Ferrari Brings Back the Manual Gearbox — Sort Of — With the New 12Cilindri Manuale

More than 90 per cent of new cars sold in Australia have an automatic gearbox.

Not this one . . .

It’s the Ferrari 12Cilindri Manuale and it has an old-school six-speed manual shift, complete with Ferrari’s traditional aluminium open-gate shifter and a milled aluminium shift knob.

It comes as a complete old-school contrast to its most-recent all-new model, the battery-electric Luce which has created controversy in almost every country.

Ferrari has even re-installed a clutch pedal despite the downturn in family driveways and execution orders for a huge number of sporty cars including the Volkswagen Golf GTi.

But, despite the obvious shift back to manual shifting, the Manuale is not exactly as it seems.

It retains the 12-cylinder engine in its nose, but the transmission itself is an eight-speed double-clutch automatic.

So what the Ferrari engineers have done is to develop a ‘by wire’ system that allows the car to be driven manually in the first six gears and reverse, or in fully-automatic eight-speed mode.

And, yes, it is possible to stall the car while using the clutch to move away from a standing start.

“To integrate mechanical and electronic components, the Manuale By-Wire system features a dedicated module equipped with sensors and advanced kinematic mechanisms. This accurately recreates the loads associated with every phase of gear shifting: synchronisation, engagement, and disengagement,” said Ferrari.

The company says the 12Cilindri Manuale can sprint to 100km/h in 2.9 seconds, with a top speed of 340km/h but a claimed thirsty fuel economy of 15.5 litres/100km.

Ferrari has yet to give pricing details for Australia, but the regular 12Cilindri is priced from $803,500 before on-road costs – or options – and it’s hard to see the manual model starting at less than $850,000.

The first of the Manuale models is expected next year and will mark a total backflip for the brand, which was the first supercar maker to shift to ‘robotised manual’ gearboxes with its 355 model to provide a new type of automatic driving.

Now it has gone back for the future with the simulated six speed to provide the driving enjoyment which made the Italian company’s GT model into iconic stars of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.