At the end of the eighties, a very special order knocked on the doors of the Pininfarina study. Prince Jefri Bolkiah, brother of the Sultan of Brunei, wanted to be designed a new exclusive Ferrari. The only condition was that this project be kept completely secret.
In fact, it was kept so secret and for so many years, that not even Ferrari knew it existed until a series of photographs revealed them to the public and the brand itself decades later. This is the story of the only six Ferrari F90s that exist in the world. a car so mysterious They haven’t even seen it in Ferrari.
The prince’s secret order
The incredible story of this peculiar model came to light according to an interview that Speedholics made Enrico Fumia, director of design and development at Pininfarina in the late 1980s. In those years, Prince Jefri Bolkiah was one of Ferrari’s best clients, where I bought cars by the dozen to feed your large collection of cars made up of more than 7,000 cars.
In 1988, an intermediary of Prince Jefri contacted the Pininfarina design studio, the Italian company responsible for designing some of the most famous Ferraris, with models such as the Ferrari FF, California, F12 Berlinetta or 458 Italia, among many other.
The request was clear: I wanted six exclusive units of a Ferrari that only he would have. In exchange, the studio would receive an indecent amount of money, just at a time when the studio was not having a good financial streak.
Without going into specific figures, the studio’s design manager only indicated in his interview that, with that commission, Jefri Bolkiah became the studio’s main source of income, above brands such as Ferrari, Maserati or Alfa Romeo. There it is nothing.
The only condition that the prince set was that everything had to be done in the most absolute secrecy. So much so that not even Ferrari found out until 16 years later.
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The project was baptized “F90”, so named because it was “the Ferrari of the nineties“. The design was built on the chassis of the Ferrari Testarossa – which was the star of the moment –, but with a completely new and original design in terms of body, cabin and roof, retaining only the engine, wheels and mirrors of the base model.
Innovation and complexity in design
In his interview, Enrico Fumia assured that “without a doubt, the F90 has been the most difficult and spectacular project we have ever done.” Among its most notable innovations was a unique sliding roof that slid over the rear window, becoming fully integrated to turn it into a convertible supercar.
This solution was something completely unprecedented for the time and a major technical challenge, Fumia explained. But the fees paid by the coffers of the Sultan of Brunei more than covered the development cost.
Making a Ferrari without Ferrari knowing was not easy. Fumia claimed that they tested the car at night, without any emblem of Prancing Horse and with the body completely camouflaged. As they did not have test drivers, the designer acknowledged that “sometimes I participated in the tests and, since the car was right-hand drive, when I was driving, another person had to sit in the passenger seat to pay the tolls at the highway exits.”
In its design, Fumia was inspired by classic Ferrari models like the 1964 500 Superfast, with its peculiar oval front grille, the Ferrari 365 or the Ferrari 330 with its smooth and aerodynamic lines. Under the hood they mounted a 4.9-liter, 390 HP twin-cylinder V12 engine.
After many difficulties, the six units of the F90 were delivered directly to Brunei and in the most absolute secrecy, where they have remained hidden in the royal collection of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. They remained this way until 2002.
Ferrari, what Ferrari?
It was in that year when some mysterious photos began to circulate on the Internet in which the unprecedented silhouettes of an unknown Ferrari. Finally, in 2005, Fumi met with Ferrari and Pininfarina to reveal the project.
The design manager was surprised by Maranello’s reaction. “It was better than we ever imagined,” Fumia said. “Ferrari officially recognized the F90 as an authentic Ferrari, without ever having seen or touched it,” confessed the former Pininfarina manager.
As of today, and only by reference to the leaked photos, it is known that the Ferrari F90s were painted in black, blue, gray, red, white and green. But none of these cars have left the royal collection nor has it been used publicly, thus maintaining the aura of mystery and exclusivity that surrounds them to this day.
Image | Nano Banana
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