Recently I went to Maranello to get educated about tech that goes deep into the petrolhead psyche. Nothing too dystopian: Ferrari’s white-coats haven’t been holding up test tubes to a backbeat of sardonic laughter and thunder as they devise subliminals to make us love the Luce. But they do appear to have concocted a gearbox that can convince you it’s something it manifestly is not.

The 12Cilindri Manuale is the first V12 Ferrari with the famous open-gate gearlever and a full complement of pedals since the 599 GTB. Note the careful omission of the word ‘manual’. It costs an abject fortune – an entire 911 GT3 on top of the regular car – and naturally is sold out.

In a Euro 7 world, a new V12 Ferrari with an H-pattern shift feels like a black swan event. And rather a wonderful one at that. You guide that engraved orb on its slender lever, through the snick-snack gates, so that it manipulates an articulated rod that runs for a short while alongside the propshaft before docking portside at the transaxle, where – still under your control – it elicits an artful spasm of forks, synchro rings and dog teeth. It’s a decadent and romantic thing to contemplate, let alone orchestrate, if you love cars and driving.

Which we all do. But of course the kicker here is that none of the above is actually happening in the hysterically hyped 12Cilindri Manuale. Instead, and as you’ve possibly read, position sensors on the gearlever act in concert with a sensor on the clutch pedal.

It’s all inordinately clever, and the dual clutches in the ’box at the back will engage in a manner dictated by your left foot. Timid drivers will be able to smudge the car off the line in town, just as those with unresolved emotional issues will be able to bang the clutch back in to break traction. But this is all ultimately shift-by-wire, just with a UI of mind-blowing tactility. It’s like listening to the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden on Spotify.

Actually, that’s not quite right. In the Manuale you’re there, doing the act, and that act has been painstakingly recreated. It’s more like being in Madison Square Garden, listening to Gimme Shelter on the world’s greatest PA system, only with Jagger and Richards pouring pints at the bar rather than up on stage with their instruments.

It was clear that journalists at the Manuale’s unveiling didn’t instinctively know how they should feel about it all. No, this isn’t usually a problem. Heavy batteries bad. Mezger good. Lane keeping bad. Skoda Yeti good (very good). But the Manuale defies easy classification. The physical act is real but it lacks emotional stuffing, because it ends at a sensor just out of sight in the transmission tunnel or the roof of the pedal box.

Does enjoying the process of changing gears like this subvert your credibility as a petrolhead? Is a perfectly faithful reproduction of the shift quality enough for you, or is the root of the appeal in knowing that something oily and mechanical is relaying the command?

I can’t quite work it out. What I will say is that, after a series of faintly cynical questions in the press conference, technical chief Gianmaria Fulgenzi threw up his hands and said something to the effect of: ‘For God’s sake, remember this is an 830bhp V12 that you can drive as a manual!’

And the man has a point. Assuming they really have got the weights and elasticities of the controls right, the Manuale is going to be sensational to drive. Riotous, even. The resolve of the most po-faced detractor will melt before even a half-decent rev-matched downshift. It will be pure joy regardless of the absent mechanicals.

And it might just be the start of something. Perverse as it sounds, for now the €590,000 Manuale represents the affordable end of this technology. Koenigsegg has offered a similar by-wire system since 2022 with the £3 million CC850 and its extraordinary ESS gearbox (nine speeds, seven clutches, one open-gate plate).

And there is the upcoming Lola T70S GT, which will give the driver by-wire ‘manual’ control over a six-speed sequential ’box, for an optimal blend of rawness and usability. Prices for that will be somewhere between the Koenigsegg and the Ferrari.

So Ferrari has done something a bit rogue here, but not necessarily bad or, as some have suggested, degrading for the company. Rather it has kick-started a wider conversation that may just end up allowing you to enjoy the sensations of a manual gearbox in your Golf GTI, long after emissions regulations or whatever have made it prohibitively expensive to fit a real one. And you won’t have to buy a Luce to get your hands on it.