Photography courtesy of Sammy Hagar
Former Van Halen lead singer and entrepreneur Sammy Hagar can’t drive 55 and wont drive 200, so he offered his LaFerrari hybrid hypercar at Barrett-Jackson’s 2024 Scottsdale Auction in January 2024. The cream-coloured Sammy Hagar Ferrari LaFerrari, personally specified by the rocker and entrepreneur after a visit to Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters, ultimately sold for $4.675 million, making it one of the most notable sales of the Scottsdale event. Below is our 2023 cover story with the icon.
In 1974, the United States government implemented the National Maximum Speed Limit, which was designed to help the nation reduce its oil consumption. The law put a 55-mph cap on speeds on any road in the whole country and reduced traffic fatalities by nearly a half during the decade that it was in effect. In densely populated places like New York State, it also essentially allowed police to print money by sitting by the side of a road with a radar gun, waiting for anyone in a muscle car to drive by.
One of the recipients of the many tickets handed out that era was a big-haired singer who was spotted driving 62 mph in New York State. The citation was so unfathomable, the social experiment of a law so silly to the young rocker that he wrote a song about it. Soon the track rose to the top of the charts and the artist was able to pay for his ticket many times over with the money he made.
As a result, you can ask any classic rock trivia enthusiast and they’ll tell you that the lower level of rock-n-roll icon and former Van Halen lead singer Sammy Hagar’s navigational abilities are well documented. The Red Rocker simply and famously can’t drive 55. But what’s less recognized are his upper limits, because he’s got those too. He’s probably not going to write a song about it anytime soon, but the truth is that Sammy Hagar also doesn’t want to drive 200 mph. And that’s one of the reasons he’s parting ways with his prized Ferrari LaFerrari.
“Even at 160, if you step on it in the right RPM range, it puts you back in the seat like a 427 Cobra coming out of the hole,” says Hagar. He’s sitting in his home office in Orange County, his energetic answers bouncing off the walls and through the speakers of his iPad. On the other ends of the three-way video call are Craig Jackson, CEO and Chairman of Barrett-Jackson Auction Company, and a writer from the Interior of British Columbia, yours truly.
“It’s freaky,” he continues. “I mean it scares me now because if I wrecked the car it would break my heart. I don’t know what I’d do. I would feel like the biggest idiot in the world. And at my age, my reflexes and my eyesight just really aren’t up to par to be driving a car like that the way it should be driven.”
Hagar’s automotive enthusiasm is well noted. The man has made millions not only as a musical entertainer, but also as an entrepreneur with a tequila and rum brands along with multiple restaurant chains to his name. As a result, he’s been able to keep the 1982 Ferrari 512 Berlinetta Boxer from the ‘I Can’t Drive 55’ music video, now boasting worn-down seats and pedals from all the years of use, and a stable of other Ferraris including a Daytona, a 1984 400i, a 599 GTB Fiorano, and a 1997 456 GT. There’s also a Jaguar XKE and a Ford GT in his garage, but none of these are quite as rare or valuable as the LaFerrari.
When the hybrid was unveiled in 2013, it was the first production vehicle ever to wear a hybrid setup borrowed from F1. It became the superest of supercars, the ultimate car from the ultimate car maker, with 950 horsepower and over 630 lb-ft of torque. It can travel to 60 mph from standstill in under 3 seconds, can get up to 124 mph in 7 seconds, and has a top speed of 217 mph. It is fast. Very fast. Too fast for many, regardless of their visual acuity or hand-eye response, including almost all of the passengers Hagar took for a spin in his.
Owning a LaFerrari is like owning a work of art from a modern master like Andy Warhol or Lawren Harris. Only this multi- million-dollar artwork can take to the road and terrify nearly anyone who dares to enter the passenger seat. This includes but is not limited to Hagar’s wife, his son, his bandmates, and even legendary American journalist and news anchor Dan Rather.
“We shoehorned him in there and tied him all up, put cameras all over the car,” says Hagar, recalling the interview with the 80-year-old veteran reporter. “He loved it. I couldn’t believe it. He was scared, he was nervous, but he was more tripping out on how fast it stopped, you know. I’d taken it up to about 120 on a little short street, you know, and I’d slam on the brakes and he was like, whoa.”
Even purchasing a LaFerrari is a special process. Just 499 were to be made and, if you wanted one, you had to be invited to Italy to shop. The right to buy was handed out to VIP clients only by the brand itself. As a known collector, Hagar got his invite and flew out to the brand’s Maranello HQ to help design his car. It wasn’t until he saw a photo of a vintage cream-coloured Ferrari on a wall that he decided to do it up in the creamy hue it is rather than the Root Beer shade he’d originally chosen. His choice, which lined up with the colour palette in his private jet, was later validated by none other than Piero Ferrari who told him it would be one-of-one and an excellent choice.
“It’s a very sexy car. You want to lick it when you see it. It looks like freaking French vanilla ice cream with black coffee poured over it,” Hagar says, adding that though he hasn’t actually licked the car yet, he plans to before he sells it.
At the Barrett-Jackson event taking place Jan 20-28, 2024 in Scottsdale, Arizona, Hagar’s cream LaFerrari will pour out onto the stage where it will be able to be bid on by collectors and coveters of fine vehicles around the world. Hagar and some bandmates will be there, including British drummer Jason Bonham who will be selling a Corvette, so music could be made if a stage and instruments appeared.
“This is fun. All this shit is fun,” Hagar says. “You know, it’s like going to Barrett-Jackson and being up there with a car on the block and having fans and car nuts drooling over my car, because it’s the most gorgeous piece of machinery that’s ever been made on this planet, in my opinion. If Enzo Ferrari was around today… in his day he said that the XKE was the most beautiful car ever made. Well, he would say ‘no, Sammy Hagar’s LaFerrari just killed the XKE’.”
This won’t be the first auction Hagar has attended. Jackson and Hagar have been friendly since the rocker sold his GT 500 at auction back in 2006. Jackson remembers the fanfare involved in the event. “We sat in the coach after the auction with Carroll Shelby,” he says, “and my head of security was going to walk him to the gate. He comes back three hours later and says that Sammy had to stop and thank everybody. He was just taking pictures and buying people rounds of tequila and having a great time enjoying himself. And that’s what we look forward to again.”
It’s one thing to appreciate the LaFerrari’s beauty, but totally another to handle its performance. Hagar points through the screen at Craig’s chosen background, a still shot of the CEO’s famous leather- lined million-dollar garage. “That’s the reason why I’m thinking about selling it,” he says. “I’m going, ‘man, I don’t want to just sit and look at it all the time’. It’s like, if I had Craig’s place, I’d build a house around it. I would put it into my TV room and build this big theater, and I’d sit in it and eat popcorn and watch movies.”
“It’s a very sexy car. You want to lick it when you see it. It looks like freaking French vanilla ice cream with black coffee poured over it,” Hagar says, adding that though he hasn’t actually licked the car yet, he plans to before he sells it.
But that’s not how the LaFerrari should be treated, and Hagar knows it. The hardest he ever drove his most special car was on an airstrip with Jackson riding shotgun. “It was at the airport on a Sunday afternoon and all the planes were up in the air cruising around, and we had the whole parking area with half the runway and stuff,” he recalls. “It was a blast. We were laughing so hard. If you get any photos from that thing, we were all teeth. The car will get you high. That car is so powerful. And the power is so under control, but just enough out of control to scare the shit out of you…Yeah, Craig’s the only passenger who’s had a good time… Everybody else freaks out. They’re laughing, but it’s a nervous laugh, you know what I mean? Then when you get out they fall apart and say ‘you scared the shit out of me!’ So if that’s my last drive in the car, my time with Craig, God bless it, man.”
America eventually put an end to the National Maximum Speed Limit in the 1980s. Turns out the program hadn’t been all that effective at lowering oil consumption across the nation. But it did earn a few bucks worth of speeding tickets along the way. And it inspired one young rocker to write a hit track that would help accelerate his career to the point where he could buy just about any car on the planet, even a super sexy, super fast, super rare Ferrari. But that doesn’t mean he could drive it exactly as it was intended, though — because, as we all should well know by this point, Sammy Hagar can’t drive 55, and he really doesn’t care to drive 200 either.
