There's a secret free Ferrari museum in Central London — here's what's in it
Lots of red, for starters...
Just a few weeks ago Ferrari opened a flagship store in Central London. But at first glance, the place may not have all that much for the petrolhead Ferrari fan.
It is predominantly a fashion store, Ferrari’s first in the UK. From it you can buy £6,000-plus women’s leather coats, or £750 sweatshirts.
The construction of this space, at 45 Old Bond Street, is absolutely mad — more on that later — but if the whole concept sounds like a turn off, you just need to head down to the lower ground floor.
Behind a massive leather curtain, made using the same leather seen in Ferrari cockpits, lives a mini Ferrari museum. But in this museum you can buy all the exhibits. We are in Old Bond Street, not South Kensington, after all.
The concept of this area of the Ferrari Store is it’s the brand’s Collectables Collection. But because this is Ferrari, most of these are actual fragments of automotive history.
You’ve have to be quick to see it before it’s shipped off to the buyer — we were told it was heading out within days — but one wall was taken up by the shoes and suit worn by Sebastian Vettel during his final season with Ferrari in 2020.
It’s not a replica. It’s the real thing.
We weren’t told quite how much the suit cost in the end, but we’re undoubtedly talking about some factor of fortune here. There are other pieces of automotive art you can pick up at slightly more palatable prices, though.
Along the rear wall of the Ferrari Store’s collectibles exhibit are pieces of actual historically important Ferrari cars. For example, you can pick up a conrod from a 2003 F1 series car for £1,850, or an engine valve from a 2000 season F1 car for £950.
These are all parts from real F1 cars, broken down into their constituent parts like pieces of the Holy Grail — except real.
They are arranged like beautiful museum pieces, which they could very well be. But the best bit is they haven’t been polished and ground down to look new. You can see the use they’ve had on their surface, like automotive laughter lines. And it’s kinda fascinating to see, even if you don’t have the knowledge to point out exactly where inside a car each of these bits would go.
Ferrari’s Colleactables collection goes far further too. When we visited, there were two F1 crankshafts on show, which when separated from their fellow components look like something that could actually be dropped right into the Tate Modern as a sculptural exhibit.
No price tags on these but, well, they’re not going to be cheap are they? For the richest and most obsessed of Ferrari fans, you can even pick up an entire motor, as a “collectable” the Ferrari rep told us would likely end up between some car collectors’ various actual, complete Ferrari cars.
And for the rest of us? Ferrari also offers some absolutely amazing scale model recreations of classic Ferrari cars. But before you get too excited, these are also not remotely cheap.
They start at £13,500, rising a good chunk higher for the limited run designs. During our visit cars on display included the Ferrari 499P and Ferrari 12Clinindri Spider, once again arranged like museum exhibits in acrylic cases.
These aren’t actually Ferrari models. They are 1:8 scale replicas made by Amalgam Collection, whose works we’ve written about before.
The aim is always for the greatest possible fidelity, the claim being they are “almost impossible to discern from a real car in photographs.”
You can browse through these cars online. Amalgam Collection has, somehow, made hundreds of them in 1:8 scale alone. However, actually getting to see these models in person is a rarity — Mr Porter also lists them, but is an online-only retailer, while Amalgam Collection is based in Bristol and does not have an actual showroom.
They are fantastically detailed not-that-little works of art in their own right.
Ferrari’s fashion store probably isn’t hoping to attract petrolhead model obsessives, but that crowd really should take note.
The Ferrari fashion store is also notable — some might even say deranged — in its commitment to bringing about that Ferrari sense of luxury and attention to detail. Across the three floors are giant curtains made using the same leather used to upholster Ferrari interiors. As are the leather-handrails that adorn the massive single-piece stair cases so large the front of the shop had to be removed to fit them in, closing off nearby Piccadilly in the process.
By the entrance, the shiny red mannequins have been sprayed using the same process used to paint Ferrari cars — which we are informed was a bit of a nightmare.
Even the metallic decoration of the Ferrari fashion store’s walls is designed to evoke that of Ferrari workshops. And no, not all of Ferrari’s clothing is the marque’s signature red. Just a lot of it.
Ferrari’s first UK fashion store is found at 45 Old Bond Street, a site formerly home to jeweller De Beers, and is open seven days a week.
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