Ferrari F50

Ferrari F50 Ferrari F50
Road Test

There are two things you should know about the Fer­rari F50. First, no one we know in all of the world has measured its performance. Second, it doesn't matter if you're richer than Ted and Jane; you can't buy one.

This is true. And to make sense of it, we slogged slowly through a ver­itable Ripley's fun house of politics, behind-the-scenes arm-wrestling, and lifestyles of the rich and famous.

So why can't you buy an F50 out­right? Well, it isn't because all 55 of the U.S. allotment has been spoken ton. It's because the whole passel of F50s was offered only via a two-year lease whose various articles and cod­icils were fashioned by Ferrari North America (FNA). Even if you possess the requisite $240,000 down pay­ment for the lease (not to mention sales tax and luxury tax), and even if you also are sufficiently affluent to swing the 24 payments of $5600 per month, you'll still have to summon a $150,000 final payment—again, two years down the cash-littered road—before you can truthfully refer to yourself as an F50 owner.

According to Ferrari North America, this lease-it-or-leave-it scheme is in place simply to weed out avaricious speculators—the quick-turnaround artists who, you may recall, jacked F40 prices to as much as $1 million when that car was introduced in 1988. Mind you, it has historically been tricky even for Ferrari to identify those specula­tors. For instance, whose motives for buying an F40 could brie truer or bluer than former Ferrari driver Nigel Mansell's or, say, Princess Caroline's husband's? Yet both of these customers almost immediately liquidated their F40s into a stack of Euro-dollars slightly taller than Enzo's headstone.

Even if your savings account, gravy-wise, is relatively undamaged by the $560,640 that you'll eventu­ally spend on an F50 lease program, you still may not qualify to wrap your sticky fingers around this par­ticular car's carbon-fiber shift knob. And that's because Ferrari North America will lease you an F50 only if you're on its "A list" of customers.

More hoops to clear? Fine. But how?

"There's this long questionnaire that Ferrari sent me when I first tried to buy the thing," explains a current F50 lessee. "FNA makes you answer stuff like, 'What Ferraris do you cur­rently own? and 'How many Ferraris have you sold in your lifetime and for how much? and `Have you raced any Ferraris?' and 'Do you plan to race the F50?' And so on. If your answers satisfy someone at Ferrari, maybe then your name goes on a list of guys they'll con­sider leasing an F50 to."

In the previous 13 months, C/D has spoken at length to 11 Ferrari F50 lessees. Most expressed annoyance at FNA's questionnaire and leasing scheme. "I always pay cash for my Ferraris," said one. "This time, I couldn't do that, so the car doesn't feel like it's mine. Throughout all of this, I've felt as though Fer­rari was questioning my motives—me, a guy who buys another of its cars every single year."

"I admit [the questionnaire and lease] were kind of a screening process," says Ferrari North America spokesman Giampaolo Letta. "The F50 became something of a reward to customers who already had three, five, ten Ferraris. We looked at the cars they owned. If they already owned an F40—hadn't sold it to make a profit—that was important. But we [FNA] did not decide who got an F50 and who didn't. That decision came from Maranello."

Says longtime Ferrari dealer Rick Mancuso: "The [leasing] theory isn't wrong, but the execution is painful. They [FNA] have controlled an inordinate amount of the transaction on this car."

He's not kidding.

More than a year ago, when C/D first asked FNA if we could measure an F50, it told us, "No, there is no press car." Fair enough. Not many companies regularly hand out half-million-dollar machines to writers who will thrash them on a track.

But a funny thing happened as we began contacting the 11 men who had F50s parked in their garages. Either they recited what sounded like a prepared FNA public-relations speech, which always began, "Numbers have nothing to do with Ferraris. The cars are about soul and emotion and a rich heritage." Or the F50 lessee enthusiastically replied, "Sure, let's do it, where do you want to test?"

Then, among those who said yes, one of two things would happen in short order. Once we'd reserved a track and the test drew near, they'd stop returning our calls and faxes. All contact would cease. That happened four times. Or an even stranger response would manifest. The lessee would sheepishly call to announce: "I'd still like to let you test my car, but I can't. Fer­rari doesn't think it's a good idea."

Well, okay. But why would wealthy, inde­pendent men care what Ferrari thinks?

Explained one: "I buy every new Ferrari that comes out. It was suggested that if my F50 got tested, I might not be on the list of preferred customers, which I think is necessary to get the first new models."

"There are perks for being a loyal Ferrari customer," said another lessee who had initially been keen on having C/D test his car. "Things like personal factory tours in Maranello and pri­vate drives at Fiorano. Maybe I have a big ego, but those things mean a lot to me. So, to be told I might lose those perks, well, you know. . ."

And that was the end of the discussion. No owner was willing to reveal the name of a man at the distributor, at the dealership, or at the factory who had uttered these intimidating persuasions. So we asked Ferrari North America whether it had recommended that its customers not lend us an F50. Replied spokesman Letta: "It is true that we didn't want a customer's car to be tested, because you never know what condition it is in, or how it has been maintained. But Ferrari North America never threatened a customer."

We then asked Letta if any magazine had measured the performance of an F50. "No," he replied. When asked if he knew why, he again said no but added: "I'm aware that [C/D] con­tacted some customers who agreed to test. But [those customers] backed out when they heard someone else would drive their car." In point of fact, however, C/D offered each customer the chance to drive his own F50 during the test.

In one instance, Letta referred by name to a Midwest customer who, he said, "backed out because he wanted to drive his own car." This is an odd statement, for two reasons. First, it was that customer's dealer who called C/D and with­drew the car from the test. Second, that partic­ular customer, back in 1991, happily handed us his F40 to test under identical conditions.

And so, 13 months and 11 American F50 lessees came and went, and the paperwork in our F50 file began to resemble something akin to a Warren Commission report.

Still, if there did exist some Oliver Stone—style conspiracy to keep us from measuring an F50, no one had explained its purpose. The lone theory ever posited, at least for publication, came from a dealer who would only speak anonymously. "Understand that Ferrari, the company, has a big ego," he said. "And the F50 probably isn't as fast as the F40. I'm sure it would prefer this go unsaid."

Fast-forward to late summer 1996, and we're wandering the paddock at an IMSA race. That's where we stumbled across a 45-year-old investment analyst and heavy-duty trader of corpo­rate stocks, bonds, and possibly small countries. His name is Andy Evans, a crony of Bill Gates's. He lives on a private island near Victoria, British Columbia, and using either his three-engine, ten-passenger Falcon DA-50 or his Lear, he daily flies to his office in Mill Creek, Washington, or in Indianapolis.

Through Team Scandia, one of a dozen companies he owns, Andy Evans fields an unprecedented number of racing cars. Last year, for instance, Evans ran a CART Indy car alternately for Eliseo Salazar and Michel Jourdain Jr. He entered seven IRL cars at the Indy 500 and six at the Las Vegas event—giving rides to the likes of Alessandro Zampedri and Michele Alboreto. He ran one and sometimes two IMSA Ferraris—magnificent, open-cockpit WSC 333SPs—for drivers Fermin Velez and, occasion­ally, for himself.