Ferrari FF review: the all-wheel-drive V12 shooting brake most enthusiasts still underrate
4.1/5motorssouq Editorial Team
The FF is the Ferrari for a buyer who wants a naturally aspirated V12 without giving up a usable boot, real rear seats, or confidence on the rare occasions Bahrain's roads turn genuinely slippery. It is unloved by purists who cannot get past the shooting-brake body, and that neglect has kept prices well below what the engine and the all-wheel-drive engineering alone would justify. If four-seat, all-weather practicality matters as much as the badge, this is the most rational V12 Ferrari on the used market.
Pros
- Only all-wheel-drive Ferrari of this generation, genuine security on Bahrain's rare wet-road days
- 450-litre boot, expanding to roughly 800 litres, is the most usable cargo space Ferrari ever built
- 6.3L naturally aspirated V12 is the largest-displacement engine in the classic Ferrari V12 line
- Rear seats fit real adults for a real journey, not a token 2+2 gesture
- Undervalued relative to the engine and engineering because the shooting-brake body divides opinion
Cons
- Shooting-brake styling remains genuinely divisive among Ferrari purists, hurting resale prestige
- All-wheel-drive system adds mechanical complexity a pre-purchase inspection must specifically cover
- Largest and heaviest car on this list, noticeably less agile than the mid-engined range
- No factory-authorised showroom physically based in Bahrain
The FF asked Ferrari's engineers a question the company had never seriously tackled before: what happens if a V12 grand tourer needs to put power down on a surface with genuinely low grip? The answer was 4RM, a proprietary all-wheel-drive system that adds drive to the front wheels only above a certain threshold and under specific conditions, keeping the car rear-drive-biased in normal use while adding real security when it matters. It is a solution engineered for snow and ice that, in Bahrain, mostly proves its worth on the rare heavy-rain days when Manama's roads pool water faster than the drains can clear it.
A shooting brake that actually works as a Ferrari
The body style is the thing that divides opinion most sharply, and it is worth being honest about why: a two-box hatchback shape was never going to please buyers who want their Ferrari to look unmistakably like a supercar. What it buys in return is a genuinely usable 450-litre boot that expands to roughly 800 litres with the rear seats folded, and a rear bench that fits adults for a real journey rather than as a token gesture. For a Bahrain family that wants one car capable of the causeway run to Saudi Arabia with luggage, a school pickup, and a spirited solo drive on the same weekend, nothing else in Ferrari's history comes close.
The 6.3-litre naturally aspirated V12, the largest-displacement engine in this entire generation of Ferraris, revs with the same theatre as the smaller units in the 599 and 612 while pulling harder at low revs thanks to the extra capacity. It is, mechanically, one of the last and largest naturally aspirated V12s Ferrari ever built for a road car.
Value and ownership
Because the styling divides opinion and the market has never fully warmed to a Ferrari that looks like this, used values sit well below what a 599 or F8 owner would pay for a comparable naturally aspirated or twin-turbo experience, which is the single strongest argument for buying one. Servicing follows the usual regional pattern — no factory dealer physically in Bahrain, work through the wider GCC network or a trusted specialist — and the genuine flaw to budget for is the all-wheel-drive system's added mechanical complexity over a rear-drive-only Ferrari, which means a pre-purchase inspection should specifically check the 4RM transfer case and front differential rather than treat it as a standard V12 service item.