A nearly 1,000-horsepower Ferrari F40 is up for auction during Monterey Car Week 2022. Swipe and learn its history.
Ferrari was represented at the Monterey Car Week 2022 with copies that have been auctioned for millions of dollars and others that, with the event concluded, the house RM Sotheby’s still has for sale. In this context, another was the Ferrari that drew all eyes during the appointment in the center of the city of California, United States.
When an F40 is put up for auction, per se It’s usually news. And if this iconic 1987 model -entered the Ferrari Hall of Fame as the most representative of its decade- had been presented to the market as the fastest production car in the world, what about the one that RM Sotheby’s offered to the highest bidder?
A Ferrari F40 Competition model 1989 It stands out for the power of its engine, for its circuit legend and for how it has gone from restoration to restoration until reaching the exterior in Grigio Nardo with which it is presented today.
Possibly the fastest F40 ever built.
The history of this F40 begins once the model was launched. How to forget those tests in Fiorano with a Sylvester Stallone dressed in the uniform of the Scuderia drivers. Beyond its purpose of being a series horse, from its origin the F40 carried within it a competitor’s potential. Ferrari acted.
From Maranello to Padua. The manufacturer’s assignment to Michelotto was to move the car from the street to the tracks contemplating for it the rules of the International Motor Sport Association (IMSA). Nineteen copies went to Le Mans as the F40 LM, seven were called the F40 GTE -evolution of the LM- and another seven were built to race in the Italian supercar championship.
This new F40 circuit range generated such a momentum that it was joined by examples that had been launched as road grand touring cars and that now had their update to take them to competitions. Among the latter is this Ferrari, “possibly the fastest F40 ever built,” Sotheby’s assumes.
From modification to modification for more than 30 years
This F40 Competition left the factory in November 1989 and, immediately, it was delivered to the official importer of Ferrari in the Netherlands, Kroymans BV. There, after three seasons maintaining its original appearance and mechanics, Cavallino Tuning, the automobile division of Kroymans, made the first modifications that included racing shock absorbers, new brakes and a yellow body repaint.
In 1995, following another mid-sale, the vehicle underwent a key restoration. The British of G-Tex and Will Gollup provided an improved anti-roll ring and tweaks to the engine so that it, with the collaboration of Michelotto, was capable of producing up to 700 horsepower. The driver David Hart, who had already raced with the copy in 1993 and 1994, also made changes to it, this time with the classic duels between Ferrari and Porsche of the time as a central objective.
Michel Oprey did the same, who acquired it in 1997. A Ferrari collector and racing driver, Oprey also touched up its mechanics, also raced successfully against Porsche in the 1990s and kept it under his ownership until 2006, the year in which a team British bought it to continue using it in competitions.
His return to Maranello and his radical aesthetic change
After new repairs in 2019 by the British Autofficina, the 1989 Ferrari F40 Competizione changed hands again and was transferred to the traditional Carrozzeria Zanasi from Maranello. There, the firm specializing in restoration and painting was the one that gave this specimen its final destination. To do this, the vehicle had to be completely disarmed.
With a new gray Grigio Nardo exterior, new power seats upholstered in blue cloth, and new mechanical tweaks that generated a power increase of between those 700 and almost 1000 hp, the work carried out by the Zanasi Group revealed in the final invoice a cost of more than 123,000 euros. Waiting for a new owner, this 1989 Competizione is perhaps therefore the fastest Ferrari F40 in the world.