Should you become one of the world’s greatest and richest sportsmen, you too could drive the most desirable car and fly the most beautiful aircraft whenever you liked – just like Formula 1 racing driver Michael Schumacher.
When the ex-world champion driver flies around Europe with the Ferrari F1 team, he often travels in the Maranello squad’s Piaggio Avanti II – surely one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built and a welcome addition to the static line-up at Dubai.
During a race, if you look closely at Schumacher’s visor when the feed from the in-car camera features on your TV screen, you’ll notice that the Italian aircraft manufacturer’s name features as one of his sponsors.
But that’s not the only connection between the two companies. Piero Ferrari, the son of Enzo Ferrari, founder of the eponymous car company, is the chairman of Piaggio Aero and the deputy chairman of Ferrari.
Piero was at Dubai to pose with two of his most cherished products: the Ferrari Enzo car (named after his father, of course) and the Piaggio Avanti II.
While you can buy an Avanti II if you have a cool $6.2 million lurking in your bank account, you’ll have to wait for a Ferrari Enzo to appear on the second-hand market as all 399 examples of the €500,000 ($600,000) car were sold a couple of years ago.
Of alternatively, you could always hope to persuade one of the 29 people who have pre-ordered the Ferrari FXX, successor to the Enzo, to let you have their place in the queue. They’ll have paid €1.3 million for the privilege, so you’ll undoubtedly have to do better than that.
GEOFF THOMAS
Source: Flight Daily News
