The Ferrari F40 was released in 1987 with a list price in the UK of £163,000, about £460,000 at today's prices. The cost included something remarkable beyond the car itself: a trip to Ferrari's factory in Maranello where buyers were personally shown how to drive their new 201mph supercar. At the time it was Ferrari's fastest, most powerful, and most expensive car for sale. Five times the price of the 288 GTO it replaced. The motoring press called it excessive. Observers accused Ferrari of cynically exploiting speculator money. Turns out they were right, just not in the way they thought.
The Last Ferrari Enzo Ever Approved
The F40 was designed to celebrate Ferrari's 40th anniversary and created as a successor to the 288 GTO. One of the most driver focused cars of its era, the F40 had no radio, carpet, or inner door panels and a windshield made of plastic. The body was constructed of a combination of Kevlar, carbon fiber, and aluminum. This wasn't luxury. This was racing hardware with number plates.
From the beginning of the project on 10 June 1986, Enzo Ferrari asked for the car to be completed in a very short space of time, eleven months, and be presented in the summer of 1987. The team worked outside normal business hours. The car was revealed on 21 July 1987 at the Civic Centre in Maranello. Enzo Ferrari died in 1988, shortly after the F40 project, making this the last Ferrari he would ever commission. That provenance alone drove value in ways nobody predicted.
The Speculation Bubble
When the F40 was unveiled in 1987 it received mixed reactions. Observers considered it a cynical attempt to cash in on speculators' money after seeing how much was paid for used 288 GTOs and for the Porsche 959. Speculators were expecting Enzo Ferrari's death and to benefit from raising prices. The cynicism was warranted. It was estimated in 1990 that only 10 percent of the delivered F40s were used for driving. Speculators sold the cars with ever rising prices, up to over seven times the list price in 1989 before the bubble burst.
One F40 that belonged to Formula One driver Nigel Mansell was sold for £1 million in 1990, a record that stood into the 2010s. Seven times list price in three years. Then the bubble popped. Values crashed. By 2000, F40s traded as low as £225,000, below the inflation adjusted original price. The speculators who bought at peak in 1989 lost fortunes. The buyers who waited acquired arguably the greatest Ferrari road car ever made for less than it cost new, adjusted for inflation.
The Comeback
The recovery took time. Through the 2000s, values climbed slowly. From 2013 to 2019 there were 20 F40s sold at public auction in Europe, 25 in the US and six in the UK. European prices rose steadily from around €500,000 in 2014 through to a high point in 2017 when values would consistently reach over €1m. Then another pause. Values peaked in late 2017 with all 2018 and 2019 public sales failing to reach this benchmark figure.
But the long term trend is unmistakable. In average condition, a Ferrari F40 is worth £1,964,063. The most expensive Ferrari F40 to sell in history publicly sold for £3,243,140. £750,000 should be enough to find a more original example. With minimum mileage and the right history, an F40 could potentially fetch over £1 million to the right buyer. The bubble speculators were right. They were just 35 years early.
Why It Worked
Ferrari initially planned to produce only 400 F40s, but demand was so high that they ended up making over 1,300. That production number, controversial at launch, actually saved the car's investment potential. It's actually brilliant news for potential buyers that they made so many, otherwise an F40 would be valued in the millions by now. Wait, they are valued in the millions. Poor phrasing aside, the logic holds. Limited but not unobtainable. Rare enough to be special, common enough that examples trade regularly.
The specification matters too. The F40 was powered by a twin turbocharged 2.9 litre V8 longitudinally mounted in the middle rear section, driving power to the rear via a five speed manual gearbox. The vehicle produced 471hp, launching from 0-62mph in just 4.7 seconds. That's slower than modern hot hatchbacks. Nobody cares. The F40 isn't valuable because of its performance figures. It's valuable because of what it represents.
An F40 is one of the most aggressively beautiful supercars ever built, and today's draconian legislation means there will never be another Ferrari like it ever again. No emissions equipment. No hybrid systems. No driver aids beyond ABS. Just turbocharged violence wrapped in Kevlar and carbon fiber, approved by Enzo Ferrari months before he died. You can't recreate that combination. The moment passed. The cars that exist are all that ever will exist.
The Investment Math
Buy an F40 in 1987 for £163,000. Hold it for 38 years. Sell it today for £3,000,000. That's £2,837,000 gross profit or 1,741 percent appreciation. Inflation adjusted, the original £163,000 equals roughly £460,000 in 2025 pounds. You've still made £2.54 million in real terms. That's a 552 percent real return, beating essentially every traditional investment over the same period.
The S&P 500 returned roughly 2,700 percent from 1987 to 2025 including dividends. The F40 matched it without dividends, maintenance costs aside. Property? London house prices rose about 800 percent over the same period. Gold? Roughly 500 percent. The F40 sits in the middle, except you can't drive a stock certificate or sleep in a bar of gold.
The Uncomfortable Truth
The F40 delivers one of the rawest driving experiences of any recent roadgoing Ferrari and on a long trip can soon become a complete pain in the backside. They're noisy and completely impractical, there's no real boot to speak of unless you jettison the spare wheel under the front hood, they're impossible to park, LHD only and the easiest car in the world to hit a kerb with. You made £2.8 million on a car that's borderline unusable on public roads.
That's the secret though. Nobody bought F40s to drive them. Only 10 percent were used for driving in 1990. The pattern continued. These cars sit in climate controlled garages appreciating while owners stare at them and occasionally fire up the V8 to keep things lubricated. The ones that were actually driven? They're worth less, proportionally, but they've provided experiences the garage queens never delivered. Pick your priority accordingly.
A total of 1,315 were produced, which is more than three times the numbers of the F50 and Enzo that would follow it, with approximately 78 being registered in the UK. Seventy eight UK cars from 1,315 total production. Most are left hand drive, most live elsewhere, most rarely trade hands. If you want one today, expect to pay £2 to £3 million for a decent example. If you wanted one in 1987, you paid £163,000 and got a factory tour.
The buyers who held from 1987 to 2025 made 1,741 percent returns. The ones who held through the 1989 bubble and 2000 crash made even more if they bought at the bottom. The speculators who flipped cars for seven times list price in 1989 made quick fortunes then watched values crater. And somewhere in a Maranello museum sits the original F40, priceless not for what it's worth but for what it represents. Enzo Ferrari's final road car. The last of an era. The investment nobody knew they were making when all they wanted was a 201mph widow maker with no radio and plastic windows.