If any of you consider yourselves card-carrying members of the Ferrari F40 fan club, now may be a good time to look away. What you’re about to learn is going to make you sick. If you have the will to push on, then you’re in for a sobering reminder of the frailties of the auto collecting. See, this here is a Ferrari F40, or at least it was a Ferrari F40 until it caught fire and burned beyond recognition. If that isn’t heartbreaking enough, this particular model is not just an “ordinary” F40; it’s actually one of eight F40 prototypes Ferrari used to help develop one of the most iconic supercars to come out of Maranello.

There’s no word yet on the cause of the fire, but according to the Italian website IVG, the prototype was part of a Ferrari contingent that was on a road trip to Maranello, home of the Prancing Horse. The car’s owner, millionaire auto collector Jon Hunt, was reportedly behind the wheel of the car and was on his way to Ferrari HQ to pick up his brand new Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta when disaster struck, leaving his prized possession into the skeletal mess that it is now. Hopefully, word comes out on what exactly happened to this Ferrari F40 prototype. It’s an absolute travesty for a car of this status to go out like this, so the least we can do is find out what caused the blaze.

Continue after the jump to read the full story.

Be still our bleeding hearts

Hard as it is to come to grips seeing a Ferrari F40 prototype end up looking like this, I can’t imagine what its owner, Jon Hunt, must be feeling seeing one of his prized exotics suffer this ignominious fate. I know some of you will say, “he’s a millionaire; he’ll get over it!” That may be true, but it still doesn’t make up for the fact that despite his stature – he’s the guy who runs Tax The Rich – this F40 is arguably one of the rarest ones in the world. It doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you make, watching your prized F40 prototype burn to the ground is going to bring you to your knees as tears stream down your face.

Note: Production Ferrari F40 shown here

To make things worse for Hunt, this actually isn’t the first time a car from his collection was roasted. Back in 2013, his Lamborghini Miura SV was also burned to a crip in central London. Videos of that debacle are still online. So while you’re still in a state of despair over seeing the charred remains of the F40 prototype, you might as well dive into the deep end of the pool and watch the video of his Miura SV suffering a similar fate.

As for Hunt, I don’t know what to say, really. The good news here is that even after seeing his F40 prototype get burned to bits, he still has a pretty sweet Ferrari car collection that includes, among other beauties, a Ferrari F50, a Ferrari Enzo, and one of Maranello’s holiest of holy grails, a 388 GTO. Here’s to hoping that he doesn’t bring that car out on the road anytime soon because if that happens and the 288 GTO gets toasted, well, there won't be enough curse words in the dictionary to properly describe the horror of seeing that car meet an untimely demise.

Read our full review of the 1987 - 1992 Ferrari F40 here.0

Read our full review of the 1987 - 1992 Ferrari F40 here.