The most intuitive way to tune your car radio harks back to the 1950s and was resurrected by Ferrari in the 612 Scaglietti 2+2 touring car. The Bose-supllied system uses outer and inner tuning knobs, outer for genres, inner for individual stations. Plus there's something you never saw on on 1957 Chevy: an infrared sensor that brings up a menu as your hand approaches the radio. Very cool.

For the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti slideshow, click here.

Know all those cars with Bose logos on the speaker? They've got Bose speakers, Bose amplifiers, and Bose acoustic shaping, but not a Bose head unit, the head unit being the radio, CD, and sometimes navigation unit that sits in the dash and is what the driver and passenger interact with. That means that until now, Bose's carefully honed image is at the mercy of somebody else's sizing and placement of buttons. The Ferarri 612 is the coming out party for the new Bose Media System and it's a wondrous thing for the most part, more immediately intuitive than a controller such as BMW iDrive or Audi MMI, in some ways easier than a touchscreen.

Why Offered First in a Ferrari? Why Not?
The Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, pronounced SKAL-yetti, named for a Ferrari designer) is the biggest Ferrari, the 2+2 designation meaning it can hold two in back in Mustang levels of comfort, with a faux-suede-lined trunk big enough for two of three soft-sided bags. It's a grand touring car meant to cover long stretches of highway in supreme comfort, say Paris-Berlin. Ferrari and Bose chose each other to provide what turns out to be a highly useful system for radio and iPod playback, a bit less intuitive for navigation. The excellence of the audio system is a good match for the overall excellence of the car.

While the Ferrari prancing horse emblem is on the hood, my test car was done in a champagne silver color and in combination with a design that has its critics owing to the overly long hood, it's not the head turner in the manner of a Ferrari F430 in the signature racing red livery. I have, however, spent few days more enjoyable than in the 612. It has a V12 engine much beloved by OPEC countries and a jerky and unrefined automatically operated manual transmission that has no clutch pedal - jerky even after many years of refinement.

Virtually every cockpit surface you don't see out of, or rest your feet on, is covered in buttery brown leather, even the headliner and transmission tunnel. There's an official Ferrari name for the color that I believe translates to: guaranteed sex. Hey, it works better than expensive after shave for Silicon Valley geeks with stock options.

How It Works
The head unit sits low in the center stack, the top of the stack being reserved for massive air vents only slightly less imposing than the 612 exhaust pipes. The 6.5-inch display is small, fades a bit in direct sunlight though I've seen worse, and is at the same height in the car as your belly button. That's because the 612 Scaglietti dates to 2004 and this is a drop-in enhancement for 2008 models.

The head unit has big knobs to the left and right of the display. Left is volume, right is tuning. Here's how it works when you're tuned to XM satellite radio: When your hand is about a half-foot from the tuning knob, a proximity sensor pops up a tuning menu onscreen and the choices are arrayed in a semi-circle, replicating the circular theme of the knob. Turn the outer knob and you move among rock, classical, news, decades, and the other genres. Turn the inner knob and you move from station to station within the genre. You still get buttons that store station presents.

The outer-and-inner theme works with traditional FM radio since most transmit their genre and song information through the RDS (radio data service) signal that accompanies the music. With your CDs, hard disk music, or iPod (other brands don't connect), the outer-inner arrangement works for genre or artist, however you're currently configured. This is both brilliant and pretty obvious once you think about it.

How Many Stations in the Genre?
An onscreen circle next to the physical tuning knob displays red arcs along the rim equal to the number of choices you have. If you have eight rock stations to choose from, the red arc is one-eighth the size of the circle. Just two classical stations? The arc is one-half the circle. While it sounds like a gimmick, it turned out to be useful in seeing how many choices you have, especially on traditional FM radio in unfamiliar areas.

Hard Disk for Music, Navigation
The head unit integrates a shock-mounted 30GB Toshiba hard disk. Pop a CD in the slot and it's automatically ripped (unless you choose otherwise) to the hard disk, and track-and-tune information is verified by an on-disk version of the Gracenote music database, to which Bose adds a feature called UMusic that lets you indicate thumbs up or thumbs down to a particular track and also play more (or less) of the same style, the style being more than just the broad genre.

Navigation: Bose's Achilles Heel
Bose doesn't supply the navigation component and was stuffy about not revealing who does it for them. (It's Navigon; as if there are secrets in the industry.) It's passable but not as full-featured as the best from Pioneer and Alpine. You do get to use the outer-inner tuning feature to good effect, though there were times when I'd rather just press a touchscreen. There's no 3D (birdseye) view that to me is more than a gimmick. Some of the data services lack basic smarts. When I asked for the nearest gas station, it listed them in proximity, rather than what's ahead on my planned route. That's just dumb, although it's a failing of more than Navigon units. (BMW's real time traffic service, for instance, highlights accidents and traffic jams you've already passed.)

The 612 infotainment package includes text-to-speech output, voice command input, Bluetooth, real time traffic, a USB jack, and playback of every form of virtually any shiny disc format known to mankind including DVD video when you're parked. It lacks HD Radio and the display has only one view; this would have been the perfect vehicle for the Sharp Dual View LCD that can show car functions to the driver and video (while on the go) to the passenger.

Should You Buy?
Enzo Ferrari once declared the sound of his engines to be all the music you needed. Now the cars bearing his name are quiet, well-built, relatively reliable if you do the preventive maintenance, and have not just audio systems but what is arguably the easiest one to use for satellite radio and iPods. The sound is excellent, too. However: For $270,000 you get a breathtaking-but-cramped cockpit without cupholders. No problem: Get an expresso every time you stop to fill the beast, which gets 11 mpg combined city/highway mileage.

The car is a blast to drive. The paddle shifters are huge and don't move with the steering wheel. The automated manual transmission, derived from Ferrari's Formula One cars, shifts with a jolt at lower speeds and will annoy some passengers. It's no match on smoothness for Audi's DSG (S tronic) dual clutch automated manual. The knobs, dash as well as radio, are all big and easy to grasp and steering wheel buttons are well spaced. A big LCD multi-information display in the upper left corner of the instrument cluster provides useful engine, speed, and audio features in one place. In the Arizona desert on a warm but not hot day, the air conditioning worked flawlessly.

Practical advice about cars costing more than $100,000 doesn't make sense - "practical ... $100,000 car"? - but I am a believer that if you can afford a new Porsche (a 911 Turbo, not a Boxster), you can afford a used Ferrari, and as sexy and desirable as a Porsche is, Ferrari stands on its own. Unfortunately, if you want this incredible audio system and passable navigation system, the only choice currently is a 2008 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. Expect to see this Bose Media System move into a wider range of cars than just Ferraris. The benefits of the old-fashioned tuning knob are just too good to keep on one car.

Ferrari 612 Scaglietti

Ferrari North America: www.ferrariusa.com

Price: $275,000

EPA economy: 9 city, 15 highway, 11 combined (premium fuel)

Pros: Easy-to-use audio system with separate controls for genres and stations. Excellent sound. Sumptuous cockpit. Powerful engine, responsive handling. Fixed paddle shifters (don't rotate with wheel).

Cons: LCD display small, mounted low. Navigation system. Fuel economy. No cupholders.

Bottom line: Bose and Ferrari combine to offer what may be the easiest-to-use music system ever, thanks to outer-and-inner tuning knobs and a proximity sensor that brings up a menu. A great touring car for the handful who can afford the payments and the fuel bills.