12 Cylindri Spider picture and comment thread

Thought I’d start the thread specifically to post pictures and design comment for the Dodici Cylindri Spider since I know that is what we will choose and the design is quite changed from the coupe.

Overall it’s fair to say that 24 hours after the reveal, opinion is mixed. However, I feel it will settle down and opinion will warm towards the car, especially when we see different spec ideas and eventually photographs of press and then customer cars. So this is perhaps a good place to post images and comment on them ahead of seeing all the various specs and TM designs people choose for their own cars.


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I think the main element of the 12C design is a return to a simpler form, with evocative influences from the 365 ‘Daytona’. I enjoy the front three-quarter and think it is the strongest link to the older car but still retaining a modern feel but not overstyled. The pronounced lower lip reminds us that, though this car is probably fulfilling ‘super GT’ duties within the Ferrari range, it still has purpose. Let’s face it, it won’t be slow so it had better handle.

Absence of the rumoured multimatic suspension found in the PuroSangue is interesting but probably welcome for long term ownership, which if this turns out to be the last scale production V12 from Ferrari, people will be thankful for.

The stance is strong on this car, the scuttle leaning forward into the front wheels and seats sitting well back towards the rear with an ultra long bonnet or ‘cofango’. I like the flared rear arches, very classic and again reminds of those racing Daytonas, Ferrari perhaps hinting at some pretty extreme performance from this car.

The rear lights, while many will bemoan the absence of the traditional double rear round tail lights, also to be found in the original Daytona, the execution of the twin slot lights is different to the Roma. The details are quite interesting. Maybe this is not effusive language but I’m still in the ‘what are my eyes seeing’ phase. Remembering that we have just been introduced to an image that will be with us for the rest of our lives. The world is a little bit changed. That’s what these designs do and what responsibility these designers carry. Where we ultimately end up in our opinion depends on how the world interacts with the design over the coming years - that’s what makes this interesting!

The rear black parts are very different on the spider. The car loses one of the key features of the coupe, the so-called ‘delta wing’ roof arrangement. For me it’s a fair trade for open air V12 motoring and I’m very glad of the hard folding roof instead of the Roma’s cloth equivalent as some rumoured for this car. Phew!

Finally, the car is very colour sensitive for me. Some are starting to mock up cars with the black elements in body colour. I don’t think that works. You either take it all or nothing. Taking the black parts away neuters the design and leaves it looking shorn of too many of the key elements that make it interesting. I don’t think the arrangement of black panels at the rear of the spider works as well as on the coupe but I guess that is to be expected. Whatever you say about Manzoni, he tries to push the style envelope and there are a number of new things we have not seen before on what is quite a classically styled car. I don’t think it’s too easy to do that. Still, there will be those calling for his head. C’est la vie, Flavio! As for me, I was a little underwhelmed at first sight but have begun to notice some elements that I like. Perhaps the best designs reveal themselves over time, taking us on a journey while doing it.

Strangely, I don’t like the car in the red colour shown on the launch TM studio videos on YouTube. I think, unusually for Ferrari, a form of white really suits the car and some of the greens could look great. I won’t choose the silver/black wheels instead preferring a one colour wheel, probably dark wheels with a light exterior paint colour to emphasise the black work. A distinguishing and key feature of this car, celebrate it or don’t buy it.

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Yes, you can definitely imagine this car looking good in lots of the places it will be driven.

 

This is a very positive view about the design of the car from a guy I’ve seen comment on YouTube before…

 

I think the clean lines are what stand out with the 12C. The good news is that they are not really disrupted with the spider. There was so much speculation about this car with the replacement thread extending to hundreds of pages. There is always bound to be both a positive and negative reaction but once the design becomes a little more familiar to you it starts to be easier to see what the thinking was.

I think the front is excellent, being both very modern but also very linked to the 365. It is not a ‘copy’ but very much its own thing but a thing that references the beautiful 365 and reminds us that Ferrari has been building beautiful and inspiring front-engined V12s for a very long time now. They are undoubtedly pre-eminent in the world at this format. This is beyond question in my view.

The rear is also very crisply done and the sides are quite simple but with classic lines. I had worried that the car might be a little boring without the aggression of the 812 and F12, both cars having creased side panels and a focus on aero, the 812 especially so. But that isn’t the effect. This might just be the most beautiful classically-styled Ferrari V12 design since the Daytona. I don’t really think F12 and 812 are what I would call ‘classically styled’ because both cars were not really GTs, more like front-engined super sports cars. And their designs emphasised that. To some degree, even the 599 falls into the aggressive super sports car category with its flying buttresses, although the side of the 599 has some similarities to 12C. The 599 felt so big though. It will be interesting to see if the feeling of the 12C from behind the wheel is that of a big car, or smaller than what has been done before. The 550 was very GT like but that design was never my favourite. It had smaller proportions but the stance of the car was always a little odd to me. It was different but not really a ‘pretty’ car and not an aggressive one either. The 12C is undeniably more classically styled but also has tremendous presence and stance.

I think the comments from people on fchat such as Day355 have proven accurate. This is a proper Ferrari V12, in both appearance and layout. Seems remarkable how close the renderings from the artistic contributors were!

 

Interesting to compare the 12C Spider to the 812 GTS. The two designs seem to show what is good about the other, at least in part. The side treatment of the 812 GTS has been controversial but I personally love it. The 12C eschews that theme firmly and instead goes for a simpler form with tighter lines and a smaller feel. I know that the 12C is supposed to be longer but it has a much smaller appearance it seems.

The 812 is a beautiful car, more complex in its lines but more natural in its detailing. The 12C is the other way around. It’s a simpler lined car but a little more edgy in its details. I think that’s kind of a good thing. Both cars are clearly Ferraris but one doesn’t really invalidate the other, not that that ever really happens with Ferrari.
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I think it’s more the other way around. Since we obviously all know which is the older car we have to filter our own pre-judgment but unusually, the newer car returns to more classical styling ideas. The 812’s styling is clearly more influenced by aerodynamics and thus most would assume more modern. The taillights of the 12C give the game away because they are more obviously futuristic but apart from that, if you were to ask someone who had never seen either car before, I think they might choose the 812 as the more recent design.

 

It suddenly looks like ‘brother of Roma’ with the black piece removed. I prefer the link to the Daytona - what a car to be linked to! Much better than Roma. Since it was designed that way, I say keep it black.