The Ferrari F40 built in 1987 is the last Ferrari which was created under the reign of Enzo Ferrari. It created a new dimension of Ferrari road cars and was the birth of the so called Super Cars.
It is almost a race car for street use, you can cruise to the bakery in the morning to buy your daily bagel and in the afternoon you drive it hard on a race track.
Presented at July, 12th 1987 at the town hall of Maranello, the F40 impressed everyone by the first sight. This wasn’t the usual presentation at one of the international auto salon’s in Torino, Geneva, Frankfurt or Paris. Under the eyes of the most important Ferrari Dealer, some racing drivers and only a few journalists from all over the world the breathtaking Ferrari F40 made his debut in public. The name F40 was given because of the 40th anniversary of the Scuderia.
When the Ferrari F 40 was presented at the Motorshow in Essen in December 1987 I was blown away. I felt in love at the first sight and even after all these years the F40 for me is the best ever build road car of the Scuderia Ferrari. The design and it’s shape is aggressive but also elegant, the car fits perfect to the streets of Monte Carlo in front of the Casino but also to the race track at the Parco di Monza.
The Ferrari F40 is more uncompromising than any other car of this time. The Porsche 959, which may have been the answer to the F40 looks in comparison like a toy for a boy. Never before was a road car build at the Scuderia Ferrari which had less comfort than the F40. No part of the car was for decoration reasons – uncompromising.
When the car arrived at the scene it was the fastest road car ever built. The Ferrari F 40 followed the 288 GTO, the „Prototype“ of the F 40 was the fantastic Ferrari 288 GTO Evoluzione. The body design made by Pininfarina was a milestone, not less than a revolution in creating body works for road cars. If you like to compare the 288 GTO with the F 40, I think the F 40 looks like it is from an other universe. Nothing, no car, of this time compares to him.
And the hype of owning a Ferrari reached new heights, never before knewn heights. The regular price for a new Ferrari F 40 was about 444000 DM. But the price grow up very quickly cause the limited number of items was sold out after a few weeks. Ferrari didn’t sell the F 40 to everyone which want to buy one, potential customers were choosen by Ferrari very carefully. But nevertheless even the Scuderia could prevent that some of the well chosen clients try to make fast money with a confirmed buying contract. The car magazines were full of offers of buying confirmed contracts, mostly it cost more than a million dollars. I think, that the Scuderia Ferrari got aware of this with a laughing but also with a tearing eye. The desire of having a Ferrari in your garage, but not anyone, it must be a F 40, reached new dimensions. It was really crazy, but if I had the money I would tried everything to get one.
By the way, in 2021 at the Pebble Beach auction from Gooding & Co, a Ferrari F 40 was sold at 2,892.500 $.
A bit smaller, but also very impressing, was the run to the scale model of the F 40 from Burago, for all those, like me, who didn’t have 444000 DM under their pillow. This die-cast model in scale 1:18 was truly hard to find at retailers worldwide. So me and my friends were looking everywhere to get one of the Burago F 40. Some day one guy of our group went to his relatives in Italy and he just found a few in a small town at a toy store. He bought them all, and when he came back, everyone had two F 40 …
FERRARI F40 – TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION
MODEL F40
TYPE Road Car Coupé
YEAR OF PRODUCTION 1987 – 1990
TOTAL NUMBER OF BUILD CARS 200 items
ENGINE F 120 A V8 cylinder, 90˚ Mid, longitudinally mounted
FUEL FEED Weber-Marelli Fuel Injection
ASPIRATION Two IHI Turbos with two Behr intercoolers
CUBIC CAPACITY 2936 cc
TORQUE 577 Nm / 426 ft lbs at 4,000 rpm
TRANSMISSION 5-speed, manual
HORSEPOWER 478 bhp / 357 kW at 7,000 rpm
BODY STYLE carbon-fibre and Kevlar
CHASSIS steel space frame, reinforced by composite panels
SUSPENSION F/R double wishbones, coil springs, Koni hydraulic shock absorbers, anti-roll bar
BRAKES ventilated discs all around
WHEELBASE 2450 mm
LENGTH 4430 mm
WIDTH 1980 mm
HEIGHT 1130 mm
WEIGHT WITHOUT FUEL 1100 kg
V-MAX 324 km/h
