Ferrari 812 Superfast roadster on the way next year?

We’ll lay this

rumor

here as a marker and compare it to future events. In a thread on the

Ferrari

Chat forum anticipating the reveal of the

Monza SP1 and SP2

,

Ferrari

expert Marcel Massini stopped by a few weeks ago to write, “Just wait till the 812 S Spider comes out (with a folding roof similar to the Portofino).” We don’t know where Massini got his information, but he comes with credentials. The Swiss resident has been called “the world’s leading Ferrari historian,” documenting the Italian carmaker in books and articles for more than 35 years, and in 2014 he

debunked the story of a 250 GTO

for sale for $63 million because he knows where each of the 39 remaining

GTO’s

are parked.

If there’s an

812 Superfast

convertible on the way, the question is whether it will be another severely limited edition. Ferrari has lately been at its most restrained with V12 series production convertible models. The most recent was the

F60 America

, based on the

F12 Berlinetta

. That model was for the U.S. only, and Ferrari built 10. Before that, Ferrari made 80 examples of the 599 SA Aperta; this is the company that built 209 of the

LaFerrari

Aperta. The Ferrari

575M Superamerica

, the first Ferrari with an electric hardtop, got 559 examples, and the brand made 448 models of the 550 Barchetta Pininfarina in 2001. You need to go back to the 1973 365 GTS/4 for the next-most-recent droptop V12.

As for the roof mechanism, another forum member said he’d seen the car and the roof opens in the style of the mid-engined

488 Spider

.

On the Portofino

, the entire rear decklid raises, the roof and backlight split in two, and a folding truss lays them upright in the trunk.

The 488 roof

also breaks in two, but it flips around hinges atop the B-pillar, resting upside down in a space above the engine. Mimicking the 488 for a front-engined GT would

evoke the 575 Superamerica

. That glass roof and backlight on that car were one piece that rotated around the B-pillar axis; when the roof was open, the underside of the roof was exposed. A bit of trivia: Leonardo Fioravanti designed the droptop 365 GTS and the

roof mechanism for the 575 Superamerica

.

Yet another forum member said he attempted to place a deposit on a convertible 812S, but his

dealer

didn’t know anything about the car, which isn’t surprising.

Related Video:

Forum user gt_lusso wrote that the

812S Spider will come within 12 months

. If that’s not enough hearsay for you, the same user said “a very reliable source” told him there’s a

Portofino

Coupe coming, that the 488’s successor will debut next year and get a twin-turbo V8

hybrid

, not a V6, that Ferrari V6 models will comprise a new lineup under the V8 cars, and that more vintage-inspired designs are on the way.