Meet Ferrari's high-mile club
Two Ferrari owners are proving that Prancing Horses can go the distance and that Italian supercars make ideal daily drivers.
Ferrari fans Richard Losee and Brian Whalen definitely don’t treat their Italian stallions like garage queens. Instead they’re both on a mission to rack up as many miles in their cars as they can, exploring the USA as they go.
Losee bought his Ferrari Enzo in 2003, and unlike most of the other 492 owners refused to lock it up in some climate-controlled storage facility. Instead he set about piling on the miles. First he loaned it to Road & Track magazine where former Ferrari F1 driver Phil Hill was one of many drivers to add 1,500 miles to the odometer.
That was just the beginning. Losee decided to make his car the MM Enzo (Most Miles Enzo) and returned the car to the Road and Track team who took it past 10,000 miles. Within a couple of years the Enzo had done 30,000 miles before disaster struck.
During a Utah Highway Patrol Fast Pass Charity event in 2006, which took place on a closed road, Losee lost control at over 200mph. The Enzo was wrecked and Losee suffered terrible injuries. He was, however, more determined than ever. It took nearly three years for the Enzo to be rebuilt, during which time a pair of turbos was added to boost it to over 800hp. In 2010 Losee set a land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats with a speed of 237.1 mph.
Now the MM Enzo is continuing to be driven all over the USA in the hands of Instagrammer @dryl8k who has just taken the car past 90,000 miles.
Brian Whalen also documents his exploits in a 1982 Ferrari 308 GTSi on Instagram under the handle @briansquestionabledecisions and, since the early days of the pandemic he’s been living a mostly nomadic life, even going as far as Alaska.
Whalen picked up his 308 at a Bring a Trailer auction it already had 50,000 miles on the clock and needed a fair amount of work, so he’s never been especially precious about it. In fact he’s made such unheard-of modifications as fitting a rear rack for luggage and spares and even putting on a set of off-road tyres to get him to far-off places. His adventures have taken Whalen from the barren desert of Moab to the streets of San Francisco and many many places in between.
Whalen was last seen on the Galena Pass in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho after using the Ferrari for a ski trip. Now that’s what we call living the Detour Life.