Dubai Police Put a Mansory Ferrari 812 on Tourist Patrol, and the 800-HP Claim Doesn’t Add UpBackfire NewsShawn HenrySat, September 19, 2026 at 10:00 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleDubai's tourist police just added a carbon-bodied V12 to the patrol roster, and the interesting part isn't the bodywork. It's the number printed next to it.Brigadier Omar Ali Al Shehhi, Assistant Director-General of the General Department of Criminal Investigation for Criminal Security Affairs, pulled the cover off a Mansory-built Ferrari 812 on September 14 at the Arabian Travel Market inside the Dubai World Trade Centre. Colonel Mohammed Abdul Rahman, who runs the Tourist Police Department, and Mansory founder Kourosh Mansory were both on hand. The force says the car will work Burj Khalifa, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard and JBR — the parts of the city where visitors keep their phones out.It is the fifth vehicle Dubai Police and Mansory have built together. The quoted specs: a 6.5-liter engine, 800 horsepower, 0-100 km/h in 2.8 seconds, and a 345 km/h top end.Run Those Numbers AgainFerrari rates the standard 812 Superfast at 800 cv. That's cavalli vapore — metric horsepower, worth about 735.5 watts apiece. The American mechanical horsepower we use on this side of the Atlantic is 745.7 watts. Convert Ferrari's factory rating honestly and you land on roughly 789 hp.AdvertisementAdvertisementWhich means the 800 hp on the Dubai Police card is Ferrari's showroom figure with the units quietly swapped, not evidence of a tuned engine. The 345 km/h claim sits right on top of Ferrari's own "over 340 km/h" rating, and 2.8 seconds is a tenth inside the factory 0-100 time — the kind of gap you get from a good surface and a rolling start, not from hardware.Here's the tell. Mansory's own published program for the 812, the Stallone, claims 830 hp (611 kW), extracted through revised engine electronics and a sports exhaust. If the police car were carrying the full Mansory powertrain treatment, the announcement had a bigger number available and didn't use it. Read that however you like, but don't read "800 hp" as a modified engine.That distinction matters well beyond this car. Every time a European manufacturer's PS or cv rating gets reprinted as "hp" on a spec sheet, the car gains about 1.4 percent of free power on paper. It's how a 493 PS AMG becomes a "493 hp" AMG and nobody blinks.What Mansory Actually Did HereThe Stallone package is a body and trim exercise first. Mansory's catalog for the 812 covers visible carbon fiber body components, its own forged wheels — the Yavin design — lowering springs to match the revised stance, and a cabin rebuilt in carbon and hand-stitched leather with a bespoke steering wheel and aluminum pedals.AdvertisementAdvertisementTwo of those have teeth in daily service. Visible carbon panels are gorgeous and expensive to own. A scuffed painted composite bumper is a filler-and-respray job at any competent shop. A gouged clear-coated carbon panel with an exposed weave is not — matching twill direction, layup and clear depth is specialist work, and in most cases the shop quotes replacement instead. Exotic insurers price that in, which is why carbon-heavy conversions carry higher agreed-value premiums than the base car.Lowering springs are the other one. The 812 already carries a nose that needs a front-axle lift and a driver paying attention. Drop it further and you're asking a $400,000 GT to negotiate speed tables, hotel valet aprons and underground parking ramps five days a week. Splitters lose that argument.Dubai Police have been running exotics on tourist duty for more than a decade. Photo: Peter Dowley via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0Nobody Is Chasing Anyone in ThisAn 812 is a front-mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive two-seater with a transaxle gearbox hanging off the back axle, and it was the first Ferrari to use electric power steering. It is a magnificent road car and a terrible police car. There's no cage, no prisoner partition, no room for a long gun, a medical bag or a spare set of plates, and no all-wheel drive to put 789 hp down when someone runs a light in front of you.Dubai Police have never pretended otherwise. Al Shehhi's framing was police presence in tourist and high-profile areas, and that's exactly the job. These cars are a public-facing asset — approachable, photographed constantly, and enormously effective at making a police uniform something tourists walk toward instead of away from. Measured as a recruiting and tourism tool, the fleet is cheap. Measured as pursuit equipment, it was never the point. It's worth remembering that the traffic stops that actually involve hypercars tend to end with a regular patrol car and a clipboard.The Rest of the CollectionThe Mansory partnership now covers a Mercedes-AMG G63 from 2024, a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, a Ferrari Purosangue and a Lamborghini Revuelto, with the 812 making five. Dubai's relationship with high-end metal runs deeper than the police garage — this is the same city where a $1.4 million Aston Martin Valhalla turns up on a showroom floor, where Bentley chose to launch the Supersports, and where a G63 gets left parked because a pigeon nested on it.What an Enthusiast Should Take From ThisThe 812 Superfast is out of production. Ferrari replaced it at the top of the front-engine V12 range with the 12Cilindri, and the 6.5-liter unit in this car belongs to the last generation of big naturally aspirated Ferrari V12s built without hybrid assistance. That lineage is the entire investment thesis for the model, and it's the reason heavily modified examples sit awkwardly in the market.Collector buyers for cars like this want originality, or at least reversibility. A carbon conversion with lowering springs is a taste purchase, and taste doesn't transfer. If you're the one commissioning the work, the single most valuable thing you can do for the car's future is crate the factory bumpers, wheels and springs, label them, and store them dry. The parts you keep are worth more at resale than the parts you bolt on — the same logic that keeps factory-documented Ferraris at the front of the queue.AdvertisementAdvertisementAnd if you ever do put a carbon body kit on a car you drive, get a written repair procedure from your shop before you need one. Ask them what happens when a panel cracks. Composite structures fail differently than metal, and the answer is usually a part number and a lead time, not a dent puller.The Dubai car will be fine. It'll live on a boulevard at 20 km/h, get photographed four thousand times a week, and never see the far side of third gear. Which, for a 789-hp V12, might be the strangest fate of all.Your Turn: Would you want to see this Ferrari roll up on patrol, or does it rub you the wrong way? Tell us what you think.