Our F40
The Ferrari F40 was the last project personally overseen by Enzo Ferrari, giving it a unique place in the company’s history.
Developed from the 288 GTO, the F40 retained its longitudinal twin-turbo V8 and rear-mounted gearbox but introduced carbon-Kevlar composite bodywork over a steel chassis. Originally Ferrari planned a limited production run of just 400 units, however demand pushed total production to over 1,300 cars. Early non-catalyst, fixed-suspension examples remain the most sought after, as many regard them as the closest expression of how Enzo Ferrari intended the F40 to be.
Our F40 is such an early non-catalyst, non adjustable suspension example. As all other F40, the car is painted in Rosso Corsa and feature seats in Rosso textile..
Carbon-Kevlar
The body of the Ferrari F40 is made of a hybrid composite called Carbon-Kevlar. At the time it was revolutionary as it came directly from aerospace and motorsport, where these materials were used for their extreme strength-to-weight ratio and impact resistance. Ferrari applied it to a road car at a scale that had not been seen before.
Unlike the fibreglass bodywork used on most performance cars of the period, Carbon-Kevlar combined woven carbon fibre with Kevlar to create panels that were both lighter and far more resistant to cracking and tearing.
Lexan windows
The Lexan side windows are one of the clearest tells of an early F40. While it is often claimed that only the first 50 cars received them, in reality they were fitted to a much larger portion of the earliest production. They were later dropped simply because they proved highly impractical.
What makes them special from a collector perspective what they reveal inside the door. Instead of a Kevlar-covered winder mechanism, the door is left as a bare lightweight composite surface, just like Ferrari’s racing prototypes of the period.
NACA ducts
Carbon-Kevlar was not the only aerospace idea on the F40. The car also uses NACA ducts, a design developed by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics for aircraft. Unlike simple scoops, NACA ducts pull air into the body with minimal drag and without disturbing the airflow across the surface.
On the F40 they are used to feed cooling air to the engine bay and intercoolers efficiently, allowing Ferrari to keep the bodywork clean and aerodynamic while still managing the heat of the twin-turbo V8.
