🏎️ Max Found the French Ferrari F40

presented with…

Gm. It is Monday and there are over 800 cars for sale on BringATrailer right now.

The scale of the collector car auction world is getting CRAZY. There are too many cars I want to talk about, and too little time.

BUT, this (as you may have guessed) is MaxFindsCars.com.

And MaxFindsCars.com is like… BringATrailer email notifications with character, pizazz, and a little bit of chaos.

Today, we are covering a car whose manufacturer I had never heard about before my research.

A car that looks like a Ferrari F40 and an OG Honda NSX had a love child.

HERE IT IS: A 1992 Venturi 400 Trophy

Today’s Edition is brought to you by Morning Brew

WHAT Makes the Venturi 400 Trophy So Cool?

• IT MAKES THE GOOD TURBO NOISES

• IT IS A TRUE WORLD TRAVELER

• THE INTERIOR IS PURE 90S RACE CAR

But First, the Highlights…

• 🌏️ Driven around the world: 0.24x

• 🎼 Song to Get the Vibes Right: Le Vent Nouse Portera by Noir Desir

• 🏇 Can beat 400 (I think) horses in a fight

• 💰️ Predicted Price: $199,999

  • Buyer had to save that dollar.

• 📆 Auction Ends: Tuesday, August 1st, 2023

IT MAKES THE GOOD TURBO NOISES

This section is going to be short, its entirely based on all of us having a collective listening party to a couple videos, the first being the one I linked above.

The Venturi may be a V6, but the engine in this is no slouch. It has two turbos, and makes some of the best sounds I’ve ever heard.

Linking video 2 because I would feel terrible depriving anyone of these noises on a Monday morning.

IT IS A TRUE WORLD TRAVELER

What do I mean its a world traveler?

And, more importantly, WTF is the brand Venturi, anyways?

Ironically, Venturi generally is a scientific term for speeding up the flow of fluid in a tube, by constricting one second of that tube. Picture like, an hourglass on its side. The ironic piece is that this is named after an 18th century Italian scientist.

The history of Venturi doesn’t go back that far, however. In 1984 Venturi was born as the brainchild of two French engineers: Claude Poiraud and Gérard Godfroy.

The two had previously worked at a company called ‘Heuliez’, which I can only assume is the French version of Heelys.

Their idea was, effectively, to create a competitor to Ferrari & Aston Martin.

And… for some reason they thought “You know what Aston Martin and Ferrari owners WISH their cars had? A VW GOLF ENGINE.”

So, with that brilliant thought they threw exactly that engine into their first car.

Unsurprisingly, they sold only 5 cars their first year. I would say that that was more scaling production facilities than it was lack of demand, but they weren’t making their own engines… so, who knows!

In 1991 Venturi released a new car, which I feel deserves some brief shine. It was the Atlantique 300. It wasn’t particularly powerful at 306 horsepower, but mannnnnn was it pretty! Check this thing out:

Its a better looking Ferrari 550 Maranello, if I do say so myself. And the Ferrari 550 didn’t come out until 1996, so it wasn’t even as if the Venturi guys copied the Ferrari styling! They beat Ferrari to this look!

Unfortunately they made only 13 of these… ever. So I (and you, dear reader) will likely never see one. They’re probably all owned by various Saudi Prince’s, locked away forever like Fiona from Shrek.

BACK TO TODAYS CAR THOUGH…

SO, the Venturi 400 Trophy today is based on the street-focused 400 GT & GTR’s that Venturi made in the early 90s, and it was actually quite successful in racing events at the time.

In fact, it took first place in EVERY SINGLE Gentlemen Driver’s Trophy race!

Now… yeah, the detail oriented among you might point out that it also got last place in every race because every driver in the series was required to drive a Venturi, but that is besides the point.

The Venturi was dominant in race series where it was the only option, and that’s just a FACT.

Okay jokes aside, it did do well in the 24 Hours of Le Mans a couple times and beat Porsches and Ferraris a handful of times in the BPR Global GT Series.

The Venturi 400 Trophy we are looking at today was one of the cars to participate in that series, in fact. It’s 1 of 73 examples ever made, and they were all made to race in the Gentlemen Driver’s series, and each owner was given the option to convert it to a more street-friendly trim once the series had concluded.

This is one of the cars that was converted to a more public road oriented spec. And once it was, it traveled to Japan to compete against other supercars from the era for the GOAT Japanese automotive magazine: Best Motoring.

It somehow ended up in Florida before being put up for auction this week, so its in rare company, I’d imagine, as far as ‘cars that have been driven on three different continents’ is concerned.

Born in France, raced throughout the EU. Moved to Japan where it became a TV star, and now is living its best life in the US of A.

Swap the birth place for Canada and we would have a veritable Robin Scherbatzky on our hands!

To bookend Venturi’s story, unfortunately its good looks and solid motorsport performances didn’t translate to sales. From 1984-2000, it only sold ~700 cars.

For arguments sake, let’s say their margins were 50% (which would be very good for a niche automaker). If they were positioning their cars as cheaper competitors to the likes of Ferrari and Aston at the time, let’s say the average Venturi sold for $80,000 (its very tough to find real MSRP’s for these cars).

That means over 16 years Venturi only made $28mil, an average of $1.75mil a year. That’s exceedingly small for an automaker. Not a lot of headroom for R&D.

In 2000, Venturi declared bankruptcy. It was bought by a Monegasque Millionaire who shifted focus towards strange, even more niche electric vehicles…

Like this one, that is apparently featured in their current Monaco showroom:

They also seem to have an electric motorcycle brand called Voxan:

THE INTERIOR IS PURE 90S RACE CAR

The inside of this car looks badass, to be concise. It’s all exposed carbon fiber, switches that look more at home within a rocket ship, and will require some heavy usage of Google translate to understand how to use.

Nearly everything is in French, minus the ‘On Off’ switch, unless On & Off is the same in French as it is English? No clue.

I don’t feel confident at all I would know how to start this car, given the look of this cockpit. It’s just as likely I hit the built in ‘white surrender flag’ button all French cars have (presumably) when trying to start it up.

If you have made it this far, thank you!

And remember…

MaxFindsCars.com is not, technically, free! By subscribing, dear reader, you have agreed to tell your friends about it.

In fact, I believe the contract specifically stated you had to each subscribe 100 of your closest friends, colleagues, enemies, exes, priests, pets, & sugar mommas. I’ll have to check the fine print to be sure, but you all may as well get started spreading the word in the meantime.

That's a wrap for today. New Editions come out every Monday & Friday! While you wait, go out and drive! And if you want more, be sure to follow Max’s Twitter (@maxjzin)

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