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Sammy Hagar's quest for a LaFerrari, step 1: Off to Maranello

Sammy Hagar and LaFerrari
Sammy Hagar and LaFerrari

We're following rock 'n' roll legend Sammy Hagar as he becomes one of 499 people in the world to own a LaFerrari. Here's the first leg of the journey — Ed.

As odd couples go, you can’t imagine a more different duo. Sammy Hagar and Piero Ferrari. The Red Rocker and The Legend’s Son. Separated by language and a continent, but bonded by a passion for the same man-made piece of automotive magic.

The meeting was pure serendipity, but perhaps also fated. Hagar was dining at Il Cavallino, the famous restaurant just outside the gates of the Ferrari factory, when he spotted a distinguished man in glasses. “He had the same bearing as The Old Man,” Hagar says, using the affectionate term for the late Enzo Ferrari.

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A chat was hastily arranged. But that’s getting ahead of our tale.

Hagar’s love of Ferraris started on a curb in Boston in the ‘70s, when fellow musician J. Geils pulled over to pick up a friend and promptly sped off in a fog of glorious 250 Lusso exhaust. “That was it for me,” Hagar, 67, recalls. “I had to have one.”

And so he has — in fact, many Prancing Horses have romped in and out of his life over the years. The collection grew as the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer saw his finances mushroom after fronting Van Halen in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and positively explode after he sold his Cabo Wabo Tequila company to Skyy/Campari a decade back.

Today, a select half-dozen Ferraris stalk his studio/garage just north of San Francisco, including the Berlinetta Boxer that starred in his “I Can’t Drive 55” video and a factory-customized black with red stripe 599 GTB. But despite his sheetmetal addiction to the Maranello marque, Hagar had never visited the automaker’s fabled factory just outside Modena.

Until now. Hagar recently returned from a trip to Italy with his wife Kari, where they lock in the order details for Hagar’s $1.4 million Ferrari LaFerrari.

The company’s oddly-named-but-who-cares supercar boasts nearly 1,000-hp, derived from a Formula One-inspired brew of hybrid technologies and a 6.3-liter V-12. Only 499 will be made. After putting down a six-figure deposit at his local Ferrari of San Francisco dealership, Hagar was informed that expediting the order meant traveling to Maranello to be custom-fit for the driver’s seat and to select his colors and interior materials.

Jet-lagged but excited, Hagar and his wife presented themselves at the factory. “As big as that place is, it feels so private and so protected,” Hagar recalls. “It’s like visiting so medical lab. Everything is so clean and orderly.”

The Hagars were taken to a special area where LaFerraris are being produced largely by hand. Five cars surrounded them in different states of undress, from one that was a mere carbon-fiber shell to another complete with seats to a fully built model.

A red one beckoned. The scissor door was raised on the driver’s side of a red LaFerrari and Hagar hopped in.

“I kid you not, I immediately got goosebumps from head to toe just sitting down,” says Hagar. “I was almost intimidated. No, actually I was intimidated. It’s just crazy wild looking, with those doors and the almost pontoon-like fenders. And that’s without even starting it up.”

“When you close the door there’s actually an indentation in it to make room for your head, that’s how small it is,” said Kari. “I of course asked where the trunk was. That was funny. I think maybe it would fit a handbag.”

That sense of being in the product of a space agency and not a car company is likely to hit most La Ferrari customers, regardless of their exposure to high-tech automobiles.

As for what Hagar’s LaFerrari will look like, that’s now been decided. Although initially debating the merits of everything from red to black to silver, the musician settled on a cream-colored white exterior. “I’ve been a rock star all my life, and I am over drawing attention to myself, which a red car does,” he says.

Under Kari’s watchful eye, Hagar when through a range of interior leather and Alcantara options assisted by a dedicated LaFerrari concierge who offered limited but firm advice. When Hagar at one point suggested a variety of interior trim tricks, he was politely told that keeping things simple is what makes things classic. “And I think she was right,” he says.

That means his interior will largely be covered in a rich brown leather to compliment the cream exterior. Given the LaFerrari’s racing roots, there’s plenty of carbon fiber inside the cabin. Hagar is choosing a root beer colored weave that blends with with the brown leather. “I feel pretty good about the choices,” says Hagar, whose other Ferraris — in contrast — come mainly in traditional flavors such as Rosso Corsa and jet black. “I don’t think I’ll tire of it.”

After the material selection, Hagar took a seat in a demonstration LaFerrari seat complete with brake and throttle pedals. The point of the exercise was mainly to determine a precise fit for the driver, the assumption here being that each LaFerrari is likely only to be driven by the person fortunate enough to purchase such a four-wheeled gem. (The seat itself is bolted to the frame, making a custom fit that much more important.)

Elated but on jet-lag fumes, the Hagars made their way around other hallmarks of the factory.

This included a visit to the Ferrari Classiche restoration division (“That place floored me, you saw cars from 40 or 50 years ago that looked like they were new,” he says), a peek at the garage housing an array of race-only FXX cars (“To see million-dollar cars all banged up and dirty, wow, I thought ‘That’s not for me’”) and a walk through the Museo Ferrari, where Hagar clowned in front of a reproduction of Il Commendatore at his old Ferrari office (“I joked that my car wasn’t being made fast enough so I needed to take it up with the boss”).

Sammy Hagar and wife Kari with Piero Ferrari
Sammy Hagar and wife Kari with Piero Ferrari

The boss died in 1988 at the age of 90. But Piero, 69, his only surviving son, is very much a presence at Ferrari, of which he is vice chairman. When Hagar spotted him, a conversation ensued in broken English and hand gestures.

“I told him I was here to order my LaFerrari, and he asked what colors I was choosing,” says Hagar, still buzzing at having met the man whose name is on the hood shield. “I told him cream with a brown interior.”

And Ferrari’s response? Hagar laughs. “He said, ‘Very good, very good. It will be the only one.’”

And that’s good enough for Hagar. He was told that around Christmas a LaFerrari could appear at his door, which is about as man-sized a boyhood automotive fantasy as one can imagine.