Mama Mia: Pavarotti’s F40 and a Green LaFerrari at Museo Enzo Ferrari
Museo Enzo Ferrari • Modena, Italy • The Greatest Hits
Mama Mia& One Jealous Montanan
A friend went to Ferrari's hometown museum and texted me the evidence. I replied "Dang." Then "Mama Mia!!!" This is the long version.
Field Report From Someone Who Isn't Me
I did not go to Modena. Let's get that out of the way. A friend did, and instead of sending a postcard like a normal person, they fired off a string of photos from inside the Museo Casa Enzo Ferrari with zero context and maximum cruelty.
My entire critical response, typed in real time: "Dang." Then, one photo later: "Mama Mia!!!" Three exclamation points. I stand by all of them.
The museum sits in Modena, right next to the house where Enzo Ferrari was born in 1898. It opened in 2012, and the new building is the giant yellow one. That's Giallo Modena, the city's color and the same yellow behind the prancing horse on the Ferrari shield. The sign out front is about as understated as a Ferrari museum gets. Which is to say, it's yellow.
The Greatest Hits: Music Legends and Their Ferraris
The current exhibition is The Greatest Hits: Music Legends and Their Ferraris. It opened February 18, 2026, on Enzo's birthday, and it runs until February 16, 2027. The idea is simple: gather the Ferraris that famous musicians actually owned, put them on white pedestals, and let people like me sulk about it from an ocean away.
The roster is ridiculous. Mick Jagger's 288 GTO. John Lennon's 330 GT 2+2. Miles Davis's 275 GTB4. Nick Mason's 250 GTO. Eric Clapton's one-off SP12 EC. Madonna's Mondial. There's a jukebox and a podcast on headphones, because apparently a room full of V12s wasn't loud enough on its own.
Pavarotti's F40: The Loudest Tenor in Italy
The F40 in the exhibit belonged to Luciano Pavarotti. Let that settle. The greatest tenor of his generation owned the rawest supercar Ferrari ever built: twin-turbo V8, no carpet, no radio, door pulls made of cable, and a rear wing you could hold a picnic on. It was the last new car Enzo signed off on, built to mark the company's 40th anniversary in 1987.
A man who spent his life controlling every single note bought a car with exactly zero manners. I respect that deeply.
Dang, indeed.
A Green LaFerrari. On Purpose.
Then the room opens up, and in the middle of a floor full of red sits a LaFerrari in green. It's Jay Kay's, the Jamiroquai frontman, a man famous for giant hats who apparently brings the same energy to paint codes. Ordering a V12 hybrid hypercar and speccing it anything but red takes a special kind of confidence. Somewhere, a purist is still upset about it. I love it.
Around it: a red one-off that looks a lot like Clapton's SP12 EC, a red convertible that looks like Madonna's Mondial, and a dark green 2+2 grand tourer proving Ferrari has been quietly building sensible cars for rich people for decades.
The Long Room
The last photo is the wide shot, and it's the one that hurts the most. A curving white hall, a long line of cars down one wall, vintage GTs parked like a timeline, and a red mid-engine car in the foreground close enough to touch. It looks less like a museum and more like the inside of a very expensive dream.
No dust. No barbed wire. No dirt roads. Every car in here is clean enough to eat off of. Normally that's my complaint. This time I'll allow it.
Verdict: Still Jealous
I got a museum tour by text message, four photos long, from someone standing there in person. It's the closest I've ever been to Pavarotti's F40, and I'll take it. But Modena just moved way up the list. The exhibition runs through February 16, 2027. That's enough time to plan a trip. Probably not enough time to afford one.
Thanks for the photos. I hate you a little. Mama Mia.
Photo Credit
Every photo in this post was taken by a friend of the blog at Museo Enzo Ferrari in Modena, Italy, and sent to me specifically to make me jealous. It worked.
The Greatest Hits exhibition runs through February 16, 2027.
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