A private seller in Chula Vista, California, has a red Ferrari F40 listed on Facebook Marketplace for $35,000, and the entire description is one line: “F40 kit car, base off Fiero v6. Automatic.” The condition box reads “Used – like new.” In January, RM Sotheby’s put an estimate of $2.8 million to $3.2 million on a genuine 1991 F40 for its Arizona sale, which puts this car’s asking price at between 1.1% and 1.25% of the real thing.
Nobody shopping at that price thinks they are buying a Ferrari. The legal question is who owns the shape, and the law answers it two different ways. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles will keep calling this car a Pontiac for as long as it’s registered. A federal appeals court, ruling on a Fiero-based Ferrari replica business 35 years ago, decided the shape belongs to Ferrari.
A Pontiac Fiero under an F40 body in Chula Vista
The seller’s photos show the F40’s low nose, slatted engine cover and full-width rear wing, parked on pavement beside a grass field and sitting on polished aftermarket wheels. Through the engine-cover louvers you can see red-painted engine parts. The open driver’s door shows tan and red seats. The listing gives no model year, mileage, builder or body maker, and no price for the kit or the build.
Ferrari’s own history page says the F40 was announced in mid-1987 to mark the company’s 40th year of building cars and was the last new car presentation Enzo Ferrari attended before he died in August 1988. Ferrari lists a 2,936cc turbocharged V8 with a claimed 478 bhp at 7,000 rpm, and production of 1,311 cars that ended in 1992. The Chula Vista car uses the V6 that Pontiac put in the Fiero and, according to the listing, an automatic transmission.
Ferrari v. Roberts: the 1991 ruling against a Fiero-based replica maker
Fiero-based Ferraris have been in federal court before. Carl Roberts, doing business as Roberts Motor Company, sold fiberglass replicas of Ferrari’s Daytona Spyder and Testarossa under the names Miami Spyder and Miami Coupe. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s opinion, the body was “usually bolted onto the undercarriage of another automobile such as a Chevrolet Corvette or a Pontiac Fiero.” Most were sold as kits for about $8,500, and a turnkey car cost about $50,000…