Some cars need a racing pedigree to earn their place in history. They need to traverse the world to prove they are the toughest of them all, while some become legends thanks to the drivers brave enough to strap themselves into the cockpit and drive them to their limits. Others, however, have none of that, and yet still remain just as special. This one just needed a parking spot outside the United Center on the night of June 13, 1997, the night Michael Jordan won his fifth championship, walked out into the Chicago night with a cigar in one hand and a trophy in the other, and climbed into a Rosso Barchetta Ferrari 550 Maranello wearing the plate MJ 5. We imagine basketball's undisputed G.O.A.T. has had his fair share of ‘Mama I made it’ moments in his lengthy career, but this moment mussurely have been up there. 

The Maranello itself was already a significant machine, a car that marked Ferrari's return to the front-engined V12 grand tourer after two decades of mid-engined flagships. Its 5.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 sent an impressive 485 horsepower through either an F1 transmission, or, for those who loved the click-clack nature of a manual, a six-speed transmission, the one MJ thankfully opted for. A mere 3,083 were built.  Jordan's was delivered in May 1997, through North Carolina's Foreign Cars Italia, where he immediately ran into a problem. Because stood at six-foot-six, Ferrari had to extend the seat rails and slimmed the padding so he could push the seat back as far as it would go. It's a detail some would overlook, but it proves this basketball legend wanted to experience this car in its entirety. 

Its cultural footprint, though, runs well beyond the driveway and finds its way into fashion more than some might think. Tinker Hatfield used the Maranello as the literal blueprint for the Air Jordan XIV, using quilted leather that echoed the cabin, a tire-tread heel, even a Jumpman badge set inside a shield like Ferrari's own prancing-horse badge. Jordan wore those shoes for the Last Shot against Utah in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals. A year on from his 1997 win, he had a new pair of kicks on his feet, a new cigar to smoke and a new trophy for the cabinet, but the scarlet Ferrari remained the same.

Jordan drove it roughly 6,400 miles through his final Bulls seasons before selling it in 2002. And then, remarkably, it simply vanished, with no public sightings, no auction appearances, nothing for nearly a quarter of a century. It took our friend and co-founder of Curated, John Temerian the better part of a decade to find it, starting with a partial chassis number spotted on an old forum, reconstructed against Ferrari's own dealer records, and ending with a long-term Californian owner who'd never once offered it for sale. After that exhausting search, Temerian bought it unseen, and on May 29, 2026, exactly twenty-nine years to the day since its original delivery, MJ 5 finally came home to Chicago. 

To complete the fairytale, the auction house are also offering one of the most consequential sports artifacts ever to appear on the market,  the jersey that Michael Jordan wore during Game 3 of the 1998 NBA Finals, played on June 7, 1998, against the Utah Jazz at the United Center in Chicago. 

If the story is too tantalising for you to handle, the opportunity to own it is now underway, with Pharrell Williams’s auction house, Joopiter, offering it in an online auction which concludes on September 30th. The car is estimated to fetch anything between $700,000 and $1,300,000, but with days to go and the reserve already met, we predict this might be a slam dunk of a car for one lucky collector. 

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