Celebrities Who Got Banned from Buying a Ferrari

Owning a Ferrari is not so much an experience as it’s a lifestyle. The Italian maker has made sure to establish strict (and still relatively secret) rules of ownership and to abide by them even in the face of pressure. The result is that, even today when brands rush to celebrities and influencers for sponcons, Ferrari shies away from such practices.

You don’t own a Ferrari, Ferrari owns you, is another say you’re likely to hear whenever you talk about any of the sportscars released with the Prancing Horse badge. That’s because the maker chooses its clients carefully, still working on the principle that, as good as its cars might be, the people who drive them are just as important to the overall image of the brand.

That said, if Ferrari (reportedly) hates something with a passion, it’s flashiness, self-promotion (especially if it’s done with its cars) and tackiness. Some celebrities are believed to have been served a lifetime “ban” for either or all these reasons; others got denied for other reasons. So let’s talk about the most high-profile stars to have gotten banned by Ferrari.

*Disclaimer: much of the process of buying a Ferrari is a secret shared only between the potential buyer, the dealer and the higher-ups who decide whether the prospect is worthy of one such supercar. Because of this, what you’re about to read are partly rumors, partly urban legends and partly facts.

Deadmau5

The musician is perhaps one of the most mediated cases of celebrities crossing Ferrari – and losing. In 2013, Deadmau5 took his Ferrari 458 Spider and put a custom-wrap on it of the Nyan Cat. He added custom badges and floor mats and renamed the car Purrari, and then took it to all kinds of auto events to show it off.

Ferrari is notoriously famous for not allowing major modifications to its cars, so it took offense with the Purrari. A cease and desist letter was dispatched and whatever was in it was enough to get Deadmau5 to sell the car as-is. He claimed that he removed the wrap beforehand, but that proved to be false years later, when the car emerged on the market again – at a significant discount, but still with Nyan the Cat on it.

Safe to say Deadmau5 will never get a brand-new Ferrari again.

David Lee

Where Deadmau5’s case is the most mediated, David Lee’s is the most outrageous and impossible to understand. The millionaire businessman (owner of the watch and investment empire Hing Wa Lee Jewelers) is also an avid car collector, investing more than $50 million in the world’s rarest, most beautiful cars. Many Ferraris are among them, some bought new from the factory, other classics and restored. However, not a single limited-edition one is bought new.

Trying to get on the VIP list for Ferrari limited-edition supercars, Lee even went to the Ferrari driving school, visited the Ferrari factory and established a very solid relationship with a local Ferrari dealer, all three a must to even be considered for a limited-edition release. He keeps getting denied, but he says he will keep trying for as long as he can.

Tyga

To those not into rap music, Tyga is best known for two things: his love of supercars and his relationship with reality star Kylie Jenner. OK, make that three: and his inability to pay for the supercars he leases. At some point, the third came to overpower the other two, and he became the butt of all jokes in the industry for going overboard on flashiness when he couldn’t afford it.

At some point, Tyga has had several cars repossessed, including a 2012 Ferrari 458 Spider and a 2012 Rolls-Royce Ghost. As if that wasn’t enough of an embarrassment, he then got sued by both companies because he was refusing to pay back what he owed on the cars, so it’s safe to say that Ferrari will never let him behind the wheel of one its cars again.

Chris Harris

Pick a fight with the Prancing Horse, you get the hooves. Racing driver, auto journalist and TV presenter Chris Harris went up against Ferrari in 2011, writing a story about how it optimized test cars to make sure they scored excellently in magazine performance tests.

One could argue that this kind of story and investigation came with his job as a journalist, but Ferrari strongly denied his claims. Moreover, it banned him from the list of journalists entitled to loaner cars for several years and, it is said, from ever trying to purchase a new Ferrari car.

Preston Henn

Former racing driver and entrepreneur Preston Henn was also the owner of one of the largest car collections in the world and of the most expensive car in the world. Ironically, it was a Ferrari: 275 GTB/C chassis No. 6885, worth over $80 million. Yet, when he applied for a limited-edition LaFerrari Aperta, he was denied.

Henn sued Ferrari for damaging his reputation by saying he wasn’t worthy of the Aperta (the guy even included a $1 million down-payment check in his offer), asking for $75,000 in damages. In 2016, one year before he passed away, Henn dropped the lawsuit, having been informed he didn’t stand a chance of winning. He wanted to sue Ferrari for something else, but never got the chance.

Other celebrities who are reportedly on Ferrari’s blacklist include Nicolas Cage and Floyd Mayweather Jr., the former because of his financial woes and the latter for his inability to hold on to his cars for longer than a few months (and for only buying them to show off).

Reality stars Kim Kardashian and Blac Chyna are supposedly there, too. Kim for receiving a Ferrari as a 2011 wedding gift from a known financial fraudster on the run, and Chyna for painting a Ferrari Barbie pink and putting red wheels on another.

Justin Bieber is in good company. Admittedly, he has been banned because he was somehow able to “lose” his blue Ferrari 458 Italia after a night out on the town, and it took one of his assistants 3 full weeks to locate it. The media had a field day with that one.

Similarly, 50 Cent drew Ferrari’s ire for going on an Instagram rant against the carmaker because his 488 wouldn’t start on account of a dead battery. The rapper called the car a “f***ing lemon,” and we assume it didn’t sit well with the suits in Maranello.