This is Alain Prost’s Ferrari 641 Formula 1 steering wheel from 1990, it was his first season at Ferrari after the reigning World Champion was lured away from McLaren to partner Nigel Mansell – creating one of the greatest driver line-ups of the period.
Prost would take 5 victories during the 1990 season with Mansell taking an additional win, the drivers would pilot the car to 14 podium positions in total, with 3 pole positions, and 5 fastest laps.
The relative lack of buttons, switches, and screens is a stark contrast to modern Formula 1 steering wheels. This wheel has just one button and one stitch, with a single cable to plug it in.
The steering wheel was kept as a memento by Ferrari F1 engineer Nigel Stepney after his exit from the Ferrari team, and it comes with a certificate explaining its history and provenance.
RM Sotheby’s are estimating that it’ll sell for between $2,600 and $3,900 USD, though obviously not cheap it’s pretty reasonable for a piece of Formula 1 history this significant. Sadly there’s currently no word on where you’ll be able to source a boss kit from to fit it to your 1998 Honda Civic.
Images: Jack Margerison ©2018 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
