2012 Ferrari FF

It looks far better in person than it does in photos, but the FF probably won't win any design awards. At least not for its styling. What's underneath is a different story. Ferrari's first all-wheel-drive system is a simple, elegant solution to a big engineering challenge: how do you send power to the front wheels of a car with its engine behind the front axle and the transaxle in back? Simple, you add a second transmission onto the front of the engine. The two-speed front transmission, or Power Transfer Unit, allows the FF to send torque to the front wheels without heavy driveshafts or differentials, and a built-in torque vectoring capability allows the FF's computers to adjust the car's cornering attitude. It's brilliant. The FF's V-12 engine is no less impressive. It is Ferrari's first direct-injected twelve and uses six-into-one headers that were first seen on the 599GTO, which means it's a screamer. It revs to 8200 rpm, and its torque peak of 504 lb-ft occurs at a lofty 6000 rpm, but it's already making 370 lb-ft at 1000 rpm. In other words, by the time the tach needle hits one grand, the 6.3-liter V-12 is twisting out more torque than the California's V-8 does at its peak. And that speaks to the drivability of the FF. With four large, comfortable seats, a spacious, gorgeously finished cargo space, and four-wheel drive, this is truly the first Ferrari you could drive every day.