NEW CARS

Ferrari Tailor Made 12Cilindri

Ferrari’s Tailor Made program has always flirted with excess, but this latest creation—a one-off 12Cilindri developed exclusively for South Korea—doesn’t just push the envelope. It hand-weaves, lacquers, screen-prints, and sonifies it. If most bespoke Ferraris are haute couture, this one is closer to a traveling museum exhibition that just happens to have a naturally aspirated V-12 up front.

Called simply the Tailor Made 12Cilindri, this car is Ferrari at its most self-aware: a brand that knows its engineering is untouchable and therefore feels confident enough to let artists, designers, and cultural curators take the wheel aesthetically. The result is less about horsepower figures and more about storytelling—though the fact that the story is wrapped around one of Ferrari’s most important modern flagships makes it all the more compelling.

The project took nearly two years and spanned three continents. Maranello handled the hard bits, naturally, while COOL HUNTING®—the New York–based design and culture publication—acted as creative conductor. The real stars, however, are the South Korean artists whose work defines nearly every surface of the car. This isn’t a Ferrari with a theme; it’s a Ferrari that is the theme.

Start with the paint. Ferrari calls it Yoonseul, a newly developed transitional finish inspired by a Korean word that describes sunlight shimmering across water. It’s not marketing poetry either. The color genuinely shifts as light moves across the body, flowing from green to violet with blue undertones. One moment it recalls celadon ceramics rooted in Korean history; the next, it feels like neon reflections bouncing off the glass towers of modern Seoul. Ferrari has played with complex paints before, but this one feels unusually alive.

Inside, the collaboration becomes even more ambitious. Textile artist Daehye Jeong, known for her ethereal horsehair weaving, brings traditional Korean craft directly into the cabin. Her patterns appear in a newly developed 3D fabric used on the seats and flooring—the first time Ferrari has employed such a material. The same motif is screen-printed onto the glass roof, turning sunlight into a shifting pattern of shadows. Most striking of all, a handwoven horsehair artwork sits on the dashboard itself. This isn’t trim pretending to be art; it is art, permanently integrated into the car.

Ferrari’s engineers had to work closely with designers and suppliers to make that possible, and it shows. Nothing feels tacked on. The materials respect the car’s architecture, rather than fighting it.

Artist Hyunhee Kim takes over the visual identity. Known for her translucent reinterpretations of traditional Korean objects, she reimagines Ferrari’s most sacred icons—the Prancing Horse, the wheel caps, the Scuderia shields, even the long “Ferrari” nameplate—in a semi-transparent finish. It’s a bold move, and one Ferrari would never attempt on a production car, but here it works. The center tunnel inside carries the same translucent treatment, joined by a hand-crafted dedication plate rendered in traditional calligraphy.

Kim’s contribution even extends to the trunk, where she designed a custom case that doubles as luggage and houses a Ferrari key reworked in her signature visual language. It’s the kind of detail that feels excessive until you remember this is a car likely destined for climate-controlled storage anyway.

White, a color Ferrari usually treats cautiously, becomes a statement thanks to contemporary artist TaeHyun Lee. Drawing from traditional Korean lacquer techniques, Lee inspired a series of elements finished in brilliant white—including the brake calipers and the shift paddles. Yes, white brake calipers on a factory Ferrari are a first, and no, they don’t feel like a gimmick. Against the iridescent bodywork, they read as intentional punctuation marks.

Then there’s sound—visualized. The South Korean duo GRAYCODE (jiiiiin) translated the 12Cilindri’s V-12 soundtrack into a graphical waveform that’s subtly rendered across the bodywork using a darker variation of the same transitional paint. It’s a literal expression of the engine’s voice, frozen in motion, and it might be the most Ferrari idea of all: turning mechanical noise into visual drama.

What makes this Tailor Made 12Cilindri remarkable isn’t just the craftsmanship or the novelty of its materials. It’s Ferrari’s willingness to step back and let external creative voices reshape its most recognizable symbols. The company didn’t dilute its identity in the process—it reinforced it. This car still looks unmistakably like a Ferrari. It just happens to speak fluent Korean design language while doing so.

No price has been announced, and frankly, it doesn’t matter. This 12Cilindri isn’t about cost or collectability. It’s about Ferrari demonstrating that personalization, when taken seriously, can move beyond color palettes and stitching samples into something closer to cultural dialogue.

In a world where “bespoke” often means little more than a new shade of red, Ferrari just built a rolling argument for why craftsmanship, art, and engineering still belong in the same sentence. And yes, it still has a V-12. Some traditions are simply non-negotiable.

Source: Ferrari

News

North Carolina’s CDL Program Just Failed a Federal Inspection

If there’s one thing the modern auto industry understands, it’s that regulation is rarely subtle. When Washington decides a system is broken, it doesn’t send a polite warning light—it yanks the keys and threatens to tow the whole operation. That’s exactly what’s happening now as the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation tightens the lug nuts on state commercial driver’s license programs, with North Carolina becoming the latest—and most dramatic—example.

According to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy, more than half of North Carolina’s commercial truck licenses issued to immigrant drivers should never have been approved in the first place. A federal audit found that 54 percent of the non-domiciled CDLs reviewed violated federal rules, a failure rate that would get any automaker hauled before Congress, if not recalled outright.

The penalty for this kind of bureaucratic misfire isn’t a slap on the wrist. The federal government is threatening to withhold $50 million in transportation funding unless North Carolina immediately halts all new non-domiciled CDL issuances and submits to a full compliance teardown. Think of it less like a warning ticket and more like pulling a state’s racing license mid-season.

This isn’t an isolated incident, either. A nationwide audit of state truck-licensing systems has already put California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and New York on notice. North Carolina just happens to be the latest state to discover that the federal government has been watching the gauges closely—and didn’t like what it saw.

What Went Wrong Under the Hood

The audit revealed a familiar and troubling pattern. Many licenses were issued with expiration dates extending well beyond a driver’s documented legal presence in the United States, echoing the same problem previously uncovered in California. In other cases, CDLs were granted to drivers deemed ineligible for non-domiciled licenses altogether, though federal officials haven’t yet explained precisely how those determinations were bypassed.

Perhaps most concerning from a systems perspective, some licenses were issued before the state verified whether applicants were lawfully allowed to be in the country at all. That’s the administrative equivalent of sending a semi down the interstate without checking whether the brakes work.

FMCSA Administrator Derek D. Barrs didn’t mince words, calling the level of noncompliance “egregious.” In regulatory language, that’s roughly the same as saying the engine block is cracked and the oil light’s been ignored for miles.

Under the new federal directive, North Carolina must now identify every active CDL that fails to meet Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration standards, revoke and reissue licenses for drivers who do qualify, and conduct a full internal audit to figure out how the process went off the rails in the first place.

The Politics Hit the Rev Limiter

Secretary Duffy’s public statements, however, have gone well beyond dry compliance talk. In announcing the crackdown, he framed the issue as a direct threat to public safety, calling the state’s failure “dangerous” and urging leadership to “remove these dangerous drivers from our roads.”

That kind of rhetoric may play well in press releases, but it glosses over a more complicated reality. Licensing failures don’t automatically translate to unsafe drivers, and the audit itself focuses on administrative noncompliance, not crash data, inspection failures, or accident rates. Conflating paperwork errors with road safety risks is a convenient shortcut, but it’s not especially precise—something engineers and regulators alike usually care deeply about.

In other words, this looks less like a sudden discovery of reckless truckers and more like a long-ignored backend system finally collapsing under scrutiny.

A National Problem, Not a Single-State Spin

The bigger takeaway here isn’t that North Carolina did something uniquely reckless. It’s that multiple states—across political and geographic lines—have been operating CDL programs that don’t fully align with federal standards. The audit didn’t just stumble onto a single bad actor; it exposed a structural issue in how states manage non-domiciled commercial licenses.

For an industry already strained by driver shortages, aging infrastructure, and rising compliance costs, this adds another layer of uncertainty. States are now being told to slam the brakes on entire categories of licenses while they rebuild systems mid-drive. Trucking companies, meanwhile, are left wondering how many of their legally working drivers could suddenly find their credentials pulled for reasons unrelated to performance or safety.

The Road Ahead

Whether this crackdown results in safer highways or simply cleaner spreadsheets remains to be seen. What’s clear is that the federal government is no longer content to let states run CDL programs with loose tolerances and crossed wires. The era of “close enough” licensing appears to be over.

For North Carolina, the task now is less about rhetoric and more about execution: fix the system, audit the failures, and prove that compliance can coexist with a functioning commercial trucking workforce.

Because in transportation—as in cars—when the warning lights finally come on, ignoring them only makes the eventual repair more expensive.

Source: FMCSA

NEW CARS

Apollo Evo: A Track-Only V12 Hypercar That Makes Subtlety a Casualty

Three years is an eternity in the hypercar world, but Apollo would argue the wait was the point. After first surfacing as a prototype, the Apollo Evo has finally emerged in production form—and it hasn’t mellowed with age. If anything, it’s gone further off the deep end. Limited to just 10 examples and designed strictly for the racetrack, the Evo is the logical, louder continuation of the already unhinged Intensa Emozione. The first customer car is now under construction, and the message is clear: this thing was never meant to blend in.

Freed from the burden of road legality, Apollo has designed the Evo with a singular focus on performance and spectacle. The result is a car that makes even the most extroverted creations from Pagani or Koenigsegg look almost conservative. This is not a machine interested in compromise—or subtlety.

At its core sits a carbon-fiber monocoque that tips the scales at just 165 kilograms (364 pounds). That’s a 10 percent weight reduction over the IE’s already feathery structure, while stiffness has increased by 15 percent. Apollo doesn’t just talk about weight savings in marketing terms—it engineers them into the foundation of the car.

Drape that tub in bodywork and the Evo’s intent becomes impossible to miss. Sharp LED lighting slices into the front and rear, while a towering roof scoop feeds air into the mechanical madness below. Out back, a massive diffuser and an active rear wing dominate the view. That wing isn’t just for show, either: Apollo claims it can generate a staggering 1,300 kilograms (2,866 pounds) of downforce at 320 km/h (200 mph). At that point, the Evo is theoretically capable of producing more downforce than its own curb weight—a stat that neatly sums up how far removed this car is from reality as most drivers know it.

The interior is no refuge from the insanity. Apollo has stripped away anything that doesn’t serve a direct function, exposing the car’s structural and mechanical elements rather than hiding them behind leather and trim. The dashboard itself doubles as a structural beam, and the control layout follows a logic dictated by track use, not convenience. This isn’t minimalism for aesthetic reasons—it’s functional brutality. The Evo doesn’t want to coddle its driver; it wants to involve them.

Then there’s the engine, and it’s the reason purists will pay attention. In an era increasingly dominated by turbochargers, hybrid systems, and silent electric propulsion, the Evo proudly sticks with a naturally aspirated 6.3-liter V12. Derived from Ferrari’s F140 engine family—the same lineage that powered cars like the F12 Berlinetta—it revs to 8,500 rpm and produces 800 horsepower and 564 lb-ft of torque (765 Nm). No turbo lag, no battery assistance—just displacement, revs, and noise.

Power is sent exclusively to the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential gearbox, reinforcing the Evo’s old-school, driver-first ethos. There’s no mention of all-wheel drive, torque vectoring, or electronic trickery designed to make things easier. The assumption here is that if you’re buying an Apollo Evo, you already know what you’re doing—or you’re willing to learn the hard way.

The rolling stock matches the aggression. Forged wheels measure 20 inches up front and 21 inches at the rear, wrapped in Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires—the kind of rubber you choose when longevity is irrelevant and grip is everything. Combined with the Evo’s low mass, the numbers get serious quickly.

Despite its dramatic aero and V12 soundtrack, the Evo weighs just 1,300 kilograms (2,866 pounds). That power-to-weight ratio helps launch it to 100 km/h (62 mph) in just 2.7 seconds, with a claimed top speed of 335 km/h (208 mph). Those figures put it squarely in modern hypercar territory, but the way it gets there—naturally aspirated, rear-wheel drive, sequential gearbox—feels increasingly rare.

As exclusive as the hardware is, Apollo is pushing individuality even further. Every Evo will be a one-off, with each owner choosing their own combination of materials and finishes. Pricing starts at €3 million (about $3.5 million) before taxes, and first deliveries are expected in the first half of this year.

The Apollo Evo isn’t trying to be the future of performance cars. It’s a defiant celebration of excess, noise, and mechanical purity—a reminder that sometimes the most exciting answer to modern automotive trends is to ignore them entirely.

Source: AutoExpress

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