Tag Archives: Ferrari

Story

How Diego Maradona Forced Maranello to Break Its Own Rules

Some people buy cars. Others change automotive history simply by ordering one.

Diego Armando Maradona belonged firmly in the second category.

Fresh off leading Argentina to World Cup glory in 1986, Maradona was arguably the biggest athlete on the planet. His left foot had just delivered one of football’s greatest triumphs, and with fame came the desire for the ultimate reward: a Ferrari Testarossa, the undisputed poster car of the decade.

There was just one catch.

He didn’t want it in red.

Today, a black Ferrari hardly raises an eyebrow. Walk into a Ferrari dealership and you’ll find every imaginable shade on the configurator. But back in the mid-1980s, things worked differently—especially when Enzo Ferrari was still calling the shots.

To Enzo, Ferrari’s identity was inseparable from Rosso Corsa. His flagship models were supposed to leave Maranello wearing the company’s iconic racing red, not some customer-requested color. Personalization wasn’t part of Ferrari’s philosophy, particularly for the halo cars that defined the brand.

Maradona, naturally, wasn’t interested in philosophy.

He wanted his Testarossa finished in black.

The task of making the impossible happen fell to his longtime manager, Guillermo Coppola. Napoli president Corrado Ferlaino had already agreed to purchase the car as a reward for his superstar, reportedly paying an eye-watering $430,000—roughly double the Testarossa’s standard asking price at the time—but money alone wasn’t enough. Someone still had to convince Enzo Ferrari himself to approve a one-off exception.

Against all expectations, Ferrari relented.

The result was one of the rarest Testarossas ever to leave the factory, painted in the elegant Glasurit Nero Met finish. Maradona became just the third person in the world to receive an official factory-built black Testarossa, joining an exclusive club that reportedly included Sylvester Stallone and Michael Jackson.

For most collectors, that would have been the end of the story.

For Maradona, it was only the beginning.

When the car finally arrived at Naples Airport, the Argentine legend admired the dramatic black bodywork before climbing into the driver’s seat for the first time.

Then came an unexpected question.

“Guillermo, where’s the music? Where’s the tape recorder?”

Coppola explained that this wasn’t a luxury grand tourer—it was Ferrari’s vision of an uncompromising road-going supercar. Equipment that most buyers expected simply wasn’t part of the package. No radio. No air conditioning. Even interior trim was kept to a minimum in the pursuit of performance.

Maradona was unimpressed.

According to the story, he immediately opened the door, turned toward Napoli president Corrado Ferlaino, and made it abundantly clear what he thought of a Ferrari that couldn’t keep its driver cool or provide music on the drive home.

His verdict was blunt: if the car didn’t have air conditioning and a stereo, Ferrari could have it back.

Fortunately for everyone involved, cooler heads prevailed.

Ferlaino quickly promised to retrofit a state-of-the-art sound system at the club’s expense while arranging for air conditioning to be installed. With those assurances, Maradona decided to keep the car.

It would go on to become almost as famous as its owner.

The black Testarossa became a fixture of Maradona’s extraordinary years in Naples, standing apart from the sea of red Ferraris and perfectly reflecting the personality of the man who drove it. He wasn’t interested in fitting expectations—on the football pitch or in the parking lot.

The car has since passed through several owners, eventually becoming a coveted collector’s item. When it appeared at auction decades later, it commanded nearly €250,000, with its unique provenance proving every bit as valuable as its rarity.

Looking back, the story isn’t really about a paint color or missing options. It’s about two larger-than-life icons colliding at the height of their powers.

One was Enzo Ferrari, the stubborn perfectionist who believed no customer should dictate how a Ferrari ought to look.

The other was Diego Maradona, a football genius who never accepted the word “no.”

In the end, Maradona got his black Ferrari—and Ferrari proved that, every once in a while, even its own rules could be rewritten.

News

Kids Turn Ferrari 488 GTB Into a Playground Slide, Owner Sues Parents After $4,300 Damage Bill

Owning an exotic car comes with plenty of expected risks—stone chips, careless parking, and the occasional overenthusiastic admirer. Few Ferrari owners, however, expect their six-figure supercar to become neighborhood playground equipment.

That’s exactly what happened to the owner of a Ferrari 488 GTB in Kunming, China, who has now filed a civil lawsuit against the parents of four children accused of using the Italian supercar as an impromptu jungle gym.

The incident occurred in late May after four neighborhood boys, reportedly all under the age of 10, discovered the Rosso Red Ferrari parked in an open area. Security camera footage that later circulated on social media shows the children climbing onto the car, sitting on the windshield, walking across the roof, and sliding down the rear glass as if it were playground equipment. At one point, the exposed engine beneath the rear window appeared to capture their attention, while bamboo poles were also seen making contact with the bodywork.

When the owner returned from a business trip, he found the consequences of their curiosity scattered across nearly every panel. According to local reports, the Ferrari suffered deep scratches to the hood, roof, fenders, taillights, and glass, while the front bumper was also cracked.

Given Ferrari’s famously expensive repair costs, the owner chose not to send the car to an official dealership. He estimated factory repairs would have exceeded 100,000 yuan (about $14,700). Instead, he took the 488 GTB to an independent body shop, where aftermarket replacement parts helped reduce the final repair bill to 29,360 yuan—roughly $4,300.

Armed with repair invoices, the owner met the children’s parents twice at a local police station in hopes of reaching a settlement. According to the South China Morning Post, the parents offered just 5,000 yuan (around $730) in compensation and reportedly did not bring the children to apologize for the damage.

The negotiations quickly stalled.

Unwilling to accept the reduced offer, the Ferrari owner has now filed a civil lawsuit seeking reimbursement for the full cost of the repairs.

Under Chinese law, children younger than 14 cannot be subjected to administrative detention, meaning civil litigation is effectively the only legal avenue available for property owners seeking compensation from a child’s legal guardians.

The damaged car is no ordinary sports car. Produced between 2015 and 2020, the Ferrari 488 GTB marked a major milestone for Maranello by replacing the naturally aspirated 458 Italia with a 3.9-liter twin-turbocharged V8 producing 670 horsepower. It was later succeeded by the F8 Tributo before Ferrari transitioned to hybrid power with the 296 GTB.

According to the owner, he purchased the Ferrari new for 3.6 million yuan—approximately $530,000—and, until this incident, it had never suffered so much as a scratch.

For most owners, protecting a Ferrari means avoiding potholes, parking far away from shopping carts, and keeping up with meticulous maintenance. Few would think to add “playground supervision” to the list.

Source: South China Morning Post via YouTube

Sale

Ferrari 328 GTS Conciso

Some Ferraris are preserved. Others are restored. And a very small number are reimagined into something so left-field that even Maranello would probably do a double take. The latter is where the Michalak Design “Conciso” lands—an almost unrecognisable reinterpretation of a Ferrari 328 GTS that trades weight, complexity, and convention for a sharper, leaner kind of exoticism.

Built in the early 1990s by German design house Michalak Design, the Conciso started life as a standard 328 GTS before being stripped back and re-bodied into something closer to a design study than a traditional restomod. Ferrari itself had no involvement in the project. The mechanical backbone—the chassis and 3.2-litre V8 drivetrain of the original Ferrari 328 GTS—remains, but everything wrapped around it was re-engineered with one obsession in mind: mass reduction.

The result is a car that looks like a parallel-universe Ferrari. The proportions are familiar, but the surfaces are tighter, the bodywork more experimental, and the overall aesthetic far more industrial than sensual. It debuted publicly at the 1993 Frankfurt Motor Show, where it stood less as a Ferrari derivative and more as a design thesis on what happens when you aggressively strip a mid-engine sports car down to its essence.

Diet of Aluminium, Gains in Everything Else

The headline number is the weight. At just 1,900 pounds (889 kg), the Conciso sheds roughly 780 pounds (363 kg) compared to the standard Ferrari 328 GTS. That puts it not only well below its donor car but even beneath modern lightweight benchmarks like the Mazda MX-5.

That kind of reduction changes the character of the drivetrain entirely. With the same 3.2-litre V8 doing the work but far less mass to move, performance tightens up dramatically. The Conciso is said to reach 62 mph in around five seconds and continue on to roughly 170 mph (274 km/h)—numbers that push it closer to early-2000s supercar territory than late-’80s Ferrari grand touring.

It’s not about outright power. It never was. It’s about what happens when you remove everything that doesn’t absolutely need to be there.

A Collector’s Odyssey

After its Frankfurt debut, the Conciso entered a quieter, more nomadic phase. Michalak Design sold it to a North American collector, where it remained until 1998, before passing to a Belgian owner. In 2018, it returned to the United States, continuing its slow evolution from show car curiosity to bona fide collector oddity.

Between 2022 and 2023, the car underwent a comprehensive restoration by Italian specialists Bacchelli & Villa. More than €50,000 was spent returning it to its original specification, including a full respray in Rosso Corsa with Gunmetal Grey accents. The paintwork alone reportedly accounted for over €23,000—a reminder that when low-volume coachbuilt Ferraris are involved, even cosmetics operate in a different financial universe.

Now on the Market—Quietly

Today, the Conciso is being offered for sale in the United States through RM Sotheby’s Sealed platform, meaning no public price tag is attached. The last recorded auction result in 2018 placed it at $109,250, but given its rarity, restoration work, and renewed collector interest, that figure now feels more like a historical footnote than a benchmark.

RM Sotheby’s is keeping expectations discreet, which is fitting. Cars like this don’t really price themselves against standard Ferrari market logic. They exist in a narrower lane where design provenance, engineering curiosity, and sheer individuality matter as much as badge value.

The Conciso isn’t trying to be a better Ferrari 328 GTS. It’s trying to be a lighter, stranger, more focused interpretation of one. And in doing so, it has become something arguably rarer than performance alone: a Ferrari-based machine that feels genuinely unrepeatable.

In a market increasingly dominated by escalating horsepower wars and digital excess, the Conciso’s appeal is almost rebellious in its simplicity. Strip weight. Keep the engine. Redefine everything else.

Source: RM Sotheby’s