My Ride in a Ferrari F40

My Ride in a Ferrari F40

April 19, 2019

It turns out I know someone on the other side of the world, who knows someone, who recently added a Ferrari F40 to their already stellar, but only now hyper, Ferrari collection.

Normally when the chain gets that long you probably wouldn’t bother pursuing the opportunity but being a car fanatic since I could walk, I was not going to let this one slip by.

When I was a child my two prized possessions were my diecast black Porsche 959 and red Ferrari F40, I took these two cars everywhere and they remained in my bedroom until I moved out of my parents house at 21 (I’m a car tragic and still have models scattered around my house).

With this in mind on a recent visit to Germany for the friend in questions wedding I put an early call out to meet this car collectors and get a tour of his garage.

Everything moved quickly after I arrived in Munich. After a big first night out, we caught up for a recovery session in a beer garden in the centre of town.  A couple of questions (subtle reminders), led to a couple of phone calls, and before I knew it I’m being driven to a private underground 25 car garage in a Ferrari Testarossa.

An hour later we are on the Autobarn in the F40, at full noise in 4th gear chasing high 200km/h. So, did reality meet the years of expectation? Was the experience everything I hoped since I was playing with my toy car during lunch in primary school?

Yes, and Yes! I have driven in some seriously fast cars, I have been driven by some seriously fast drivers, but I have never actually been scared in a car until this moment. Before 4000rpm the F40 is any V8 supercar, although your cant use third gear until it warms up, its comfortable, linear, polite, and predictable. It’s any high performance 80’s sportcars. I actually felt like I could cruise in the passenger seat for a couple of hours and be completely comfortable, although if you were going to use it for this then a few mode cons like carpet and door handles might be nice.

After 4000rpm it feels like the tyres became inadequate and any small variation of the throttle will send the car spinning off the road. On boost the car feels on edge and is a completely different beast, twitching around corners reacting to every minute change in the throttle. This example had a custom made exhaust that when let loose would bring a smile to any car person’s face. The owner was complaining to me about the Munich police unfairly cracking down on noisy cars, and I don’t think he had any idea he was probably the reason.

Unfortunately, due to the spontaneous way this came about I only had my phone with me to document the experience, so please excuse the less than great quality photos.

Although the F40 was the highlight the rest of the tour was worthy of mentioning with a perfectly restored Ferrari 512BBI and Daytona, Merc SLS, 328GTS with a perfect set of Ferrari luggage, and a collection of Porsche GT3 models.

James Tinsley

James is the Founder of FitMyCar and a total car nerd. At 5’11”, and with calves as wide as he is tall, he could be the most weirdly proportioned CEO in the world to ever write an auto blog.

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