You know a car is special at a show like ULTRACE when people start kneeling on the concrete. Around this one, a photographer was crouched against a planter with his lens up, a dozen people stood behind him filming on phones, and a few more leaned in from the side to get the rear wing in frame. The car was a deep purple Ferrari 360, which we posted as a Ferrari 360 N-GT ("F360 N-GT" in the caption, under three speaker emojis).
What we saw on the purple Ferrari 360
We filmed it from behind and above, the way most of the crowd saw it. Here is the list, nothing added:
- Paint. A deep metallic purple that reads almost black in the shade.
- Wing. A big fixed rear wing on tall uprights, spanning the full width of the tail.
- Stripe. A green, white and red Italian tricolore band running over the roof, the engine cover and down the tail panel.
- Engine cover. Clear, slatted panels over the V8, so you can see into the engine bay.
- Fuel filler. A round quick-fill cap set into the rear quarter, behind the side window.
- Wheels. Gold multi-spoke wheels.
- Exhaust. The 360's paired round tailpipes, two each side.
- Plates. German registration with the small 04 and 10 on the right, which makes it a seasonal plate: legal on the road from April to October.
What a Ferrari 360 N-GT is
The 360 Modena arrived in 1999 as Ferrari's mid-engined V8 coupe, with an aluminium chassis and a 3.6-litre V8. Alongside the road car and the one-make Challenge racer, Ferrari had the Italian race-car builder Michelotto develop a GT racing version for the FIA's N-GT class, which ran in the FIA GT Championship in the early 2000s. Those cars are known as the 360 N-GT. They were proper competition machines, with fixed wings, stripped interiors and quick-fill fuel systems.
That is what our caption claims this car is. We didn't get its history from the owner, so we can't tell you whether it is an ex-championship car, a Challenge car upgraded to N-GT specification, or a road 360 built in that style, and we won't guess. What we can say is that it is road-registered and that it looked every bit the part.
Why it worked at ULTRACE 2025
ULTRACE, held around Wrocław's Tarczyński Arena at the end of June 2025, is a curated show: close to a thousand cars chosen from thousands of applications, as we explained in our ULTRACE 2025 Wrocław coverage. Most of the field is tuned Japanese and German metal, so a purple Italian racer with gold wheels stands out the way a Hakosuka would at a Ferrari club day. It also had good company. The same weekend brought the Judd V8 ex-Georg Plasa BMW E36 M3, another race car that somehow ended up among the show cars, and the art car and kaido racer in our ULTRACE 2025 postcards.
The verdict
Race cars at car shows are usually roped off and silent. This one sat in the open with people close enough to touch the wing, which is the best way to see a car like this. If it really is one of the racing 360s, it is one of the rarest Ferraris of its generation, and it was parked a few metres from a planter of bamboo in Poland.
Photos and video: One Breath Pictures.
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