The new Ferrari F80, Maranello’s first flagship hypercar in more than a decade, is powered by an engine with half the cylinders of its predecessor, the V12 LaFerrari. Oh, it’s got more horsepower—about 250 more, as a matter of fact, thanks to a trio of electric motors and a pair of turbochargers. Yet, out-and-out power is only one aspect of the hypercar experience; it’s about what your ears hear, too. As you likely guessed, the F80’s 3.0-liter, twin-turbo V6 doesn’t offer a whole lot to listen to.
We know this thanks to a video of the car running at Imola. Ferrari took the brand-new machine out for some demonstration laps on Sunday, alongside the champion Le Mans prototypes that inspired its powertrain. Before we get to the audio portion of the story, I will say that the F80 looks better in motion than in pictures. It’s not that I thought it looked ugly—just hardly groundbreaking, given its place in Ferrari’s dynasty. Personally, I’m more of a Daytona SP3 guy, myself. But, seeing Imola’s trees roll over the black canopy and cinched rear profile of the F80 gives it a dynamic look that can’t come across standing still. It’s growing on me.
Looks are subjective, though. And while I’d typically say sound is too, I don’t believe anyone will recall the song that the F80 sings the same way they might if they heard, say, an F50 bouncing off the rev limiter in the snow. It’s relatively quiet, low but not impactfully so, and simply not that remarkable. In the first drive-by clip, for example, you can’t even really hear the thing over the whooshing air and water until it screams past and, even then, it’s less of a screen and more like a hum.
If you ask Ferrari about the choice of a V6, it’ll say it’s because the powertrain, with all of its hybrid assistance, performs better than an unaided V12 would. It also forges a direct link between the F80 and Ferrari’s latest and greatest racing machines—the 499P and SF-24 Formula 1 car. Both of those use boosted V6s, of course, and the motorsport link means a lot to the Scuderia.
But should it? That’s a question I’ll leave up to you. Was it worth it for Ferrari to continue chasing that “race car for the road” paradigm that defined the likes of the F40 and F50, if it also meant losing some emotion in its newest flagship? Or is that precisely what a car like this must represent for Maranello, and it’s best left to makers of other exotics to court the old-school crowd? What do you think? You know where to tell us.