As I near four decades on this earth, I’ve learned that if you wait long enough, you see all things—good and bad—make a comeback. I remember back in 1997, when Ferrari transplanted its semi-automatic, paddle-shifter transmission from its Formula 1 cars to a street-going model. That car was the F355 F1, easily one of its most handsome cavallinos of the modern era, but also one that represented an enormous leap in performance.
Ferrari is now bringing back the manual to Maranello, specifically, to its flagship V12 model, with the new 12Cilinidri Manuale. As you may have read, it’s not a traditional manual, but a manuale-by-wire, as Ferrari calls it. In a nutshell, there’s a physical, and traditionally sprung clutch pedal, and a six-speed gate with a quintessentially Ferrari shift lever. However, these two components aren’t mechanically linked to the transmission, only electronically. It’s roughly the same thing we’ve had for many years, but instead of paddle shifters, there’s a shift lever and a clutch.
Interestingly enough, when the 355 was introduced with the semi-automatic transmission, there wasn’t much pushback from enthusiasts, likely because Ferrari still offered it with a traditional manual transmission, too. That’s not to say the paddle shifters didn’t get any hate when they were introduced in F1, as racing legend Allan McNish told me earlier this year: “Now cars have paddle shifters, but when I had my first F1 test, it was an H-pattern, eight-speed gearbox with a foot clutch. When paddle shifters came in, people complained about it not being racing, and the driver not being in control with the new gearbox.”
Similarly to the Luce EV, the internet has reacted negatively to Ferrari’s “fake manual,” and frankly, I don’t really get it. I understand people not liking the EV and believing it doesn’t fit Ferrari’s ethos. But offering what’s essentially a manual experience in a front-engine Ferrari with a naturally aspirated V12 that revs to nearly 10,000 RPM—what’s there not to like? I’ve logged many miles in the 12Cilindri Spider, and if you gave me the option to wheel it with a stick shift (by-wire or not), you bet your mother’s chicken pot pie recipe that I would say, “hell yes.”
Could Ferrari have built a completely new transmission with a traditional manual linkage for the 12Cilindri Manuale? Yes, I suppose. It certainly has the know-how and the manufacturing capacity. Would it have made sense to? Absolutely not. Only 1,499 units will be built, all via Maranello’s Tailor Made program, and that’s just too few cars to justify developing an entirely new transmission. And while many will feel that’s what should’ve been done, the financial case for it isn’t there. So, it comes down to manuale-by-wire or nothing? And if most people are already used to, and enjoy, using paddle shifters in modern supercars, then why is it so hard to accept the stick shift instead?
Thirty years ago, Ferrari was the first to automate the manual transmission, giving its cars a performance advantage. It did it to be on the bleeding edge of technology, and to liken its street cars to its racing cars, knowing that many of its clients would love to “play” F1 driver in their rosso corsa machines. It worked. Nowadays, this is the only transmission in high-caliber performance cars and in basically all race cars.
Today, when “playing F1 driver” is the default in any new supercar because they all come with paddle shifters, Ferrari is figuratively throwing performance out the window for the sake of driving enjoyment. It knows that a lap around the racetrack might be a tiny bit slower in the manual, but it doesn’t care. It knows that some customers are looking for that nostalgic connection regardless of whether they lose a tenth or two in some performance metric. When I asked if Ferrari would keep this in mind for future models, it said this would be the only car to have such a system for now.
Call it a fake manual all you want, it’s partially true. However, if the options are this or nothing, I think we should applaud the effort, even if most of us will not be one of the 1,499 recipients of a 12Cilindri Manuale.
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