A rather Specialised F50

REGARDING your cover story in Octane 265 about the Ferrari F50, in the 1990s I worked for a Ferrari garage (Specialised Cars of Knutsford) that race-prepared an F50 for the Maranello Ferrari Challenge.

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It is believed to be the only F50 that ever raced and, when I was running the team at Donington during the 1999 season, I was asked by Eurosport if I would do an interview about it.

The reason they wanted to speak to me was because two weeks earlier at Monza they had interviewed Luca di Montezemolo, who had stated that no F50 would race - hence their surprise in seeing our car. Driven by owner Ian Hetherington, it beat several F40s to win the Challenge in 2000. It was eventually sold in America by broker Michael Sheehan, still wearing its race livery.

I completely agree with the comments about the F50's power delivery: I drove it on the road from our garage to Ian Hetherington's home and it was very tractable. The F40's power delivery, as you say, was much more fierce. I remember two occasions when I delivered F40s to experienced club racers and in both cases the drivers crashed on the road a day later, and I had to collect the cars for repair.

Bernard Whelan, Cheshire

In December 2023, duPont Registry offered the F50, chassis 103496, for sale. The advertisement stated that the car had passed to Preston Henn in Florida in 2000, where it was repainted in Fly Yellow, and was then restored in the early 2020s at a cost of over $770,000 to original specification, below.

Exceptional XJ6

I am so glad that Robert Coucher enthused about the early Jaguar XJ6 in Octane 266 [below].

I had one, also a 1970 example in silver with a red interior but an automatic. I paid £900 for it in 1985 and used it every day for work and for towing my HWM Jaguar, 'HWM 1', up and down to Silverstone. Its only crime was a prodigious thirst - I could never get more than 16mpg.