The new Ferrari F12 Berlinetta hosts a potent mixture of 12 different kinds of alloys in its new spaceframe structure to reduce weight over the outgoing 599, and improve the integrity of its rigidity. We're talking 20 per cent.

It borrows the engine from the FF - Top Gear's Rear of the Year - but Maranello's engineers have reworked that sonorous V12 into something unholy. The 6.3-litre (with a 65 degree configuration) now produces 730bhp, some 80bhp over the FF, and 509lb ft of torque, and thus becomes the most potent road-going Ferrari ever built.

Ally this ludicrously good V12 to the lightweight, spaceframe chassis and the result is a dry weight of 1,525kg and a weight distribution of 46/54 front to rear. It also means a 0-62mph time of 3.1 seconds, 0-200kph in 8.5 seconds and a top speed of 340kph. Its deftness of foot also manifests through a scorching Fiorano lap time: at 1m 23s, it's the quickest model around Ferrari's private test track.

Why are we telling you all of this? No doubt you were reduced to a babbling wreck on hearing the headline words of "new V12 Ferrari" and "most powerful", and thus, we wanted to arm you with as many salient facts before you plunged headfirst into this gallery of rather spiffing pics, and continued your incoherent babbling.

You may or may not have noticed, but we've been at the Geneva motor show where the new F12 made it's worldwide debut, and finally got the chance to ogle it. Up close. In person.

Here's what we found...