An interesting two-door supercar will be up for sale at RM Sotheby's. It's a Ferrari F355 GTS, which the Italian company gave to its new Formula 1 team driver in 1996. It turns out that this Ferrari was the first of Michael Schumacher - the future seven-time world champion and holder of a series of F1 records. The car's history is fully documented.
Michael Schumacher joined Scuderia Ferrari from Benetton as a two-time (and current) world champion. The Italian team at that time (1996) had not won the championship since 1979. The German athlete received a blue Ferrari F355GTS with a white leather interior and, at Schumacher's insistence, a six-speed manual transmission.
The service book states that the recipient of the supercar is the company of Schumacher's manager Willy Weber, and the keys were handed over on April 30, 1996. The first maintenance was carried out on May 5, 1996 in Monaco, when the mileage showed 1,639 kilometers. Michael used the supercar in Monte Carlo until September 1997, after which it remained his property until May 2002.
Currently, the Ferrari 355GTS in question has a mileage of 47,500 kilometers. In 2020, the car passed the Ferrari Classiche certification and the Italian masters confirmed the originality of the components, assemblies and paint.
The only thing under the hood is not the original 3.5-liter V8 engine, but its improved version. It is possible that the power unit was originally modified at the factory, but this is not known for sure.
The auction house's report includes information about regular maintenance at authorized Ferrari centers, numerous reference invoices, and the last major maintenance was carried out in September 2024. Then the battery, spark plugs, timing belt, rear brake pads and windshield were replaced. RM Sotheby's refrains from predicting the price of a supercar.
