Only a few Ferraris have earned the right to be in the XX club. We meet the cars that made the cut

WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE PHOTOGRAPHY MARK RICCIONI

Not so much a range of cars as perhaps the most exclusive automotive club there’s ever been. Membership: about 116. Cars, that is – probably considerably fewer people given many will own more than one.

You, me and 99.999999 per cent of car nuts are not members of this club. And if you’re anything like me, you’re not sure that you want to be either. The problem is that Ferrari can often come across as arrogant and aloof, it often doesn’t feel like a company that cares about you and me. It’s a global luxury brand, it’s for the wealthy, we see the branding, the merch and the stores and it leaves us cold. Where, you wonder, is the passion you’ve heard all about? The stuff that makes the tifosi tick?

It’s in this room. But not in the XX cars. There are other distractions here. The huge ground floor windows of the Attività Sportive GT building that houses the XX cars look out over Fiorano racetrack’s main straight. Over the course of the day the glass will tremble as first an SF90, then a Purosangue and finally a camo’d fruity piped Roma charge round. They’re minor distractions. The major ones are a reminder of what Ferrari does best and why we should care. Three brand new, raw carbon 296 GT3s are parked in the hall, just finished and ready to head off to race teams. Boxes of spare parts are shoved inside. Wide-arched and sinister, they look sensational. Come round the corner and there, from floor to lofty ceiling, is an entire wall of endurance racing trophies.

“NON-OWNERS GETTING TO DRIVE XX CARS IS A VANISHINGLY RARE EXPERIENCE”

Hundreds of them on glass shelves, including this year’s Le Mans win silverware. And the 499P you see here? That’s not the €5.1m Modificata that Ferrari recently announced, but this year’s actual Le Mans winner. You think that’s the best thing? Nah. Here’s the biggie –up the shallow spiral staircase, ignoring the view out over the XX machinery and there, in another airy hall, lurk examples of just about every F1 car since the mid-Eighties. More precious scarlet here than at a blood bank.