Ferrari 812 Omologata is the achingly pretty yet brutally fast GT of our dreams
With all the engineering of the epic 812 Superfast under its new, gorgeous skin, this is the car Maranello should have built all along.
There's no doubt that modern Ferraris are mind-bending pieces of engineering with performance figures that border on shocking and can cause you to recalibrate your idea of what fast is.
Unfortunately -- and this is subjective, obviously -- they're not always the prettiest things on four wheels. Take, for example, the 812 Superfast . It's got a massive, naturally aspirated V12 under its hood and anger in its heart, but it also has more scoops, pass-throughs, lines, angles and creases than you can shake a stick at. That last part is undoubtedly what inspired one very wealthy individual to convince Ferrari to have a go at smoothing the 812 out.
The result is the 812 Omologata (Italian for homologation, also where the O in GTO comes from) is just that -- a smoothed-out 812 Superfast. Where there were once ducts and splitters, we now have smooth and sumptuous curves. Oh, and louvers. The rear window has louvers. It's amazing.
The body has been hand-formed out of aluminum by the team at Ferrari's in-house design studio. The fact that it's aluminum and not carbon fiber or magnesium or some other strange, as-yet-undiscovered metal shouldn't make you think it's any less performance-minded than the car it's based on, though. The changes to the Omologata are only skin-deep.
Inside the car, you get some four-point seatbelts and cool, vintage-inspired hammertone painted surfaces to look like good old-fashioned cast metal. Ferrari even came up with a wrinkle-paint finish for the dash to mimic its racing specials from the 1960s. It's very, very good. Outside, the brand with the prancing horse kicked the bucket of Rosso Corsa paint out of the barn and came up with a darker, very gorgeous shade called Rosso Magma.
Ferrari naturally won't divulge which of its insanely rich and insanely-dedicated-to-the-brand clients commissioned the Omologata. Still, given the brand's long-established practice of playing favorites with clients based on purchase history, etc., you can be that this won't be the only world-class Italian stallion they have in their garage.