Lawsuit over crashed Ferrari folds: no fraud or mistake

A former Quote-500 member buys a 2005 Ferrari 575M Super America F1 from a high-end sports car dealer from Hengelo. The purchase price at the time was €240,000. Two years later, the man crashes his bolide. A sister company of the seller takes care of the repair. The Ferrari is in bad shape: the repair receipt amounts to €75,000, and the man has lost the car for almost a year. More than 15 years later, the man has the repaired Ferrari appraised. The car is now said to be worth €420,000. The car is put up for sale for that amount. Although there are interested parties for the sports car, they all drop out. In the Ferrari register in Italy, the car is still registered as a “crashed car.” And has been for 16 years. The owner of the exclusive car is angry and addresses the seller and repairer. He claims that he is not an official Ferrari body shop, that he charged too much for the repair and that he cheated the owner. The dealer should just buy the car for its appraised value, the man thought. And if not, they should at least compensate him for his damages. The Overijssel District Court (ECLI:NL:RBOVE:2025:491) does not go along with that. Contract law lawyer Robert van Ewijk discusses the issue.

Ferrari driver accuses dealer of cheating

The Ferrari owner is making several accusations against his dealer. First of all, the man allegedly overpaid for the repair in 2007. Indeed, the dealer's books only recorded repair costs of about €32,500. So there would have been fraud, the man thought. According to the dealer this is nonsense, and the court followed her in this. The recorded €32,500 only concerns the purchase of materials from third parties, not the small equipment used. The labor charged to the customer is also not recorded as an expense in his own records. From error or deceit is therefore out of the question, the court found.

No official Ferrari body shop

In addition, the man feels pegged because it would have been recently revealed to him that the dealer was not an official Ferrari body shop at the time of the repair. If the dealer had been, it could have registered the car as ‘repaired’ in Ferrari's systems. The judge also dismissed that contention. Any garage is authorized to make repairs to a Ferrari. Moreover, the dealership did not pretend to be an official Ferrari body shop in 2007. It couldn't have, because Ferrari introduced the concept of body shops only later. Moreover, that is when the dealer immediately became an official bodyshop. Of further importance is that the car has since been registered as repaired in the manufacturer's system in Italy. Again, therefore, there is no basis in this for assuming liability.

Claims against Ferrari dealer dismissed

Nor is there a hidden defect. The repair work done simply complies with the agreement, the court finds. The fact that the repair was not reported to Ferrari at the time does not change this. Indeed, the man has not shown that anything was agreed upon in this regard. The court all in all, therefore, puts a big dent in the man's argument and finds that the dealer is not to blame on any of the points raised. Also, the claim for destruction of the repair agreement (which had already been executed in 2007), is rejected.

Plaintiff flies off course with claims against car dealer

However, the dealer does have to provide a printout from the records showing what issues were reported to the manufacturer about the car. The man might have been better off just asking, without going straight to court. After all, he now also has to provide the legal costs of the Ferrari dealer pay. After all, he was ruled against on all other points. The question is whether the relationship with the dealer (according to Quote the two did business with each other for years and for tens of millions) can still be repaired. By the way, Quote also reports that this was not the first time the man wrecked a Ferrari. Earlier he borrowed a Ferrari 348 out to a random customer in a snack bar after he asked if he could go for a drive. A few hundred yards away, that one smashed the Ferrari into another car.

Contract law attorney with knowledge of the chicanery of litigation law

In legal disputes, it is important to properly determine in advance what goal is being sought and whether that goal is achievable. It is the lawyer's job to have sufficient distance from the client and filter out emotion in the process. Between the lines, we read that much of the dispute between the Ferrari owner and the dealership resulted from a lack of knowledge about the rights and obligations on both sides, and lack of clarity of the agreements made. In addition, an article reveals that the AD in December 2024 wrote about the case, that the Ferrari owner's main concern is also principles. And those can be expensive, it turns out. Moreover, you don't win lawsuits with principles. You only do that with good arguments. Would you like to know more about that? And would you like to know whether in your case you have a viable case or just a (potentially) expensive principle? We tell you honestly.