Published:
2 August 2018The 812’s 12-cylinder engine is utterly extraordinary in all the ways you hoped it would be: for its outright force, its pedal response and proportionality, its docility and good manners at low revs, and for the repertoire of virtuoso moans, growls, howls and wails it works its way through on the way to that near 9000rpm redline.
Only Porsche’s 4.0-litre flat six from the 911 GT3 and Lamborghini ’s very finest V10s and V12s compare with it in any of the above respects and not in all of them, by any means. But it’s the apparently perfect linearity of the engine’s power delivery that stays with you.
This engine has no flat spot; it needs no notice period to give up its brilliant best. If you engage sixth gear below 30mph (as you surely won’t once you know how great the engine sounds at high revs), you can use full throttle straight away without any fear of the slightest bit of rough or uneven combustion. And then you just sit back and watch the revs and speed pile on so metronomically.
In sixth, it takes 3.7sec for the car to accelerate from 30mph to 50mph; which may not seem particularly impressive until you read that it takes just 3.6sec for it to go from 130mph to 150mph in the same gear. Every 20mph accelerative increment in between is dispatched within four-tenths of a second of the same time.
