Super Sonic

ASTON SAYS ITS MIGHTY DBS SUPERLEGGERA IS A PROPER RIVAL FOR THE FERRARI 812 SUPERFAST, BUT WE’LL BE THE JUDGE OF THAT

- Jethro Bovingdon

LET’S SAY you’re pretty experienced with the great Ferrari engines and the cars they power. Maybe an uncle had a Daytona when you were a kid, or a friend from school would invite you over and his dad would pick you up in a 550 Maranello. Perhaps you have a 430 Scuderia tucked up in the garage. Nice choice, by the way. Anyway, the point is, you understand power and response, the sounds and sensations of a Ferrari engine at full cry.

So you’re pretty casual when the keys to an 812 Superfast are tossed your way. “Go for a blast,” you’re told, and there’s a long straight ahead followed by a series of fast sweepers. Just a taste of Ferrari’s latest front-engined V12 supercar, but only a fool would turn down the opportunity. With those tasty frames of reference lodged deep in the subconscious, perhaps you think you know what to expect. So you open the throttle to its stop and rip through first, second and third. And you can’t speak. In fact, you can barely think. You short-shift to fifth and ease off the power. Turns out you knew nothing. The 812 Superfast and its F140 GA 6.5-litre V12 are something new. Something shocking.

And the crazy thing is that even after repeated exposure to the 812 Superfast, it can still befuddle and amaze. It is so fast, so savage, so instantly responsive that it feels illicit. Can this really be legal? Well, thank the lord that – for now at least – it is. Not only does that V12 produce 588kW but it also conforms to Euro 6 legislation and somehow that high-rev shriek sneaks under noise limits too. Think about that for a second. A nice, round 800 metric horsepower in a road car. You suspect this would make a great racecar engine… but they’d have to neuter it to the tune of around 220kW to compete at Le Mans in the GTE class.