The more valuable something is, the more time, money, and care is spent maintaining it. Case in point: If you were the custodian of a Ferrari F40—an F40 once owned by a Formula 1 world champion nonetheless—you probably wouldn’t take it to the local coin-op car wash to get it cleaned. You’d probably take it to a place like I Am Detailing, a prestige detailing house recently tasked with cleaning, nay, completely visually restoring a 1989 F40 formerly owned by one Nigel Mansell.
Luckily for us, it documented the process on video.
The job went way, way beyond a simple wash. Much of the interior was taken apart, windows were removed, as were lights, badges, and trim pieces, all in the name of thoroughness and dirt destruction. Brakes, suspension, and chassis bits were dry ice and laser cleaned to remove surface rust, two processes that I admittedly hadn’t even heard of until now. The 24-minute “Part 1” video below ends with paint correction, but there’s still more work to be done as “Part 2” has yet to be uploaded.
And because I was curious too, a detail job like this is, naturally, anything but cheap. According to the shop’s website, I Am Detailing’s two-week “Gold” signature detailing goes for $4,550 while the “Platinum” package costs $9,950 and takes four weeks.
British racing legend Nigel Mansell won the F1 driver’s championship in 1992 in a Williams but spent the 1989 and 1990 seasons driving for Ferrari. That was when this very car was allegedly gifted to him by none other than Enzo Ferrari himself. That story alone makes this car quite a cool piece of automotive history, and that’s before you get to the magic that is the F40 itself.
Powered by a twin-turbo V8 before that became the norm, it rocked 471 horsepower, a five-speed manual, and a shape that catapulted it into icon status… eventually. For those too young enough to remember (yours truly included) the F40 didn’t exactly debut to critical acclaim when it was new. Automobile and Car magazines both compared it unfavorably to the Porsche 959. Gordon Murray, writing for Motor Trend at the time, panned it for using old technology and its generally slapdash construction. Some even saw it as a cynical cash grab, a speculator’s special—and considering how much some went for, they may have had a point.
It may not have been as technically impressive as the 959 back in its day, but history was much kinder to the F40 than ’80s car pundits were. The driving experience is legendary, and on aesthetics alone, it stands as a holy grail automobile for many enthusiasts. And a car like that deserves the best care money can buy.
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