Honestly than you found an example in bad condition or some failures. A well maintained Diablo is a top car. A close friend of mine had a very early Diablo and drove several times in the 90s against F40 on the Autobahn. He told me, the Diablo was faster, especially after 300km/h. But to be honest, his car seemed like a very good running example with sport exhaust mounted.
^^^^ Wish I still had the magazine, but Car & Driver did an article comparing the two and said once the F40 was rolling, the Diablo didn’t have a chance of catching it …. Probably dumb but I tossed 30 years of C & D when I moved a few years ago - just seemed like a lot of work to move them - regret it at times. MDS
Yes i know the test in the Car & Driver magazine. I just can speak for two EU spec cars against each other on the Autobahn. The F40 has a much more direct handling of course and is more "racing" oriented.
Yeah, I remember reading something about Agnelli having a bad left knee due to a ski accident or similar, and thus they adapted a F40 for him.
This is the ex-Agnelli car when I saw it at the RM Auction in Maranello, 2008. Image Unavailable, Please Login
The ex Agnelli F40 with Valeo clutch is S/N 79883 and used to belong to Dr. S. F. in Italy for decades. Marcel Massini
which means it is NOT the one in the ad i referred to...... and you were just pulling legs here and other fell for it...
I had a firm written contract for the purchase of a new F40 in 1990 with full payment of $110,000 already made to the Kuwait importer, Talal Al Essa,. The car still in Modena when Saddam rallied in.
When Saddam rolled in. Tala fled to Cairo and could not be found. I went to Maranello with his accountant to demonstrate full payment and request delivery while Kuwait was under occupation. Ferrari declined, and then began the saga where Talal decided that he would not honor the contract (the cars were trading at $1 million--and as a Bedouin trader, he decided that I had gotten the better of the deal). Through the intercession of a well known US dealer whom I had done some favors in delivering two new 512 Bi's in 1984 for his Mexican clients, Talal was informed by Maranello that he would not receive any more cars until Mr. Lyon was repaid. I duty received my $110,000 back but no F40. Arghhh.
Interesting, were you based in Kuwait during the late 80's? I am from Kuwait and I recall we only received 3-4 F40's when new via Talal's company and he was the sole agent of Ferrari till 1998 then transferred to Al-Zayani.
I was here in Alabama but a friend who had a buddy working in a Kuwait bank had an in with Talal, so we contracted for two and got exactly none.
a few people have contacted me recently for advice on buying an F40. several have asked if i want to sell - i dont. and i have been reading several threads on here about getting checkups that turn up all sorts of rotten info, or cars that have had vins tampered with, accidented, unclear ownership chains, non matching parts numbers etc etc all of this means that even though 1315 cars were made, truly worthy cars that are currently in proper condition (this is a wide description but you know what i mean), are probably less than half the production. and then, of those, there will only be less than 5% of them for sale at any time. so now we are down to about 20-30 decent cars world wide that are, or might be, for sale. and more like 300 people who want to buy one this year. the other big 4 were made in significantly fewer numbers, but the vast majority of them are never driven, hence they dont come in harms way; and they were not as prevalently stolen, or modified, or 'adjusted' in any way, or ever raced in any serious way (the odd f50 i will acknowledge). so altho their build numbers are somewhere between 272 and 500 each, my guess is that at any one time you can probably also find 20-30 for sale..... meanwhile, relatively normal cars like the Speciale or the Pista, made 2000+ times each, and with literally hundreds for sale, are commanding very high prices - nearly double what they were only 6 months ago. and all this leads me to conclude, once again, that F40's are undervalued by comparison.
Mecum - SOLD for $2.75 million + fees https://www.mecum.com/lots/FL0122-487832/1992-ferrari-f40/ Image Unavailable, Please Login .
… which is silly considering it was obvious the auctioneer didn’t have real money as he ran it up then had to back it down to the only bidders number on the car before explaining the issue to the consignor and getting him to relent on the reserve. I guess for the buyer being on tv is worth the extra money since there’s other similar examples that have been offered recently for less. Bizarre times…
