Ferrari F40 Part 2 - Unveiling the Secrets: Ferrari Expert Tony Willis | Tyrrell's Classic Workshop

hello and welcome to another tyrrell's classic Workshop this time Ram we're looking at part two of the Ferrari F40 restoration I always Muse on um the fact that I think things are incredibly nerdy and people won't find them that interesting and yet the responses are always more more so um this time round I'm talking to um a friend who I've known for some years I would like to call him a friend but also I'm going to stick my neck out and say one of the world's leading classic Ferrari experts and it was his job for some years to do the Ferrari classic certification in the UK on behalf of the Ferrari factory in Italy on cars oh I I dread to think how many hundreds of millions of pounds worth of cars he's certified probably into the billions but he's uh honored us with a visit to do some detailed checking of this F40 to make sure that we're we're doing the best job we can for our customer that I make no apologies for the fact that this video is him talking us around a Ferrari F40 and what to look for and what not to look for but before we do that um I've just got something else I'd like to share before we do speak to Tony I'd like to ask for your help this channel allows me to share my passion and to give you content that you won't find anywhere else I want you to know that I greatly appreciate you taking the time and I hope you enjoy every one of the videos that that we make here producing these videos takes a lot of elements um meeting and being brought into play uh the actual getting the cars in and being allowed to use them in the videos and make filming editing Logistics setting the time apart in the workshop schedule all these things are in play I'm proud of what we've achieved so far and I'd like to ask for a small favor in return if you enjoyed this video please consider pressing the like button and leaving a comment not only does it help me understand what content you enjoy most it also lets me know that you appreciate the hard work we put into creating these videos your support means the world and it motivates me to continue creating more content that you'll love so if you could take a moment to click that like button I'd be very grateful and now on to Tony well Tony thank you very much for coming it's a pleasure to see you as always yes I think it's probably worth uh delving into I'm not I know you won't be comfortable with this but it's probably worth re-delving into a bit of your history because you have a a fascinatingly unique um uh what's angle on Ferraris I suppose you could say so and some kind of can I just ask you a couple of questions you can indeed yes um when did you how did when did you first start getting involved with Ferraris in particular uh well I started in 1975 um we were BMW dealers in the Midlands in Leicester I work for BMW in Park Lane I was a sales manager there and they bought a business in Leicester apart from BMW it had Aston Martin Lamborghini Ford Mazda policy fit we had lots of franchises but we had no cars and really we had to rationalize the business and at that time Ferrari dealers were either 6v6 Dino dealers or you could be a complete Dean dealer and sell V12 cars well setner of Nottingham uh Frank sitner was the dino dealer at the time he didn't want to sell 12 cylinders we couldn't get any Aston Martins the last car that we sold was the four-door Lagonda off the motor show stand for Aston Martin but it took ages to come through and we thought well we can't carry on with this so we approached Ferrari who were looking for a full representation as the new 308 GT4 dinos were coming through along with the boxer and of course the 365 GT4 two plus two and then we took out we became official Ferrari dealers in 1976 right okay and what was the name of that that was initially it was Lazenby garages and then we changed the name to Cooper cars Leicester the Cooper name for BMW came about because the founder of the owner of the Cooper racing car company was Jonathan sief and we had this name on the Shelf we wanted to change the names because we had four other BMW dealerships and they all became a Cooper company Cooper partly in Cooper tensed it and so gosh um so you you hit the ground running with Ferraris well we didn't really yes it was the end of the 246 and we had this wedge 308 GT4 which was not the easiest car to sell boxes again were not the easiest cars it was not as it is today selling Ferrari they didn't just uh people didn't just come in and surrender you had to sell them and convince them that they wanted to buy a Ferrari but yes we had good success we were the biggest dealer outside of London within two years and we had a really enjoyable time here we are located on an Airfield we're getting good value here that sounds like an Islander to me with the supersonic prop tip prop tips taking off that's easy for me to say never a supersonic prop tip around when you need one um okay so um so you've a new managed to retain the production records did you not really well I did yes laterally of course I would in 93 um I went to Marinello concession Ed and ran Marinello sales uh up until 2004 with concessionaires when the factory took over well at the time um the records really had been saved by Mark Koenig who was my predecessor and sales director of concessionaires and Paul baber and they were kept in boxes either in the tower at Tower Garage again or in the body shop and eventually I managed to get them all together and my office was the Colonel's old board room so we had plenty of space in there to relocate the files and file them properly which my son helped because he had three months off because he had a crucial ligament operation and so he put all the labels on the files and filed them under chassis number order the unfortunate thing is that the 308 GT4 files had been lost destroyed or so we haven't got any 308 G2 before we've got all the production information all the original orders all the stock books but not the paper files but in 2004 I was doing the Enzo project through going to Italy with clients and or to have seat fittings or to deliver cars and I came back one day and jokingly said to somebody it was a bit late now to change the Cradle windows for double glazing we're closing down in a month and they said well the windows are coming out because everything in here is going in the shredder and I thought well this can't happen with the records they're a significant part of Ferrari history for the UK uh and and other territory well yes we looked after Marinello concessionaires were responsible for all right hand driving although we don't have all of the records for Australian or Hong Kong delivered cars um anyway the uh they gave me a letter passing possession to me I they gave me 24 hours to clear so they've let me the parts there and I phoned my wife and a couple of friends and we cleared everything out and we took it down to Brooklyn's where we stored it a friend of mine's unit there so yes that's how I came about but over the last one nearly 20 years I've been buying photographs magazines anything to do with right hand drive Marinello concessionaires I've been buying to add to the archive right and I mean in fact the archive is formidable isn't it well we have um yes the really interesting files are the early cars where of course everything was done with a type letter or a Telex and the communication between pin and Farina say who were building bodies for this about 250 gtes or uh it's just the special orders special requirements you know nicely signed by pinning foreign and it's a service we offer to authors who uh come and go through the files that give them more information for their looks which brings us very nicely via Keith Blue mail your friends amazing book on the F40 yep to the car here um we've got the honor of restoring this car and I've done part one which was sort of an initial overview and you've sort of come to have a a look and because you're um Tony is being very modest actually his uh his knowledge uh as well as his databases I would say exceptional really um so you've come to help us with this F40 keep it keeps in check we've come to have a look just to uh that the owner is known to us and we just want to make sure it's such a good original example but they're 30 years old now you never see an F40 with a paint chip on it or anything like that so they've all had plenty of paint and we're trying to recreate how did it come out of the factory well when they came out of the factory they had plenty of overspray whiskers on them or even things like this which most of the cars were corrected over the period because people couldn't live with that so it's good to see an original car but it has heads and paint yes and there's some sinkage that's where the foam underneath has degraded so hopefully we can or you can put put that right yes Ryan's we're obviously part of your visit is to just to keep us on the straight and narrow and sort of make sure that we're doing the best job we possibly can for the customer but things like as you write these same in things like there's some bubbles in this area here where it's effectively delaminating basically yeah um and we can attend to that okay so we'll start with the front let's just a Shifty under here there we are we have actually um just recently done the front suspension um that was and we've left the original stenciling on which is obviously Market it's Market different isn't it yes so you have different stencil for the uh European cars or the American Market this one has still got the stencils on very faintly which shows its originality this is nice original the many car that's had an incident and had this replaced a very very shiny and it's very difficult for them to actually get the chassis number appearing in the center of the cutout um everything else with the markings on the clam here and it's nicely faded there's bits of overspray in here which I know the car has had paint originally but paint did come into the underside through the vents body number located under here which obviously you would have to check on the door hinges and on the rear wing yes and the rear under balance where the fog lamp is to make sure the body numbers all match but it looks a very very original car to me yeah and you were commenting on this and the reason why this this number isn't always smack bang in the middle like that is obviously if the cars had a knock the chassis moves well that's part of the chassis and it's not straightened effectively bang on is it World underwater I think there's probably more to do with the with this new uh panel in here where they just can't get it to sit straight okay and you can see the nice green bonding in here any car that's had a new piece this bonding or this green here becomes a much much brighter green which is a good giveaway for the fact that it's not original okay and the same follows through in the cop bit where the green is shown yes and this is um it's an original Sigler windscreen yeah although it's a replacement windscreen if you look across a windscreen you can see there's absolutely no marks in that at all and at 22 000 kilometers for this car you'd expect some that's the Americans call it Road Rash yes absolutely or even at the odd screw up from them exactly yes yeah yeah okay so should we have a look around the uh around the the business end of things yes okay never ceases to amaze me how heavy these are well yes many years ago I could do it on my own but there we go okay for safety stake we always recommend putting a much more solid prop in there as opposed to the one that bends in the middle I have seen them where they've just collapsed so it's always wise to put a big I'm not yes that is all right yeah just double checking yeah yeah um as you can see it's just a very very original car a lot of cars have had subframes painted but this is just very very clean nice wear on these and if you're going to do anything to it it just needs a good good detailing as opposed to that cosmetic paint work really yeah these are original yeah being in an early car a non-cat car original exhaust system which is nicely patinated okay you can clean the tips up here but which is all very yeah yeah yeah um we are we're very much towards a sympathetic end of the scale with this because it's one thing that we've determined is that um we're pretty sure we're gonna have to take the paint off it because it's quite thick the painting yes it is yeah yeah um but uh I mean it's lovely because it's such a great canvas to work from that the wheel alignment was drastically out on the back wheels um and uh you said they did a factory modification there was a factory recall on the suspension forks uh bolts and washers so if someone has put that back up and not tracked the car then just needs to be double checked it is actually okay uh I mean I can't imagine with that width of Tire if the geometry is that far out I can only imagine how Twitchy this would be if you started driving it in Anger yeah and you can tell this is a good original rear clam where all the paints come off around the window uh even on cars that have done lower mileage that painters tended to flake off with the heat and there are two schools of thought whether you put the paint back on or leave it I'd be inclined to leave it that is for originality's sake as opposed to cosmetic's sake if you're going to enter the car into a Concord to get a hundred points then you probably well you would have to do that but in my opinion I think it's best left as it is so that the client can see exactly what he's got if he comes to sell it then the new owner can make the decision whether he does that but I think the originality today counts for all there are a lot of f40s out there that have seen incidents and this is a car that I think is a very very honest good car yeah it was it was a wise purchase I think so yeah the mileage you know 22 000 kilometers which is what 13 000 miles is good mileage you could use it without losing value um so yes I think it's a good car but like most f40s they have had paint and when they've had substantial paint in terms of paint thickness you lose the weave effect it and weave seems to be the most important thing that people are looking for I notice and obviously you know we love Ferrari so this is not a criticism we love Ferrari's passionately but you know bits like this red Hoover spray here World overspray was standard on the car uh the paint used to come in through the Ducks here and when they were new and people took delivery off them not everybody was happy seeing overspray on the car or whiskers like this coming off the carbon so they were tidied up and cleaned up very rough Edge but you know it's a very agricultural built car it's very very basic car effectively a racing car for the road racing cars had a very thin coat of paint and they didn't bother about things like this and this remember it was very early technology regarding the body construction as well if you look at today's modern carbon fiber it is beautifully done and so there's no marks on them you know with 30 years down the road and this is how it all started yes yeah yeah but it really is quite quite raggy oh that's lovely yes but I'd rather have that than something that's brand new yeah that's that's what this car is all about yes and we would unlike I mean you see so many of them where that's got rid of for example yeah you know we wouldn't dream of touching that it's part of the as you say it's it's like it's like watching it's like anything isn't it people try and make things that that were in the 20th century conformed of the 21st century well exactly if you look at a a Ferrari race car of the 50s I mean they were very very basic flashover with paint today the paint finish on them is impeccable nobody restores cars the way that they originally came out the single seaters and things they're all over embellished and shiny and uh that's what people like but to me I'd rather see it in its rare raw format yes yeah yeah well I mean that's I'm very glad to hear you say that because that was that was how I presented the job to the customer so it's very reassuring to uh to know I mean you were obviously involved in selling these cars new well no actually I wouldn't because I didn't go back to Marinello until 1993 and although the company I was working for bought Marinello concessionaires in 1987 and I was due to go from uh running the BMW dealership uh to Marinello to run to our garage but they couldn't get anybody to go to Leicester and in the mid 80s but Leicester was a hundred and whatever miles from London and it was like another country and you just couldn't get anybody to go there so I stayed there until Frank sitner bought the business who Frank Futures twice in my Ferrari life once when we took the franchise on and the second time when he bought Leicester and I didn't go with the company and I went to Marinello then which was an inch cake company who owned the Cooper group for BMW right but okay I stand corrected but nevertheless you've been involved yes when the cars were one two years old then and bear in mind that a UK car was what 190 192 000 at the end and they depreciated to a level of about one two five to one three five in ninety four we were just coming out of recession then um and in 94 Ferrari's big salvation was the 355 range which gave us a car that put Ferrari dealers and Marinella concessionaires back into profit in 1993 uh Ferrari only sold 136 cars in the UK compared to 1989 1990 when they were selling 350 plus and in 1994 we sold over 400 so the market came right back again with the 355 f40s within used cars but they started to gain value after that but uh certainly at the time if you bought one for around the 1125 Mark today a car like this you'd be looking at quite significant appreciation to say the least um well I I uh I mean there's so much of this car that is lovely the dashboard is all in good condition it's all original with the nice gray flannel on there yeah um yes and the seats which I notice you have up there yes so um that yeah and again we have to be extremely careful how we try and clean those yeah yeah um but um well Tony thank you very much for coming up all this way it's much appreciated well it's always good to come here around because although my uh main interest is with Ferrari there are other cars in my life and uh looking at Lamborghinis Aston Martins and uh it's always a pleasure so I love going to places like this where there are so many good cars and uh interesting and enthusiastic people looking after them that's well from you that's uh I'll take that thank you thanks very much indeed fine well that concludes another tyrrell's classic Workshop video I hope you've enjoyed it and please do um please do like uh it's not often ask you to do that as I mentioned earlier and we'll be back with something else very soon

Channel: Tyrrell's Classic Workshop

Views: 186,869

Keywords: Iain Tyrrell, Tyrrell's Classic Workshop, Classic Car Expert, Classic Car Restoration, Classic Car Insights, Classic Cars Cheshire, Ferrari F40, Ferrari restoration, Ferrari

Id: dJtSO0GyUjo

Length: 24min 6sec (1446 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2023