Let’s Help Find This Trashed Ferrari F40 That Once Belonged to Saddam Hussein’s Son
There’s a miracle-worker looking to bring it back to life, and he needs a helping hand.
If you’ve watched car videos on YouTube recently, there’s a great chance you’ve seen Ratarossa, a channel with over 40,000 subscribers that focuses heavily on rebuilding and hooning used Ferraris. Scott Chivers, the man behind the channel, is on the hunt for his next project and is asking for help. He's trying to track down a Ferrari F40 that once belonged to Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, which is suspected to be abandoned somewhere in the deserts of Iraq. His goal: to bring it back to life.
We’ll sidestep the fact that Uday was nearly as terrible as his father and focus on the fact that at one point, he was said to have owned as many as 1,000 cars. That was before Saddam destroyed many of them, though. The F40 appears to have escaped the carnage, though it's still been left to rot.
Chivers wants to find this car and rebuild it as he has with several other Ferraris on his channel. His video on the supercar has already attracted over 100,000 views, and commenters on the film have come up with some seemingly hot leads. One says that the car was bought by an Iraqi collector as recently as six months ago, and another says the car is in Erbil, a desert area in the northern part of the country. There’s even someone that says an elusive Facebook video of the car driving in early April exists, but they didn't provide a link to back that claim up.
Chivers notes that the mirrors are missing and that the drivetrain will need a complete rebuild before the car can hit the road. He also mentions that some parts have been replaced with off-brand pieces from other cars, like the Nissan bottle under the hood. There are several other missing or damaged parts that can be seen in photos, so the project will be pricey even if the car can be found.
And don't even get us started on that terrible red steering wheel.
Let’s stop for a moment and consider the gravity of what he’s suggesting. The F40 wasn’t a common car when it was new, and the number of them remaining in the wild is even smaller. To find the car is one thing, but to find or fabricate parts for it will be a whole different issue.
If there's anyone who can do it, though, it might be Chivers as he has resurrected several Prancing Horses from the grave and turned them into everyday drivers.
Reverse image searches on several photos from Chivers’ video turns up zero results out of over 40.9 billion images, leading Google to determine that the shots are completely unique on the internet. Not a great start. Still, that's not to say someone out there won't have at least a general idea of where the car currently sits.
One of Chivers’ other rides is the one that built his YouTube channel. The appropriately named Ratarossa is a 1987 Ferrari Testarossa that he was able to mold into a convertible using a shell of a car that someone had already hacked into. That build was impressive, but his collection of clapped-out Ferraris doesn’t end there. He’s got a 360 Challenge Stradale with over 70,000 miles and two F355 Spider F1’s. As Matt Farah said here back in 2018, “The man is clearly a glutton for punishment.”
Do you know where the car is now? If so, Ratarossa has a page where you can drop tips. Internet sleuths—assemble!
Got a tip? Send us a note: tips@thedrive.com
