For car enthusiasts of a certain age, there’s an image of Michael Jordan stepping out of his black Ferrari 512 TR with the iconic M-Air-J registration plate that’ll be seared into their memory. It’s the same image that drove John Temerian, co-founder of vintage supercar specialist We Are Curated, to add Jordan’s Testarossa to his wish list of cars and chase it down for nearly 10 years. After several false leads, the Curated team finally got lucky and convinced the third owner of the car to sell it to them, thus completing a long-standing dream — to own Michael Jordan’s Ferrari.
As we know, Michael Jordan is a huge car enthusiast. Jordan purchased the Ferrari 512 TR, with chassis number 091341, brand new in 1992 for about $212,000. The black Ferrari with the M-Air-J plates became as much a part of the Air Jordan legend as the man himself, with Jordan seen regularly driving it to team practices. In no small measure, Jordan helped sales of the Testarossa, driving up the desirability of a model only produced for two short years.
The car was later sold to another legend, Chris Gardner, whose story has inspired another Hollywood instant-classic, The Pursuit of Happyness. The sequence from the film that shows Gardner being inspired by a man driving a Ferrari is based on true events. In real life, Gardner purchased Jordan’s Ferrari as a tribute to the dream that helped him reach his success. It’s reported that Gardner had the car’s plates changed to “Not MJ”.
The black Testarossa’s story doesn’t end there. The car disappeared from the public eye altogether, only to pop up at auction, where it sold for around $100,000. The car had last been registered in 2010, and the buyer remained a mystery. In the search for the car, the Curated team came up against dead ends, cold trails, and even a fake lead. As Temerian relates, the team chased a car they believed to be Jordan’s for eight months before the seller finally gave them all the details, including the VIN, which finally revealed it was not the car they were looking for.
Against all odds, the Curated team managed to track down the car through a series of phone calls, convincing the owner to let them come see the car in California. The third owner of Jordan’s Ferrari had only enjoyed the car for nine months before he was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, forcing him to leave it parked for the better part of 15 years as he fought for his life. The owner’s home was spared in the recent California fires, one of just a handful of properties that made it out unscathed, with Jordan’s Ferrari miraculously untouched. The Curated team was then able to convince the owner to sell it to them, and transport the Ferrari away as it hadn’t been driven in years.
Michael Jordan’s Ferrari 512 TR has finally made it back to the best possible home it could find, in the care of John Temerian and a friend. The Curated team has promised the previous owner a drive in the car once it’s been restored to its former glory. We hope to see Jordan reunited with the car at some point, if only briefly, just to relive the magic of the greatest basketball player ever… and the greatest celebrity Ferrari ever. Dare we say, it’ll do wonders for the Ferrari’s resale value too, that is if Curated ever decides to part ways with it.
