Currently reading: Opinion: Does the Ferrari 812 Superfast have too much power?
This new Ferrari's 789bhp output is shocking, but only for now

Ah, welcome,  Ferrari 812 Superfast.

You’ll be the new Ferrari, won’t you? Your CV suggests you’re super, and I have no doubt believing you’re almost certainly fast. Sit down, make yourself comfortable, and answer me this: how much, exactly, is too much? Power, I mean. I always thought your predecessor, the F12, had a more than ample 730bhp. Then the F12 tdf turned up with 770bhp. And now you sit here, placing 789bhp on the table, while reassuring me that this unending power growth is absolutely fine. So, where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

Honestly, dear reader, where does it all stop? Sometimes in the media we confidently predict that a certain power output will be the end of things. The pinnacle. The ultimate. The McLaren F1. The Bugatti Veyron. And then what happens?

An everyday McLaren rocks up with more power than an F1, and there’s about to be a new Bugatti with 1492bhp – almost 50% more than the first Veyron. It’s time to admit that we were wrong and that there won’t be an end to it. Don’t get too used to the 812’s 789bhp. Not because it represents an apogee from which we’ll sensibly return, but because 800bhp is right around the corner.

It turns out that cars, you see, just mirror life, where unending growth, power and complexity are the overriding trends. With due apologies to any creationists, once we were amoeba, yet now many of us stand over six feet tall. The first computers used to crack wartime codes were the size of rooms, but add all the computing power of every wartime computer together and you’d barely have enough oomph to play a video of a cat falling off a shelf.

Power growth is all around us, and it has been since the dawn of times. How many calories do you – dear reader, not Ferrari – consume a day? I wouldn’t like to guess (you’re looking well), but I’ll bet it will be more than the average of, say, 100 years ago. The thrust of an Airbus A380 knocks aside anything Louis Blériot would likely have imagined. More power. More force. More lifeis as inevitable as the arrival of the morning sun.

The average family car? Thirty years ago a middling Ford Escort would have had 74bhp from a 1.4-litre engine. Today you could comfortably double that. As recent as 1991, a luxury car like a Mercedes-Benz S-Class with a 5.0-litre engine made around 250bhp and 288lb ft. Today you can buy an S-Class with almost as much power as a McLaren F1 – enough to make a Vauxhall Lotus Carlton feel like a pram. The Carlton once offended the world; today nobody is outraged that a Tesla Model S can give you, silently, 603bhp and 713lb ft.

I once asked a Lamborghini engineer how much was too much. There is no figure, he said. Acceleration at low speed is already limited by traction; more power gives you better acceleration at high speed. And if that much speed all sounds a bit hairy? Well, there’s more computing power to deal with it and more efficiency and complexity to mean it doesn’t consume the planet at an any greater rate.

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So, frankly, we had better get used to it. And look forward, I suppose, to the day when your average family hatchback will have 500bhp.

Matt Prior

Matt Prior
Title: Editor-at-large

Matt is Autocar’s lead features writer and presenter, is the main face of Autocar’s YouTube channel, presents the My Week In Cars podcast and has written his weekly column, Tester’s Notes, since 2013.

Matt is an automotive engineer who has been writing and talking about cars since 1997. He joined Autocar in 2005 as deputy road test editor, prior to which he was road test editor and world rally editor for Channel 4’s automotive website, 4Car. 

Into all things engineering and automotive from any era, Matt is as comfortable regularly contributing to sibling titles Move Electric and Classic & Sports Car as he is writing for Autocar. He has a racing licence, and some malfunctioning classic cars and motorbikes. 

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Speedraser 13 March 2017

Pointless

IMO, this level of power is well beyond the point of pointless. In my experience, cars with this kind of extreme power are not particularly engaging to drive even at what would be considered "fast road" speeds. They don't really come alive until the speeds are so high that they're effectively impossible to experience on the road, at least without taking huge risks to other people, as well as to myself. Also, the latest aero and electronic aids that "enhance" performance don't even come into play until very high speeds. I find cars that have "only" 300-500hp are considerably more fun on the road at normal and fast road speeds than these mega-power cars are. I don't see the point in having a car like this if I can't experience the performance it has to offer, and that's impossible on the road without taking massive risks and being truly irresponsible. It would be just frustrating to drive on the road. I would need to have enough free time to routinely go to a track to properly enjoy a car like this. And if I want a car for the track, a car made for the track would be better still.
Speedraser 13 March 2017

Pointless

IMO, this level of power is well beyond the point of pointless. In my experience, cars with this kind of extreme power are not particularly engaging to drive even at what would be considered "fast road" speeds. They don't really come alive until the speeds are so high that they're effectively impossible to experience on the road, at least without taking huge risks to other people, as well as to myself. Also, the latest aero and electronic aids that "enhance" performance don't even come into play until very high speeds. I find cars that have "only" 300-500hp are considerably more fun on the road at normal and fast road speeds than these mega-power cars are. I don't see the point in having a car like this if I can't experience the performance it has to offer, and that's impossible on the road without taking massive risks and being truly irresponsible. It would be just frustrating to drive on the road. I would need to have enough free time to routinely go to a track to properly enjoy a car like this. And if I want a car for the track, a car made for the track would be better still.
poon 11 March 2017

Dear reader.

Dear reader. Extremely irritating and condescending. Just stop it Matt.