment. And there's quite a lot of expensive camera equipment over here and down there that is really not going to take kindly to getting a drenching. So I am going to leave the roof up for the time being, I'm afraid. I can, of course, use the switch. I can drop the back window and let a little bit of rain in. And some of the noise is there, a little bit. But this is the thing with the Dodici Cilindri, with the coupe and again with the spider. It even says Dodici Cilindri on the dashboard. This car is named after its engine, it's supposed to celebrate its engine. But I think that badge is there to remind you there's a V12 at all, sometimes. Because it has just lost that rampant kind of savagery, that unhingedness that you used to get in the F12 and in the 812. And even a little bit more in the Pura Sangue. And look, we know the reasons for this. Ferrari talks a really good game about this car being more of a GT. And I don't really buy that, to be honest with you. I think it's much more to do with the fact that they have to comply with emissions legislation and drive by noise rules. And they are getting really clamped down on. And as a result, this car has much more filtering in its exhaust. It has to be sort of dampened down. And the result is an engine which only really comes alive above 8,000 rpm. I guess my takeaway is that if this car is, as Ferrari says now, much more about usability. And being not just a sort of treat of a GT car, but a real daily. Then you've got to take them up on it. I mean, it's so refined. It is unbelievably comfortable. This Manettino bumpy road button just gets better and better. I wish every car in the world had one of these. And it's just so feature packed. I mean, it's got all of the driver assistance systems you could ever not want. It's got heated and cooled seats. It's also giving me a massage right now. And as you can see, you can drive it in the rain. And it doesn't attempt murder. So if it's so complete and it is now so refined, then you've really no excuse to save it for sunny days. You've got to get out and use it all the time. Okay, so this roof. Nothing new really. We've seen folding hardtops on lots of Ferraris, including the old 812 GTS that this car replaced. But Ferrari's quite proud of it. I'll pop it down for you. It's got all hydraulic pumps and one electric motor. That gets the whole lot down in 14 seconds at up to 45 kilometers an hour. And Ferrari says that for this particular car, it weighs, as the window comes up. Let's pop that back down. The folding hardtop is 40 kilos lighter than a soft top would have been on a car sort of this size. And it's clever as well. Because, of course, it's no good having 800 horsepower and then using it and being buffeted around in here. So if you look up here, there's these little winglets. And they smooth the airflow that's going down the side of the car. So it doesn't crash into the air that's coming over the top and being dealt with by this lureable wind deflector in the middle. The thing is, you may have heard me say, oh, it goes up to 45 kph. What happens if you do go faster than that? Well, let me show you. So here's what happens if you exceed the speed limit of a roof. So I'm just going to find this switch, which is there. And it now says the roof is in operation. Here it comes. And I'm just going to put my foot down. Oh, it's bonging. It's unhappy. Roof operation inhibited. Slow down. But it still gives you the throttle, even though the roof is now in midair. It always gives you the drive. It doesn't put the roof back down, either, to protect it. It just sort of sits there in midair. So now the roof's off the Dodici cilindri. It does expose a couple of problems with the interior. I know people love to hate on Ferrari interiors. Some bits I really love, which I'll come back to. But can you spot what the problems in here might be? Yeah. You see, because the design boss of Ferrari wanted everything to be very minimalist in here, very clean and kind of featureless, it all had to be screens. Not screen, screen, screen. And then when the sun is directly overhead, as it is now, and then your shadow's moving in front of the screens, it can be quite difficult to see what's on them. I mean, you need to know where the nose lift is, especially when your finger's jiggling around and you've got to hit that tiny little section there. You need to be able to get into here, turn all the heating up and down and warm the seats because it's going to go cold when you've got the roof down. As you might be able to see on this one, where dust and pollen has got into the car, it's natural. That happens when the roof's off. It just completely coats everything and you can't really see what's going on. Same story with the infamous Ferrari steering wheel, which for a few years now has been all about touch-sensitive buttons, which are a real nightmare, actually, when you're trying to drive along. In fact, they're so much of a nightmare that Ferrari now defaults them to turn off. These buttons actually switch themselves off when you've not used them for 10 seconds and then you have to wake them back up by pressing this kind of middle keypad here. It kind of proves, doesn't it, that it was a silly idea. But anyway, you see how smeary it's all gone and dusty? It just doesn't really look that expensive, which it should do because it's a very expensive car and the leather and the metal, some of the materials in here are exquisite. OK, one more thing. I'm not going to hate on everything because I actually really get on with the rest of the Ferrari steering wheel concepts, if you like. I find these indicator buttons more intuitive than having old-fashioned stalks. These are the best paddles in the business and no one does a mode switch better than this. The Manettino, this little jelly baby on the steering wheel that takes you from wet mode, where the traction control is very, very pessimistic. It doesn't actually alter the throttle response, interestingly enough. Then sport, kind of your normal setting. Then race, which really should be your default. The unbelievably friendly CT off, the traction control off, which is where that side-slip drift control just is like a genie granting wishes for you. And then ESC off for fully grown-up mode. It just means you can change the character of the car corner by corner and it's so tactile, it's so iconic. I just wish the rest of the interior design was as simple and genius to operate as that. Run over, rain over too, briefly. So here's how Ferrari didn't screw up the way the Spyder feels to drive. Now, I've been having the roof up for most of the morning, as you've seen, and that always helps folding hard top because it sort of locks the chassis in place and means you don't really get any of the telltale wobbling around, but it shows that its head's been cut off. But I have to say, this Ferrari has survived being made a Spyder way better than some of the other recent stuff. I mean, particularly the SF90. Drove the XX Spyder last year and couldn't believe that for a track-focused three-quarters-of-a-million-quid special there was so much shake and wobble and the thing just felt like, I don't know, the windscreen hadn't really been attached properly. Steering wheel was alive in your hands, but not in the way that you would hope. None of that here. I mean, yes, it is a little bit heavier than the Coupe. You don't get that amazing kind of delta frame shape from the rear. It looks more conventional, but it's actually got better rear visibility, which is nice, and it doesn't certainly feel like it's lost any performance or any meaningful rigidity. I mean, yeah, we're on the road today. If you were to take one to a track, you might be able to pick holes in it, but it certainly feels like a really sorted conversion. Probably means that for the extra £30,000, more people will have the Spyder. Can't say I blame them. And just when things were looking sunny and we might at last have a chance to let that V12 sing, yep. Right, this is pretty miserable right now. It's absolutely howling with rain. Been on the road for about an hour trying to drive out of it and it's just relentlessly tipping it down. So got the roof up. I have had an idea. There is somewhere, one place in Portugal we might be able to go today where we can get the roof down. So we've not got a lot of time. Another two hours still to get to destination. But yeah, fingers crossed. Go on a Ferrari launch, they said. Sun-baked roads, shrieking chilindries. Real life? No. You've just got to wear a coat, find a grim motorway tunnel and try to keep a straight face when the Dodici Chilindri finally gets to bring the noise. Of course, if you're really struggling with the weather, then there's always somewhere you can go to keep dry. It's been a challenging day, but gives you a quick flavour anyway of what this Spyder's like. For more on the 12 Chilindri, you've got to go and watch our video. World exclusive face-off with the Aston Martin Vanquish. Check that out on the channel. There'll be a link in the description. Thanks for watching. See you next time.