Heartbreaking Video Catches Ferrari F40 Rolling Into A Lamp Post

A video has surfaced on Instagram of what looks like the end of a well-known and extremely valuable Ferrari F40, which, unlike today’s 296 GTB, for example, has no special electronic aids to save you from bad driving. From a camera behind, we see the F40 cruising along on a wet UK road, then we hear the driver give the twin-turbocharged V8 some throttle, then the Ferrari is on its side as it hits a lamp post. The whole incident takes just seven seconds to unfold on the A5 near York in the UK. From reports and photos that have surfaced on social media, the car is known by its number plate, F40 PRX as the highest mileage F40 on the road. Most importantly, nobody was seriously injured. See the post at the end of this article.

Cars Of This Era Are Known To Bite Back

It would be easy to shake our heads and give the driver a hard time, but the reality is that the F40 is a highly-strung supercar from the 1990s with no electronic driving aids, including traction control. Add in the 1990s level of turbo lag, and you have one hell of a handful of a supercar, and that’s before you put it on a wet road. Even in the dry, Car & Driver once described it as being a “mix of sheer terror and raw excitement,” while Classic And Sportscar described it as “brutal, ballistic and a bit scary.”

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It’s generally thought at this point that it’s not the owner driving in the video, but a service technician. One possibility is that the tech wasn’t used to driving a car with so much turbo lag, thought something was wrong, and gave it more throttle. When the turbos came on tap, the vicious amount of power was overwhelming. Of course, we don’t know – it’s also possible they were willfully trying to break the tires loose for fun and ended up going full Mustang.

You don’t need to see the photos of the aftermath to know the F40 is a wreck. However, we can tell the nose has been ripped off, and there’s damage to the tub chassis, while the suspension is absolutely broken. But, it’s probably not going to be the end of the car. Rare Ferrari models have been brought back from the dead from worse accidents, and with just over 1,300 models built in the 1990s, the F40 is incredibly rare.

An F40 With A Real History (And A Previous Crash)

It’s hard to put a value on this particular F40 as one of the things rarer than an F40 is one that gets regularly driven. Current prices seem to run between $1.5 and $2 million dollars for particularly good examples. F40 PRX has some interesting history as, with its first owner, it ran in the Gumball 3000 rally in 1999 and 2006, and drove all across Europe in the meantime.

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It has also been flown out to Thailand to drive, and the US, where it covered the route from Utah to Los Angeles. Around 2007, it was crashed and rebuilt, then taken around the Nürburgring, and took part in the Mille Miglia. The original owner, a business person from the UK, sold it in 2012, and it has had a couple of owners since. Since 2012, it has mainly been seen at car shows.

Source: CarScoops