If you think the images of a Japanese guy camping out by a riverside in a Ferrari F40 look AI-generated, think again. These images are from way back in 2014, back when AI was still something most people had heard of in movies. The owner, Takeshi Kimura, a Japanese car collector and gentleman race driver, is something of a legend on the internet for just how well used his Ferrari F40 is. Considering Ferrari only ever made 1,311 units of the F40, and they’re worth over $3 million today, it does boggle the mind that anyone would put such a priceless supercar in such sticky situations.
Kimura first went viral for being the guy camping in his Ferrari F40. The grainy images showed Kimura’s F40 parked off the road, by the side of a river with camping equipment strapped to its roof. Kimura even went so far as to cook eggs on the hot exhaust of the F40. The F40’s twin-turbo 2.9-liter V8 was Ferrari’s first turbo production supercar, with the hot exhaust gases usually being force fed back to the engine and used to make more power, but in this case, they were used to make breakfast. In case you were wondering, the F40’s nose lift was used liberally to make sure the car didn’t get stuck.
Takeshi Kimura didn’t stop there, though. The next year he was part of an elaborate shoot for Red Bull, which saw the same Ferrari F40 with Kimura’s signature 777 registration drifting up Japan’s snowy slopes. Fitted with yellow rally lights that made the F40 look immeasurably cooler, the snow drifting F40 is the stuff of legend. With a car collection that reportedly includes a number of Ferraris, Porsches and McLarens, Takeshi Kimura is one Ferrari F40-owner that the others should emulate.
