"Original paint, 69 kilometres on the clock, passenger door never opened." It's the dream listing for anyone in the market for a Ferrari F40 and all three details were among those that convinced Lewis Hamilton to open his chequebook and buy his dream car.
The seven-time champion revealed last year that he had sold off the vast majority of his car collection, saying at the time he was "more into art." But he still hankered after a pristine F40 -- a car that he, along with millions of other car enthusiasts around the world, considers art in its own right.
Roughly 1,315 F40s were built between 1987 and 1992, making low-mileage examples rare in 2026. Two weeks ago, a U.S. market model (distinguishable by black plastic trim on its front bumper) sold at auction for $8.4M with just 320 miles on the clock. Although Hamilton did not disclose the price he paid, with just 69 kilometres (43 miles) on the clock, it's possible his European market car (arguably the more desirable of the two) could have been in the same ballpark.
One feature that is coveted among collectors of all variants of F40 is the original paintwork. To save weight, the car's original paint was applied so thinly over the bodywork that the weave of the Kevlar and carbonfibre underneath is visible under the right lighting. If you can't see the weave, it's likely the paint has been reapplied at some point in the car's life and the value has dropped.
Hamilton said the red paintwork of his F40 was among a number of points on his checklist when was searching for his "dream car."
"I've been looking for one for a while and I wanted one with low mileage," he said after arriving for the Italian Grand Prix's media day in the car.
"I wanted one with a story, and lots have come up in auction over the past couple of years, some with low mileage, but just not particularly special, or maybe the paint's been redone or something like that.
"I wanted to find the most authentic one and managed to come across this one that the owner had bought, drove it from Maranello to his home, 69 kilometres, and then parked it and never started it again. The passenger door had never been opened."
Hamilton initially kept the purchase quiet. The car in question hadn't moved for over 30 years and, despite resting under a cover, was coated in a film of dust.
Without so much as running a cloth over it, Hamilton ensured the F40 was transported to Maranello's "Classiche" department -- which restores and certifies Ferraris that are over 20 years old -- to restore it to as close to original condition as possible.
The Classiche workshop is a dreamlike space stacked full of a rotating selection of client-owned cars from the brand's history. The department has its own library with original drawings of every Ferrari ever built and can restore or manufacture new parts to replace those that have worn out or been damaged.
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Hamilton considered treating his F40 purely as a piece of art by keeping the 30-year dust intact, but ultimately said he couldn't resist the urge to get it up and running again.
"It just had this cover on it and all this dust," he explained. "Then the decision was kind of, 'What do you do? Do you keep it as an art piece, keep it all dusty, or do you have them clean it up?' So that took me a while to decide, and then I had them redo it because I wanted to drive it.
"Because I realised, actually, what's kind of crazy is, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure none of the Ferrari drivers in history have ever arrived in the coolest cars that they have, you know, these iconic ones, the [250] GTO or the F40. And I was like, 'It has to be done.'"
As Ferrari's expert mechanics took the car apart, they uncovered a detail that Hamilton had not seen when he first viewed the car. What they found blew his mind.
"What was also crazy is when they were taking the car apart to check it, firstly, it stood the test of time -- everything was still working," he said. "Hardly anything had to be changed.
"And when they took the engine out, they found out the engine's number 44. It's got stamped on the engine number 44 [Hamilton's race number in F1]. I couldn't believe it. I was like, 'Did you know? You've got to be lying.'
"So, it feels very much like fate. And I thought it was a real opportunity to kind of highlight the history of Ferrari in their home country, at their race, and when am I ever going to get to do that again?"
The F40 is significant in Ferrari's history as it was the last of its road cars to be commissioned and approved by founder Enzo Ferrari before his death in 1988. Original owners include F1 legends Niki Lauda, Jacky Ickx, Gerhard Burger, John Surtees and Striling Moss, while decades later Sebastian Vettel purchased a second-hand one that had originally been allocated to Luciano Pavarotti.
Hamilton's time at Maranello is already synonymous with the V8 supercar after he posed for a photo with one outside Enzo Ferrari's farmhouse on his arrival at the team at the start of 2025. He also broke the internet with a viral video earlier this year in which he drifted a Japanese-based F40 through the streets of Tokyo while Kim Kardashian screamed in the passenger seat.
Hamilton said that when he met with Ferrari's executives after the video was published, they encouraged him to create something similar in the Luce -- the brand's controversial all-new electric offering. He politely pointed out that a Luce is not an F40.
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"It's such a phenomenal experience to be in amongst this brand and to see how it transcends the sport and how it's touched people all over the world, the colour and the logo and these iconic cars," he said. "I showed one of the members high up, like, the F40 I drove in Japan, and they're like, 'Oh, maybe next year you can use a Luce,' and I was like, 'It's not the same as the F40,' you know.
"I think the nostalgic, iconic curves and lines that they used to build these cars back in the day, there's just nothing quite like it. Obviously, you've got the F80, which is pretty cool, or the F50, but this one, for me, I just remember as a kid I had all these cars lined up and the red car, the F40, was the one. But it was so far from my thoughts that I'd ever have a chance to acquire one of those."
On Thursday, Hamilton's arrival in the F40 at Monza was as meticulously planned as it was iconic. Despite temperatures of over 30°C, he stepped out of the non-air-conditioned car in a dark suit and brown overcoat -- every detail of which was curated by him. The images, much like the ones outside the Maranello farmhouse, will grace the pages of Ferrari history books for years to come.
"I think arriving at the race weekends, getting to race and wear red is one thing, but outside of the sport there's so much more to do within fashion," he said. "I love getting creative and coming up with concepts that most people don't, at least within my team.
"And the image that we had, we came up with for the first image we did at Ferrari that year, the first year, that was my concept, my creation. And it was the same this weekend. I had that idea: 'I want to turn up in this style, in this suit, in this way,' to pay homage to this sport, but also just get that moment because it's never going to come again."
If Hamilton's F40 wasn't the most valuable in the world when he bought it, it almost certainly is now.
