Buy a Ferrari like the one driven by the Sultan of Brunei. It ain't cheap

A video featuring a very blond blonde and a very red Ferrari? That’s certainly one way to attract some attention.

We don’t have the skinny on the lady, but the Testarossa Spider is straight out of the annals of wretched excess. It goes on the auction block in London next Saturday with opening bids at $1.6 million. The video is a teaser tweet for the event.

According to documentation offered by the auction house of RM Sotheby’s, this 1990 stunner, a “Special Production” Pininfarina-engineered convertible, was part of a custom lot of Ferraris commissioned by a high-roller in the Brunei royalty household. In 2021, when, according to Sotheby’s, it was “revived from its life-long state of static display,” the car was shuttled to two factories in Italy for “restoration.” The cost was 94,300 Euros to repair the top’s latch and repaint the machine. Another 83,170 Euros was budgeted to fiddle with a new clutch and “refresh” the interior. Lay those numbers on your local garage.

It’s believed, the press release goes on to say, that, in the end, Pininfarina made seven almost identical but ultimately unique “Spider” adaptations, “each finished in a different exterior and interior color combination.” And, in addition to these Brunei cars, a very small number of Testarossa Spiders, like the one to go on auction, were built for important clients, including the current consignor, who ordered his (or hers) in 1989. There are a reported 413 kilometers on the clock.

But wait: apparently maestro Pininfarina — perhaps in the throes of an eccentric mood — rebelled back in the Eighties against the convention of assigning just a common 17-digit vehicle identification numbers to his creations, and so identified the car described above with the VIN of “EFG092.” Go figure.