The impossible Ferrari is now for sale

This car should not exist. A madman in Germany took his Ferrari 458 Challenge, a racing car, and made it street legal. The process took over two years, to get it approved by TUV. Through brute force and a lot of luck, the car now has German license plates and is legal to drive on the road in Europe.

No other Ferrari 458 Challenge in the world has been converted and approved for street use. The car is a proper unicorn, that gets insane amounts of attention wherever it goes. It has been on plenty of Gran Turismo events the last years, and it completely steals the show, no matter if we are in Italy, Croatia or at Hotel de Paris in Monaco.

I have had the opportunity to drive the car an afternoon in Tuscany. The cockpit is a minimalistic racing environment, with bucket seats, six point harnesses and a roll cage. To start the car you flip three switches and then press start. The alcantara steering wheel has buttons for pit lane speed and intercom.

Getting in to the car is a small project. After a few tries, you learn the process and it becomes manageable. First your butt, then the legs.

Driving the car is pure brutality. Hard core as nothing else I have driven. The noise is deafening, not only from the hysterical racing engine, but also from the gearbox. You hear noise that you have never heard before, valves working and whining from the gears. The engine has 619 horsepower and it is no problem to rev it past 9 000 rpm. Insane.

It is loud from the outside too. We could hear it from miles away, that beautiful Ferrari howl that modern Ferraris just don’t have anymore. Starting the car in the morning, the sound was like an F1 car. Car alarms in the vicinity went off. Hotel walls trembeling. Beautiful.

The side windows are from plexiglass with a little sliding opening, just like an F40. It is a lot of fun to use the McDonals drive-through to pick up hamburgers. I did this once, out of pure curiosity.

We ended up with eight small paper bags, since only one hamburger or large french fries could fit through the ridiculous little sliding part of the window. The entire McDonald’s restaurant left their tables and surrounded the car in awe. They thought I was a racing driver, getting hamburgers for the team, just like Charles LeClerc after the F1 race on Imola a few weeks before.

The car is with me in Italy now. Plenty of spare parts are included, also a brand new gear box. It has air condition, so you will not melt away during the hot summers on the Riviera.

Ferrari officials have valued this unique car to “around one million euros”, but the seller will accept offers starting at 500 000.

For more information and to make an offer, please contact me: peter@granturismo.org.

Peter Ternström

peter@granturismo.org