Ferrari 812 Superfast | PH Used Buying Guide
The best Ferrari of the last decade? Discuss
Key considerations
- Available for £210,000
- 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 petrol, rear-wheel drive
- Superlative drivetrain and chassis
- Not immune from problems, most of them electrical
- Competizione is one of the true greats but it’s very expensive
- Whither values, in light of the 2024 replacement being another V12?
It’s happened! You’ve inherited £250,000 from that long-forgotten auntie who, it turns out, had a bit of a soft spot for you. You’ve decided that you’re going to blow the lot on one mad car purchase, and it’s going to go be a Ferrari.
Step this way sir, madam or non-binary, because we’re going to be pointing out a tasty option for someone with £250k to spend. There’ll be change out of that too. We’re talking about what might be Ferrari’s greatest ever naturally aspirated front-engined V12 coupe, the 812 Superfast. Based on the 730hp F12berlinetta, the Superfast bounced onto the stage in 2018 as the ultimate autoroute and A-roads bomber.
The ‘8’ in the name gave you the first figure of the PS power output, which was 800. The 12 told you it had the right number of cylinders for a car, a number that was so much better than 11 or 13. The ‘Superfast’ part was thought cheesy by some, but not by those who remembered the glory days of the 1960s when GT cars were actually bought to do grand tours, and professionals rather than collectors actually bought watches with names like Submariner, Yacht-Master, Speedmaster and Sea-Dweller.
The Superfast pumped out 59hp more than its predecessor thanks to the usual incremental new-car improvements and the extra displacement of its F140 65-degree V12 engine, 6,496cc versus 6,262cc, achieved by increasing the stroke. Its peak power of 789hp came in at 8,500rpm, the redline was at 8,900rpm and the price was £253,000.
A GTS convertible with an electronically-opening hardtop and a redesigned rear end appeared in September 2019 at £293,000. It was the first front-engined Ferrari V12 convertible to go into (relatively) large-scale production for half a century, the last one being the Daytona 365 GTS/4. It weighed around 90kg more than the coupe but the surfeit of power meant there was no difference in claimed performance.
In 2021 the 812 Competizione came out in either coupe or A (for Aperta) convertible form. Unofficially, it was the last pure V12-powered production Ferrari, but things look like turning out differently as we’ll find later on in this story. Dan P tested a Competizione here for PH. Its comprehensive engine rework included new pistons, titanium rods, a lighter crank and special coatings for the whizzy bits in the top end of the motor to make them even whizzier. Intake, injection and exhaust were all modified to suit. Altogether the changes delayed the arrival of the Comp’s new power peak of 830hp to 9,250rpm and lifted the redline to a crazy-sounding but genuine 9,500rpm. Torque was marginally down from 529lb ft to 510lb ft, produced at 7,000rpm in all 812 variants.
The extended use of carbon fibre in the Competizione’s aeroed-up, bonnet-bladed bodywork – which included a bank of downforce-increasing vortex generators in place of the rear screen – reduced the 812’s overall weight by 38kg. Top speed and headline acceleration times were unchanged but the bodywork mods, semi-slick Cup 2 R tyres and world’s-first adoption of independent rear-wheel steering (where the rear wheels could toe-in together to get you round a corner quicker – the standard 812 had a regular ‘joined-up’ rear-wheel steer system) made the Comp quicker around a track than the Superfast, and nearly as quick as the LaFerrari.
Dan said it was the best Ferrari he’d ever driven. Prices started at £430,000 for the Competizione coupe, of which 999 were to be built alongside 599 open-tops. Needless to say, they were all sold immediately. Even at that money, they’ve been a strong investment if the one on PH Classifieds that we’ll link you to at the end is anything to go by.
Ferrari stopped taking orders for the 812 Superfast coupe and GTS convertible in early 2022, although production continued until all outstanding orders had been fulfilled. If you go to the website of London Ferrari dealer HR Owen you’ll see the GTS is still on there as a new vehicle. You won’t see the price there, which is bothersome, but we can tell you that it should start at around £297,000 before options.
What we often end up saying at the end of these ‘big-beast’ buying guides is that they mark the end of an era, in this case that of the series-production, non-hybridised V12 Ferrari, but in fact it looks like there are no plans for V12 electrification as yet and that Ferrari is going to replace the 812 with another naturally-aspirated V12 812 for possible release at the Miami GP in early May 2024.
The suggestion is that it will have at least as much power as the Competizione, and you can bet your Prada boots that it will cost rather more than the £253k that was asked for bog-standard Superfasts in 2018. The figure of £450k has been bandied around. That’s not confirmed, but with our £250k bequest it’s clear that we’ll have to look to the used 812 market for salvation.
There were no 2022-registered used Superfasts for sale in the UK at the time of writing. Of the examples we found, eight were 2018s, sixteen were 2019s, fourteen were 2020s and there was just one 2021 car. Does £210,000 represent good value for a used current-model 812 in early 2024? Let’s see.
SPECIFICATION | Ferrari 812 Superfast (2018-22)
Engine: 6,496cc naturally aspirated 48v V12
Transmission: 7-speed twin-clutch auto, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 789@8,500rpm
Torque (lb ft): 529@7,000rpm
0-62mph (secs): 2.9
Top speed (mph): 211
Weight (kg): 1,630
MPG (official combined): 19
CO2 (g/km, combined): 366
Wheels (in): 10 x 20 (f), 11.5 x 20 (r)
Tyres: 275/35 (f), 315/35 (r)
On sale: 2018 - 2022
Price new: £253,000
Price now: from £210,000
Note for reference: car weight and power data is hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it’s wrong. Our advice is to treat it as relative rather than definitive.
ENGINE & GEARBOX
It’s a shame that only a tiny proportion of the population will be able to enjoy the privilege of experiencing an engine like the 812’s 6.5-litre V12. Even in non-Competizione spec, it was the most powerful engine that Ferrari had ever put into a production car (not counting things like the La Ferrari).
The straight Superfast’s redline was at 8,900rpm, astonishing for such a large-displacement engine. Somehow it felt like a smaller unit, in a good way, but the 0-62mph time of 2.9 seconds was proper big-boy stuff and remarkable for a two-wheel drive car. The 7.9-second-0-124mph time told an even more shocking story of thrust that was both mountainous and relentless. The efficient processing of power into acceleration was also a tribute to the brilliance of the chassis dynamics, which we’ll get onto in the next section.
Normally you want a car’s maximum torque to be at a nice low rev point so that there’s still decent performance when you can’t be bothered to stir the gearbox. The Superfast’s torque peak came in at a lofty 7,000rpm with another 1,500rpm to go before you hit the power peak. That might make you think you’re going to be working hard to keep it on the go, but the sheer amount of squirt on tap made that kind of thinking utterly irrelevant in the 812. Even on the higher-revving Competizione you had 80 per cent of maximum torque from 2,500rpm.
The 812’s direct injection system ran at fiercely high pressures of up to 350 bar. Throttle response was as bonkers-sharp as the F12tdf’s. Pickup at any engine speed was breathtaking. When you did work it hard through the gears the acceleration changed from jaw-dropping to jaw-detaching.
Ferrari said the F12 had more soundproofing than the 812. Post-January 2020 models (so not some 2019 GTSs, if you can find one), had to breathe through a petrol particulate filter. That was slightly boring, but any 812 still sounded incredible from the outside and just mad enough on the inside to let you appreciate the engine’s honey-smoothness, balance and refinement.
The 812’s transmission was new. It was still a 7-speeder like the F12’s F1 DCT unit, but the internal paperwork now bore the name of Magna Powertrain, the US-based engineering concern who had bought Getrag in 2015. The 812’s first six gears were shorter than the F12’s for even more spectacular acceleration. Gearchange speed was spectacular too. Ferrari claimed 30 per cent quicker upshifts and 40 per cent quicker downshifts, along with a new ability to drop three gears in the space of a second. It was hard to believe that quicker shifts in either direction could be possible in a modern Ferrari but the 812 managed it. And then the Competizione knocked another 5 per cent off those shift times.
The official UK combined fuel consumption figure was 19mpg, giving you a theoretical fill-to-fill range of 380 miles from the 20.2-gallon tank, but that range would reduce significantly if you were using a significant percentage of the available performance – not an easy thing to do on normal roads, given how much performance there was. The official urban consumption was 13.2mpg and single-figure results were not unusual.
The 812 is generally a strong car but there have been problems. Small amounts of oil could pool up in the middle of the engine on pre-2020 cars as a result of a leak from a warped solenoid valve holder cover. Replacement gaskets and then replacement cover plates sometimes, but not always, fixed it, the first replacement plates seemingly being as warp-prone as the original ones. Sometimes the leak was put down to porous intake manifold castings but the solenoid cover plate is the more commonly accused culprit.
One high-profile YT owner turned off his Superfast after a fast run in very high Nevada temperatures followed by a spell in traffic and it dropped a lot of coolant. There were no issues with the lines or the radiator, and no leaks in the system: superheated coolant had just came out through the overflow system, which in extremis it would be designed to do. The car was okay afterwards. Another owner had to have the fuel rail replaced twice on his 2020 Superfast, and the high-pressure fuel pump once.
Electrics. Hmm. A YTer who had put a Novitec exhaust on his three-month-old GTS and had his Ferrari dealer fit an immobiliser to it had over 50 warning lights come up on it, including a major electrical system malfunction warning, stranding him on a French autoroute. The dealer in Monaco cleared the faults but all the lights came back on after a short drive. He was advised by Ferrari that it needed a new ECU and that the exhaust change had invalidated his warranty. One month later the car was ready for collection from Novitec, who had picked it up from Monaco and mended it at their HQ in Germany.
It turned out to be the battery. There have been comments about 812 alternators with dodgy voltage regulators killing the battery by dishing up uneven charges. Ex-works sourcing of ancillary items like the alternator means this sort of thing is not an 812- or even a Ferrari-exclusive issue. Odd though that not one but two Ferrari workshops in Monaco didn’t think of changing that guy’s battery. Maybe the high quoted cost of a ‘genuine Ferrari’ replacement, or perhaps more likely the messing around involved in getting at it had something to do with their decision. Even with the new battery in place however, errors were still popping back up when he got back to the UK.
The ‘start-stop inoperable’ warning light has been reported for inappropriate illumination by more than one owner. Another owner with total engine management and dash display failure was told it was down to an imperfect battery cable connection. Again not for the first time in one of these buying guides it’s important to point out the absolutely critical role of the battery in modern cars which are so stuffed with electronics.
Servicing? Pleasingly, as of early 2024, even the oldest 812 was still well within the 7-year maintenance programme that came in on all new models during or after the 2015 model year. This covers your first seven years of scheduled routing maintenance including original parts, lubricants, engine oil, brake fluid and labour, and it’s transferable. The standard warranty was 3 years, or 4 years in the UK, with unlimited mileage in that time. Extended manufacturer warranties are commonly bought, and again these are transferable to the new owner. They can run up to year seven or a maximum of 120,000km (just under 75,000 miles) – not that many, if any, Ferraris get up to those mileages.
CHASSIS
Ferrari’s overall aim with the 812 was to combine the power and stability of a mid/front-engined V12 with the agility and responsiveness of a short-wheelbase car. Luckily they had plenty of experience with transaxle architectures coupling a front-mounted engine with a rear-mounted transmission and a good front-to-back weight distribution (good in the 812’s case meaning rear-biased).
As mentioned earlier, the 812 had electrically rather than hydraulically assisted steering, a first on a Ferrari. The rack ran the same quick ratio as the F12. The EPS made the 812 helm light, but not at the expense of too much feel, a common problem with electrically-assisted steering on other cars.
When front-end grip was nearing the limit or during power oversteer situations the 812 driver could feel it through different torque sensations at the wheel that were intended to help guide you through. That plus active rear-wheel steering, adaptive damping, stronger springing, an e-diff and Ferrari’s vehicle dynamics package including the fifth iteration of Side Slip Control all came together brilliantly to make the limits far more approachable in the 812 than they had been in the F12tdf, a thought-provoking vehicle in its transitions from grip to no grip.
The 812 turned 800hp into a tool rather than a threat. Sliding felt as natural as that manoeuvre could reasonably be expected to feel in any car, with plenty of encouragement for the driver to chuck in some Queef-style opposite lock without fear of expensive retribution. For bimbling about the bumpy roads button did its suspension-slackening thing, although the effects of that weren’t as noticeable on this car as they were on other Ferraris. The urban ride was okay, if a bit nibbly.
Predictably for such a high-performance car, carbon ceramic brakes were standard (with SF90 Stradale calipers on the Competizione). In the opinions of some expert drivers, the Superfast’s pedal was a little ‘dead’, most likely a consequence of the pad material having to be specced for multiple test requirement decelerations from near-200mph speeds.
P Zeros were the default tyres. They could struggle to handle the onslaught of nearly 800 horsepower on a track. There was a recall to replace the cap of the brake fluid reservoir to ensure proper ventilation and the right reservoir pressure.
BODYWORK
The bodycolour rear diffusers on pre-Spring 2019 cars could sit low on one side, requiring re-shimming. More than one owner was told that they were all like that sir. At least one who was told that did the adjustment himself and then switched dealerships. Carbon diffusers didn’t seem to suffer from it and the GTS’s one was redesigned to do away with the problem. The diffuser was supposed to drop to a lower DRS position at 65mph but one owner reckoned his wasn’t doing it properly, or at all.
The GTS’s elegant roof mechanism could be deployed on the move as long as you weren’t doing more than 30mph. It took 14 seconds. There was practically no degradation in handling with the roof down but there was a big upgrade in the quality and volume of the glorious noises you were hearing.
Small cracks in the outside front edges of the headlights were reported by one owner. Ferrari said that was impact-related. Another owner claimed to have had his wipers go vertical at 200mph. Switching them on and off usually resolved it.
INTERIOR
The 812’s cabin was a nice evolution of the F12’s. The body design gave you a nicely glassy wheelhouse and visible corners to make city driving less of a trial than you might expect from such a long and wide car. Kit that you might have thought would be free was often a cost extra on the 812. Adding Apple CarPlay to the GTS in 2019, for example, was £2,500. Although a ‘racing seat lifter’ was part of the standard 812 offering. Quite a few smaller owners appreciated that as they could find the seats a little too low. You could delete the lifter mech if you were a tall type and wanted the extra headspace that not having that gear installed provided.
You could argue that the 812 was a bit big for a two-seater. You were never going to get rear seats in any two-door sports car with a gearbox mounted on the back axle, but not having to accommodate four humans should at least mean reasonable cargo capacity for two. 210 litres doesn’t sound like a lot, but you could get the accursed golf bag in there and there was enough space left over for the proverbial toothbrush and underwear times two.
Some 812 petrol gauges over-read the amount of fuel in the tank, causing fuel starvation if you let it run too low. Other cars’ gauges have conked out completely, requiring new sender units. The phone charger wouldn’t work if the charger connection wasn’t sitting correctly in the magnetic holder. Audio volume adjustability could vanish. Switching the car off and on again might not work but allowing the car to rest for 15 minutes usually did the trick by initiating a BUS reset. USB ports could fail. Parking cameras didn’t always come on.
Some early cars have had small, hard-to-pinpoint rattles from the area of the rear hatch or the luggage cover when driving on less than smooth roads. The hatch had adjustable feet that could be fiddled with. Sometimes removing and refitting the cover sorted it out. Other times it was a loose square plastic cover on the right side of the rear hatch. Rattles in the dash on the right side by the A-pillar could make themselves heard too, again usually on bumpy roads. Non-racing driver’s seats could rattle also, as could passenger seat belt mechs.
A buzz or whirring from the central air-vent area of the dash was not unknown. This seemed to be triggered by certain engine revs, the trigger point beginning at below 4,000rpm but gradually increasing over time to something nearer 6,000rpm. Turning the air con on and off six times could sometimes cure that. A clicking from the engine when driving was usually caused by low oil levels.
Another annoying noise was the ‘you’re going too fast’ speed warning that buzzed when you hit 80mph. The owner’s manual did tell you how to reset it to a different speed, though, which made you wonder what the point of it was.
PH VERDICT
The heady era of the super-GT can sometimes feel like it was a long time ago but five minutes in an 812 Superfast is all it takes to make you realise that it never went away. The 812 elevates the phrase ‘grand touring’ to a rare new level that scarcely does justice to its breadth of ability. Much of that was down to the magnificent – arguably peak internal combustion – engine, but just as much credit had to go to the boss-level chassis trickery that Ferrari conjured up in the 812. The combination of power and control was irresistible. Driving an 812 quickly was at one and the same time impossibly thrilling, wonderfully life-affirming and weirdly non-threatening.
The question of ‘modifying’ Ferraris with commonly-fitted items like an exhaust system does need careful consideration. We’re not lawyers, but Ferrari’s position on this sort of thing is that mods can either entirely invalidate the warranty or empower them to refuse warranty extensions. That might be a serious concern for many existing and potential Ferrari buyers for whom full warranty coverage is an absolute essential.
If you can set those concerns aside, blowing £210k of your deceased auntie’s £250k legacy on an 812 might well seem like (someone else’s) money well spent. Buy one, grab your other half and bowl majestically down to the Med with the exhaust rasping off the rockfaces and the gentle strains of Francis Lai’s Un Homme Et Une Femme wafting out of your woofer, or whatever speakers are called these days.
The impending arrival in spring ’24 of a Mk 2 Superfast might scare you off the idea of buying a Mk 1 now. Some say that its arrival will cause you to take a beating on what was ultimately a non-limited edition Ferrari. Others say that most Superfast owners have moved on to the GTS so there won’t be a sudden influx of Superfasts into the used market, and that there’ll be a minimum of a year’s wait for the Mk 2 to arrive in a UK buyer’s hands anyway, assuming you get your name on the list in the first place of course.
We don’t know which of these scenarios will come to pass but we do know that, as of Jan ’24, £210k was the Superfast entry price, as shown here by this carboned-up 12,000-mile example in TDF Blue at £209,890. Want to spend a bit more? OK, how about the princely sum of £110 more for this rather handsome 19,000-miler in Grigio Titanio with a £64,000 options bill and a warranty to 2025.
There are plenty of Superfasts to choose from in the £220-£240k range. The most expensive UK-based one on PH Classifieds at the time of writing (Jan ’24) was this 521-mile, historic-paint 2020 specimen with Bordeaux leather at a fiver under £290k. GTSs aren’t available for under £300k. The most affordable one on PH was this 10,000-mile car at £315,000. You can pay a lot more. £410k gets you this ’23 registered 410-mile car in Viola Hong Kong.
There were two Competiziones on PH Classifieds as we went to press, both coupes. One was POA, but this one at Maranello in Egham wore a £1.2 million sticker, a near-300 per cent increase on the new price and a reassuringly expensive way of confirming the religiosity of the Competizione ownership experience.
Looking at a Comp and then back at the bottom of the 812 market is like looking straight at the sun and then looking away into the relief of shade. Suddenly £210k seems cheap. With your virtual legacy of £250k you could easily find a car with an extended warranty. Then you could buy one of these exquisite 1:8 scale 812 Competizione models at £12,185 to give you something to treasure if the time ever comes for your real 812 to go, and then spend the rest on petrol and fine wines. The costs of both will be considerable – but then so will the joy of their consumption.
Its so beautiful and evocative of the earlier classics without being cheesey.
There are two special TdFs built for John Collins (Talacrest) which I think are £100m cars in the waiting.
Compare dimensions to other Ferrari models and you’ll get a surprise. Think it’s the long bonnet that gives this misconception.
Avoid the carbon seat option if planning long trips.
When touring / motorway cruising, engine drone is tiresome because of the gearing: why does it need to be pulling 3000rpm at 80 in top (7th) gear??
It’s a DCT after all, it doesn’t need to be on cam if it’s just a finger-twitch to drop a gear(s) if overtaking or heading up a steep motorway hill.
There’s bags of V12 torque, so why didn’t they gear it for 2500rpm in 7th at 80??
Allegedly, the F167 will be an 8 speeder…
Compare dimensions to other Ferrari models and you’ll get a surprise. Think it’s the long bonnet that gives this misconception.
What would your definition of a large 2 seater GT be?
What would your definition of a large 2 seater GT be?
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