Vanilla Ice is a car collector just as much as he is a rapper. He owns cars he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and never actually drove. "They're collector cars," he explains. That means that the lower the mileage, the higher the price. His Ferrari F8 Spider is one of them. He recalls that Ferrari threatened to throw him out of the factory if he took photos.
Robert van Winkle, famously known as Vanilla Ice, owns the first Rolls-Royce Phantom VII ever built in Goodwood, in 2003, with zero miles on the clock. He can't even think of ever driving it. "Somebody could crash it," he says. He got to meet the CEO of Rolls-Royce while participating in the "Dancing on Ice" TV show.
It was she who invited him to the factory in the UK to see how Rolls-Royces are built. And it was then that he decided to get one. He got one of the most special: the first-ever Rolls-Royce Phantom VII.
Meanwhile, his Ferrari drove as far as 1,400 miles (2,253 kilometers). He has been recently spotted driving the Prancing Horse in Miami. Back in February, the rapper described the sports car as being "sexy."
In love with the Italian car, he still says that his recently restored 1989 Ford Mustang is his "baby." The car showed up in his "Ice Ice Baby" music video in 1990.
To spec the Ferrari, Vanilla Ice went to Maranello, Italy, with his wife and watched the it being built right in front o f his eyes. He was impressed by the innovative procedures the Italians used to get his car together as parts came out of "smoke," carried by robots, while several interior components were still hand-made.
Photo: Vlad TV | YouTube
Vanilla Ice, on his real name Robert van Winkle, was dying to take his phone out and film the procedure. But Ferrari glued tape on his camera and threatened to throw him out the door if he took a single photograph. That is classified information by Ferrari standards.
Furthermore, the Italians from the factory made him stand behind a yellow line. "If you cross that yellow line, you're out of here, we don't care if you're Vanilla Ice or not," they told him.
Robert got to see the championship-winning F1 race car driven by the seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher. But again, he had to hold back his desperate desire to take photographs of the car. He has been a huge Schumacher fan for ages and that is why he bought a Ferrari in the first place. However, he doesn't really drive it.
Asked what model it is, Robert only says "It's a Spider." It is, in fact, an F8 Spider, the mid-engine sports car that came to the market in 2019 as a replacement for the 488.
The model is powered by Ferrari's award-winning 3.9-liter twin-turbocharged V8 engine, pumping out 710 horsepower (720 metric horsepower) and 568 pound-feet (770 Newton meters) of torque, figures that made it the most powerful Ferrari at the time.
The V8 power plant is mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission for a run from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 kph) in 2.9 seconds, it hits 124 mph (200 kph) in 8.2 and reaches a top speed of 210 mph (340 kph).
Vanilla Ice's Ferrari sports a head-turning spec. It is painted in Avorio (Ivory) over a red leather interior.
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