The Classic Car Auction Results team recently stopped by the excellent ‘Ferrari: Under the skin’ exhibit, currently showing at the London Design Museum.

For those who are yet to visit, we won’t give everything away, but sitting as the centre of attention in one of the halls is this unique 1986 Ferrari Testarossa Spider.

 

 

This is the only Testarossa to be converted to Spider configuration by Ferrari, and it was build as a gift to Fiat supremo Gianni Agnelli in 1986. Its silver colour pays homage to the Agnelli family, given how Ag represents silver on the periodic table.

A quick look at the car in person shows that this is no simple hack job – it is a carefully considered conversion by the best Ferrari engineers, and it looks completely production ready. Maybe Ferrari were considering a Testarossa Spider at one point in time?

 

 

Gianni Agnelli lived with an injured left leg as a result of a bad car accident in his younger years, which made it difficult for him to operate a clutch pedal. His Testarossa Spider is fitted with a special Valeo automatic clutch, which at the flick of a dash mounted switch bypasses the pedal and makes driving with just the right foot possible.

 

 

Testarossa values have plateaued lately, but this unique example ticks so many other collectability boxes that it defies the trends affecting the rest of the market. Artcurial sold this example at their 2016 Retromobile sale – it smashed its £600,000-800,000 estimate, bringing a whopping £1,074,000.

The Agnelli car is surely the most expensive Testarossa ever sold, but where would you ever find another?