Musicians such as Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger have long sought ways to express their identity beyond the stage. It may be for this reason that many artists developed a particular affinity for the sports car brand Ferrari. The exhibition »Greatest Hits—Music Legends and Their Ferraris« at the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena explores this special connection.
On the day of his driving test in 1965, the already world-famous John Lennon bought his first car—an azure blue Ferrari 330 GT 2+2, which delivered about 300 hp to the road. Not exactly the typical vehicle for a novice driver, but a design gem styled by Pininfarina. His fellow musician Miles Davis also had a penchant for sports cars from Maranello—he owned a red 275 GTB4, which he acquired in 1967. »I drive a Ferrari, not for the sake of beauty, but because I like it,« the famous composer and trumpeter is said to have once remarked.
However, the list of famous musicians who maintained particularly intense relationships with their Ferraris is far from over. Mick Jagger drove, among others, a 288 GTO, which at its presentation in 1984 was the most powerful road car Ferrari had built to date. Opera singer Maria Callas owned a 250 GT, and the legendary Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan had a 250 GT Lusso.
Eric Clapton had several Ferraris in his garage. In his autobiography published in 2007, he describes the moment his love for the Italian sports car brand was ignited as follows: »One day in the late 1960s he (note: George Harrison) arrived at my house in a dark-blue Ferrari 365 GTC. I’d never seen one in the flesh before and my heart melted. At that point, it was like seeing the most beautiful woman on earth and I decided there and then that even though I couldn’t drive, I was going to have one too. I had no licence and had only ever driven an automatic, so I set about teaching myself to drive using a clutch, in that Ferrari. I loved that car.«
In 2012, Clapton commissioned Ferrari to design and develop a sports car that would be reminiscent of the Ferrari icon 512 BB. No sooner said than done—his Ferrari SP12 EC was realized as part of the official prototype program and was created at the Centro Stile Ferrari, in close cooperation with Pininfarina and the engineers in Maranello. The price for the one-off sports car is not known.
Some of these vehicles can now be seen at the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena. The exhibition »Greatest Hits—Music Legends and Their Ferraris« is a tribute to the close connection between musical expression and the car as an object that defines identity. After all, identity, performance, passion, and high-level engineering are not only central to music, but also to those moments when you steer a Pininfarina-designed Ferrari from the driveway onto the road. Podcasts created for the exhibition and carefully curated photo and text material provide additional background information and allow the respective zeitgeist to flicker even more vividly before the mind’s eye. Primarily, however, it is about experiencing the vehicles that musicians once drove and which may have inspired world-famous songs live. »Greatest Hits« can be seen in Modena until February 16, 2027. [SW]
