Join The Hunt For Saddam Hussein's Son's Abandoned Ferrari F40

Youtuber Ratarossa has a mission if you choose to accept it. This lover of all things Prancing Horse wants to add an F40 to his collection, but he's looking for a very specific example of the supercar. Ratarossa wants Uday Hussein's F40. Photos show the vehicle sitting abandoned in Iraq, but the Ferrari's current whereabouts are a mystery. Ratarossa wants help hunting down the machine.

Uday Hussein was the son of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Much like his father, he had a reputation of being an awful person, including infamously torturing members of the Iraqi national football (soccer) team for not meeting his performance standards. He loved cars, though. He even had a staff member with the job of searching the Internet for interesting vehicles and filling a three-ring binder with information about them, according to a Time report in 2003. By some accounts, Uday owned upwards of 1,000 cars at one point – at least before his father burned many of them.

When the United States invaded Iraq, "Uday instructed the Fedayeen Saddam to torch his cars rather than let anyone else take them," according to the Time story. However, photos in Ratarossa's video indicate that the F40 somehow avoided the flames. Pictures from different times showed the car in various locations, indicating that it remained in the country.

The photos revealed that the Ferrari was in very rough shape, including missing pieces in the engine bay, a damaged interior, and mismatched replacement parts, including one from a Nissan. If Ratarossa can take possession of the F40, then a gargantuan restoration effort is a necessary undertaking.

In the comments to the YouTube video, Ratarossa already has several leads about where to start his search. One person claims that the car is in the city of Erbil in Northern Iraq, and there's allegedly a Facebook video of it driving at slow speed as recently as April 4, 2020. Unfortunately, the commenter doesn't provide a link to the clip.

An Iraqi collector bought the F40 about 6 months ago, according to another commenter. It had been in a garage for years, but the shop owner died.

If you have any info to share about the location of Uday's F40, Ratarossa has a page about the car where you can share tips with him. We wish him luck on the hunt for his grail.