Tag Archives: Ferrari

News

Dust, Glory, and V12s: The Newport Beach Time Capsule

It’s the sort of story that makes car enthusiasts everywhere both weep and grin: in Newport Beach, California, an 88-year-old gentleman has decided it’s finally time to crack open his garage and let a few legends breathe. And by “garage,” we don’t mean a humble two-car suburban unit with a lawnmower in the corner. We mean a treasure chest where modern icons have been quietly slumbering, under a film of dust but otherwise frozen in time.

The headliners? A Ferrari 550 Maranello, a BMW M5 (E39), and a Ford GT. Not tatty, tired examples. Oh no. These are so pristine they make delivery-mile exotics look like rental cars from Miami Beach.

Ferrari 550 Maranello (2000)

Let’s start with the blue-blooded beauty. The 550 Maranello — Pininfarina’s long-nosed love letter to the front-engined V12 — looks as elegant today as it did in its 1990s heyday. This particular car is painted in the deliciously rare NART Blue, paired with a sumptuous brown leather interior. Mileage? 908 kilometers. That’s fewer steps than most of us take on a trip to the pub.

After a proper detail, the car’s lines once again glistened like liquid metal, the 5.5-liter naturally aspirated V12 promising its 485 horsepower symphony to a very lucky new owner in New York. Consider this: most Maranellos out there have lived the life of a true GT, storming across continents. This one has barely made it to the grocery store.

BMW M5 (E39, 2002)

Next up, the one that petrolheads will argue over until the end of time: the E39 M5, the sports sedan against which all others are judged. This Carbon Black masterpiece has covered a scarcely believable 6,838 kilometers in 22 years. It has never changed hands since new. And yes, it’s got the six-speed manual gearbox and the 4.9-liter V8 with 400 horsepower—the recipe for one of the purest driver’s sedans ever built.

Inside, black leather and wood trim remain untouched, like a Bavarian time capsule. Now in Colorado, its new custodian essentially owns one of the best-preserved examples in the world. Lucky sod.

Ford GT (2006)

And then there’s the American hammer blow: the 2006 Ford GT. A retro homage that didn’t just nod to Le Mans history—it bellowed, wheelspun, and blew the doors off contemporary Ferraris. This one is painted in retina-searing red with white racing stripes, and like the others, it’s barely been touched. Odometer: 1,159 kilometers. Registered? Not once. It’s as close as you’ll ever get to buying one brand new today.

Underneath that aluminum skin sits a 5.4-liter supercharged V8 with 558 horsepower, paired with a six-speed Ricardo manual. Back in 2006, this was Ford flexing against the Europeans, and two decades later, it’s still one of the most charismatic supercars America has ever built.

The Rest of the Stash

Of course, those three are just the tip of the iceberg. Peek further into the Newport Beach vault and you’ll find an eclectic mix of Americana and oddities: a 1973 De Tomaso Pantera, several generations of Chevrolet Corvette, a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T, a Dodge Viper GTS, a Plymouth Prowler, a Dodge Ram SRT-10, and even a couple of Bricklin SV-1s. It’s a museum masquerading as a garage.

Some of these machines are destined to go back into climate-controlled hibernation, while others will roar back to life on public roads, scattering pedestrians with noise and nostalgia.

Final Thought

Every enthusiast dreams of finding a forgotten barn, peeling back the tarp, and discovering greatness. In this case, the cars weren’t in a barn—they were hiding in plain sight, napping in a Newport Beach garage. And now, thanks to one man finally deciding to part with his collection, three of the finest machines of the last 30 years are back in circulation. Dusty? Sure. Glorious? Absolutely.

Source: Silver Arrow Cars

News

$26 Million Ferrari Daytona SP3 Steals the Show at Monterey Car Week Auction

Auction week in Monterey always delivers drama, but even seasoned bidders did a double-take when the hammer fell on a Ferrari Daytona SP3 at RM Sotheby’s. The price? A staggering $26 million—more than ten times its original sticker.

This wasn’t just any SP3. Ferrari built the car specifically for the event, a one-off finished in exposed carbon fiber with a bold yellow livery stretching nose to tail, plus a bespoke interior plastered with prancing horse motifs. The sale benefitted the Ferrari Foundation, the automaker’s U.S.-based 501(c)(3) supporting education. If you’re going to write a big check, this was the place to do it.

The Daytona SP3 itself hardly needs an introduction. Launched in 2021 as part of Ferrari’s exclusive “Icona” series, it was essentially a LaFerrari without the hybrid trickery, clothed in bodywork that channels the P3 and P4 endurance racers of the 1960s. Production was capped at 599 cars, each starting around $2.25 million, and every slot was spoken for before the public even saw the car. Predictably, examples quickly began trading well above MSRP. Just not ten times MSRP.

With RM Sotheby’s gavel drop, this SP3 now holds the record as the most expensive new Ferrari ever sold at auction. It also took the top spot for Monterey Car Week overall, edging out another Maranello masterpiece: a 1961 Ferrari 250 California Spyder Competizione that crossed Gooding & Christie’s block for just over $25 million.

For perspective, the next-highest seller at RM Sotheby’s was a Ferrari F40 LM at a mere $11 million—a bargain in this rarified company.

In a weekend defined by stratospheric sales, Ferrari proved once again that nothing tugs at a collector’s wallet—or heartstrings—like a prancing horse.

Source: Ferrari

Sale

1987 Ferrari Alcador by Franco Sbarro is for sale

In the early 2020s, the automotive world briefly lost its collective mind over open-top, windshield-less supercars. McLaren’s Elva, Aston Martin’s V12 Speedster, and Ferrari’s Monza SP1/SP2 sparked a short-lived but thrilling niche segment of radically impractical, eye-wateringly expensive speedsters. But nearly 30 years before these topless titans captivated collectors, one bold Ferrari owner—and an even bolder Swiss designer—did it first.

Meet the Ferrari Alcador, a wildly reimagined version of Maranello’s iconic 1980s wedge, stripped of convention, logic, and most notably, its windshield.

A Radical Reinvention of an ’80s Icon

The Ferrari Testarossa, with its wide hips, straked flanks, and quintessentially ’80s attitude, was a bedroom wall poster car for a generation. But by the mid-1990s, automotive tastes had shifted. The Testarossa’s brutalist lines were fading from favor, and one owner decided to give his example a radical new lease on life.

Enter Franco Sbarro, a Swiss designer renowned for his unhinged one-offs and prototype work. With his team, Sbarro took the Testarossa and tore up the rulebook. The chassis was shortened, a curved underbody was grafted on, and most controversially, the windshield was deleted entirely. Not shortened. Not replaced with a race-style aero screen. Simply gone.

Instead, two thick roll-over bars—reminiscent of industrial scaffolding—were mounted behind the driver and passenger, cleverly designed to double as aerodynamic channels. These directed airflow from the headlight inlets rearwards, bypassing the cabin and adding visual drama in the process.

Doors That Scissor, Seats That Don’t Move

The modifications didn’t stop there. Scissor doors—something no Ferrari of the era featured—were bolted on. The cockpit was radically reworked: the dials were relocated to the center console, and the seats were fixed directly to the chassis, much like today’s hypercars from Pagani or Koenigsegg.

Power came from the same 4.9-liter flat-12 as the stock Testarossa, producing 390 horsepower and mated to a five-speed gated manual. While mechanically unchanged, the car’s visual transformation turned it into something closer to a cyberpunk speedboat than a traditional Ferrari.

Even the side profile, with its sharp creases and dramatic cutaways, seems eerily prescient of modern minimalist hypercars like the McLaren Elva or even the Lamborghini Essenza SCV12. Sbarro may have been dismissed as eccentric in the ’90s, but there’s no denying he was ahead of his time.

Three Built. One Road-Legal.

Only three examples of this Ferrari Alcador were ever made, but just one received road registration—making it perhaps the most exclusive (and road-legal) open Ferrari you’ve never heard of.

Now, nearly 30 years after its Geneva debut in 1995, that very car is up for sale in Germany. The price? Available only upon request, of course.

While it may never be as famous as Ferrari’s own Monza SP1 or Aston’s V12 Speedster, the Alcador stands as proof that good ideas sometimes come a few decades too early. It’s a fascinating time capsule from the future—dreamt up in the past.

Source: Thiesen Automobile