Lewis Hamilton has lived most of his life at the center of speed, but the seven-time Formula 1 world champion has recently chosen to step away from fast cars once he leaves the track. Once the proud owner of one of the most talked-about garages in Europe, Hamilton has now confirmed that his collection is gone. “I don’t have any cars anymore… I got rid of all my cars. I’m more into art nowadays,” he admitted in an interview, a statement that surprises casual fans but fits with the way Hamilton has been reshaping his lifestyle.
The decision is striking when you consider what once sat under his roof. Reports over the years linked him with an enviable roster: a pair of LaFerraris, including the open-top Aperta, Shelby icons like a 1967 GT500 in “Eleanor” spec and a 427 Cobra, a rumored McLaren F1, and more than one Mercedes-AMG toy ranging from hypercars to the outrageous six-wheeled G63.
The jewel of the fleet was the Pagani Zonda 760 LH, a one-off commission in purple with a manual gearbox. It was Hamilton’s by name, thanks to the “LH” suffix, and he often praised its engine note, but he was also brutally honest, once calling it “the worst” handling car he ever owned. That honesty was backed up by a few headlines: in 2015 the Zonda brushed a row of parked cars in Monaco after a night of celebrations. Hamilton later said fatigue was to blame, and police confirmed alcohol was not a factor.
Those anecdotes made his garage legendary, but Hamilton never pretended he enjoyed ordinary driving. In fact, he has often said that road driving stresses him, a striking admission from someone whose office is usually a 200-mph cockpit. Seen in that light, the move to offload the collection makes more sense. He already sold his private jet years ago to reduce his carbon footprint, and a shift toward art collecting now marks another change in priorities.
Yet one car still has his imagination. “If I was going to get a car, it would be the F40. But that’s a nice piece of art,” Hamilton said, calling Ferrari’s 1980s halo model the only exception to his garage purge. Produced from 1987 to 1992 in a run of about 1,311 examples, the F40 has become a touchstone for collectors.
Just 213 were built for the U.S., and prices today rarely dip below $2 million, with rarer LM and GTE racing variants soaring far higher. Styled by Pininfarina and personally signed off by Enzo Ferrari before his death, the F40 blends raw speed with analog purity, and for Hamilton, it represents something beyond transportation.
His affection for the car has even spilled into creativity. Earlier this year, he floated the idea of an “F44,” a modern reinterpretation of the F40 complete with a manual gearbox and his racing number woven into the name. The notion dovetails with whispers from Ferrari’s own leadership, which has hinted that a manual-equipped road car is not impossible “in the future.” That is big news in Maranello, given that the last factory-built manual Ferrari was the California with an optional six-speed, discontinued in 2012.
The story of Hamilton’s garage, then, is one of contrasts. The man who once owned some of the wildest machines of the modern era now professes to have no road cars at all. The one exception he dreams about is a brutally analog icon from the late eighties, a machine that has come to be seen as a rolling sculpture. For Hamilton, calling the F40 “a nice piece of art” is less a throwaway line than a reflection of where his passions are headed: out of the garage and into a gallery, with one legendary Ferrari still hovering in between.