Man Maths: Ferrari 550 Maranello

And if you still can’t get your head around it, here’s the good news: there are lots of much older and genuinely manual Ferraris out there for a fraction of the price, and you don’t need to have ordered the year’s weirdest-looking new EV to be invited to buy one. Were it my money, I’d set out to find the best 550 Maranello I could, pocket the several hundred thousand pounds I would save and not worry about fake this and simulated that.

Actually, I hope Raffaele di Simone and his development driver colleagues spent many hours behind the wheel of a 550. It is this new car’s distant predecessor, of course, but it also happens to have one the finest manual gearshifts you’ll ever come across. It would be the perfect benchmark for the 12Cilindri Manuale.

New in 1996, the 550 Maranello is an important Ferrari, historically significant for reigniting the two seat front-engined V12 berlinetta bloodline that was culled with the last of the 365 GTB/4 ‘Daytonas’ in 1973, but it’s magnificent to drive as well. What’s more, it was a fundamental part of Luca di Montezemolo’s Ferrari renaissance in the 1990s, along with the F355 and 456GT, which marked the end of the Maranello complacency years that gave us the woeful 348 – ‘the worst Ferrari’, in Luca’s words – and kickstarted a new era of tremendous prosperity.

A few years ago, I quizzed 550 Maranello development lead Franco Cimatti about the car’s gestation. Cimatti was head of Ferrari’s road testing department at the time, becoming Vehicle Concepts and Predevelopment Director in 1994. ‘The 550 was the first car developed within the new organisation that Montezemolo set up of having dedicated project teams,’ he told me. No longer did teams of engineers work across multiple new models at a time – now they were focused on a single car from conception to birth.

Another key Montezemolo contribution was far subtler: ‘We were getting good support from suppliers like Bilstein for the dampers, ZF for the steering, Valeo for clutches, Agip for lubricants and so on. Tyre suppliers were always doing a very good job for Ferrari. But on body and trim it was more difficult, because we were not considered interesting for these suppliers as a small volume producer.

‘Montezemolo met with these suppliers to motivate them to treat Ferrari as one of their important projects and not just something on the side. So we would be getting experts from suppliers instead of just commercial people who would just sell the parts – we would actually get good development focus from suppliers, and that was especially true on the non-mechanical parts of the vehicle which raise the quality level. The door seals is a very good example.’

I learned for myself only a few years ago just what a difference all that Montezemolo thinking made to the finished product. I only drove that 550 Maranello for a couple of hours on less than ideal roads, but I adored it – the smoothness and power of the V12, the gorgeous manual shift, the quality of the ride and more. I might even have declared it my favourite car of all time.

Not so long ago (okay, it’s probably 15 years or more) you could buy a perfectly decent 550 Maranello for less than £30,000. Running costs could be ruinous even without anything going wrong, but one of the great V12 Ferraris for high-end hot hatch money? It must’ve seemed like a hell of a steal.

It was never going to last. You’ll need £100,000 today, or double that for the very best examples. Strong money, although nothing like as strong as the €595,000 Ferrari asks for a 12Cilindri Manuale – and you will at least know there is a real, mechanical connection between your gearstick and the ratios inside the gearbox.