Buying and owning a Ferrari F40 is no easy feat. Aside from the eye-watering price tags, the F40 requires knowledgeable mechanics to keep it going. As a result, many owners pick one specific mechanic to keep their supercar fleet in tip-top shape. However, when you accidentally trust a shady mechanic, you may just get your rare car stolen. This is exactly what happened to one F40 owner, as John Temerian tells it on the Curated TV Youtube channel.

How do you steal a Ferrari F40?

This stolen Ferrari F40 story told by John Temerian begins with a notable unnamed collector based in the United States. This collector reportedly purchased a crashed F40 to convert it into a street-legal LM variant. This is particularly important as all legitimate LM cars are not street legal. Given the immense size of this collector’s car collection, he reportedly hired a single full-time mechanic to keep all of his various cars running well. Additionally, this mechanic was the person that brought up the idea of converting the crashed supercar into an LM.

As John tells it, this Ferrari F40 mechanic was from Italy and had plenty of experience working with Italian supercars. However, as the LM build got underway, the collector decided he wanted to sell the vehicle and asked for John’s help to get it sold. When John contacted the mechanic, he reportedly didn’t get a quick response regarding the car’s status.

This is when the story takes a shady twist. That is because John reports that this mechanic forged the owner’s signature and had the Ferrari F40 illegally shipped to Italy, effectively stealing it.

Why would you send a stolen car to Italy?

As you may imagine, hiding a stolen Ferrari F40 isn’t exactly a walk in the park. As a result, John managed to track the car down and set up a fake meeting to buy the car. However, before this meeting can occur, the F40 was reportedly sold and exported to the UK. Aside from making it difficult to track down the car, it had now been exported illegally twice, making the legal paperwork a total nightmare. As a result, John hired a private investigator to keep tabs on the car.

Fortunately for John, the F40 reportedly went to a very well known Ferrari dealer in the UK. Upon hearing this, John set about gathering the necessary paperwork to recover the stolen F40. After gathering paperwork for six months, John and the investigator went to the dealership to recover the car.

If you thought this Ferrari F40 had a happy ending, you’d be wrong. This is because the British authorities reportedly blocked the recovery of the car. According to John, the new buyer was a UK citizen who allowed them to retain ownership of the car, despite it being clearly stolen. As you can imagine, this went to the UK courts to try and settle the matter. Unfortunately, during that time, the car sold once again.

Where is the car now?

In the end, John reports that the rightful Ferrari F40 was awarded less than half of the value of the car by the UK courts. While this may seem like a small win, we have to remember that this collector financed an international search operation. Additionally, the owner already had invested over $200,000 to complete the LM conversion.

In a surprising twist, John reports having seen the car after the fact many times. This is because the F40 LM still has a normal F40 VIN. As a result, the stolen F40 lives somewhere in Europe, thanks to a shady mechanic that took advantage of a car collector.