It’s been a while since Ferrari threatened someone with legal action for modifying one of their cars, but not long enough for everyone to forget about the possibility. That’s why a lot of folks have been paying attention to the latest project from Mike Burroughs at Stanceworks where he’s chopping up a legendary F40, just waiting for the inevitable cease and desist. Sure enough, last week he shared a letter from Ferrari’s lawyers on Instagram that seemed to confirm the Italian automaker was at it again. But as it turns out, it’s not, and there’s more to the story.
Burroughs’ build is called the “F40 Evolution”, and notice that he doesn’t call it a Ferrari; that’s on purpose. It features a custom-fabricated tube chassis, as well as an F140 V12 engine that revs to 9,000 rpm and should make it pretty nasty once it’s in driving condition. Right now, though, it isn’t—Burroughs has been building the car since October 2024, taking everything slow while building pushrod suspension, fitting centerlock hubs, and doing generally crazy race car stuff.
A Real F40: The most mental project you've ever seen begins now.
None of this is a secret. Burroughs has documented the whole thing on Stanceworks’ 424,000-subscriber YouTube channel and 523,000-follower Instagram account. And in February, he posted a video titled “Is Ferrari Going to Sue Me for Building My Own F40?” where he addressed the question everyone keeps asking him. He pointed out that Stanceworks previously built a Honda K24-swapped Ferrari 308, and Ferrari never came after him over that, even though he was publicly critical of the car throughout the process.
“I’m a little bit more careful about what I say about the F40 because I respect it more,” Burroughs explained. “I also don’t want to poke the bear. But with that said, they don’t care what I’m doing here. They don’t care if you modify their cars. That’s probably the most common myth out there…. If I was going to hear from them, I think I would have at this point. We are well past that.”
Then last week, Burroughs posted a photo of a letter he received from a law firm representing Ferrari along with a cryptic caption that seemed to confirm he spoke too soon. Without any further context, the uproar was immediate; fans rallied around Stanceworks and denounced Ferrari for apparently trying to shut down a cool project and being absurdly overprotective of its brand. If you own a car, why shouldn’t you be able to modify it as you see fit? It looked like another classic tale of David vs Goliath and yet another thing to get angry about.
That’s not actually what went down, though. After his post went live, we reached out to both Burroughs and Ferrari for more information. Ferrari declined to comment, and while Burroughs initially responded to us, he dropped out of touch before answering our questions. But in a private video posted to Stanceworks’ Patreon page, Burroughs shared more details that cast the communication in a completely different light, saying “Honestly, between you and me, we’re gonna play this up a little bit. But it’s not that bad.”
In the video, Burroughs says that the letter is indeed a cease and desist—but not about the F40. Rather, it’s related to posters and desk mats that Stanceworks was selling depicting the two cars with the Ferrari logo visible, and he acknowledges that was his mistake, and Ferrari has a right to control use its trademark.
Meanwhile, the 308 and the F40 projects are mentioned in the letter, but he says Ferrari’s lawyers admitted that they can’t stop him from modifying them. Instead, they’re asking that he publicly acknowledge to his audience “that there are technical and operational risks to using custom or modified components,” and using “non-Ferrari components… does distort the monetary value and authenticity” of the cars.
“They just want me to acknowledge that. They don’t say that we have to do anything,” he explains. “They don’t even say that we technically have to remove the logos from the 308, which I kind of expected them to do.”
Basically, Ferrari is perhaps being a little overly cautious in trying to shield itself from liability should anything go wrong with the build, but the automaker is certainly not suing Stanceworks for having fun with one of its most iconic cars.
“Let this dispel the myth that you can’t modify your car,” he says in closing. “There you go, myth dispelled.”
Now, a cynic could say it was disingenuous of Burroughs to share the letter in the way he did, knowing it would rile people up and play into the ongoing narrative of big bad Ferrari, and only posting the full explanation behind a paywall that ultimately makes it a non-story. But since content creation is a business, much like making cars, he seized the opportunity to get more eyeballs on his work.
This all has echoes of another infamous case where DJ and music producer Deadmau5 received a cease and desist over a Nyan Cat-themed wrap on his Ferrari 458 that got everyone heated. But that too was actually an intellectual property case because he had also altered Ferrari’s logo to depict a prancing cat instead of a horse.
Other storylines about Ferrari hitting owners with legal action over modifications have been greatly exaggerated. We debunked a myth in 2020 about a rotary-swapped 456 that Ferrari supposedly sent a cease and desist over (spoiler alert: it didn’t). And apart from that, the closest thing we’ve seen to Ferrari throwing a fit was when it said it would reject bad taste customization to “defend values” of the brand.
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