# Ferrari Means Something Different on Every List
> Road car, racing team, or the film about beating it: Ferrari turns up in 14 rankings across cars, Formula 1, Le Mans and cinema. Same badge, different subject.
*By YPB Team · Published July 29, 2026 · https://youpick.best/articles/ferrari-ranked-many-ways*
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Ferrari at the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix — one badge, fourteen very different rankings. Photo: Lukas Raich, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Ferrari sold its first road car in 1947. The racing team is older than that — it was founded in 1929, and for most of the company's history the road cars existed to pay for it. Then a Hollywood studio spent $97.6 million on a film about an American team beating Ferrari, and the name became a movie title too.
So "Ferrari" is at least three things: a car you can buy, a team that races, and a character in someone else's story. Below it turns up in 14 rankings covering road cars, Formula 1, Le Mans and cinema.
> Ask "what is the best car brand" and Ferrari is a luxury object. Ask "what is the best sports movie" and Ferrari is the side that loses.
## The broadest question: is Ferrari the best car brand?
Thirty-two manufacturers are on this list, from Kia and Citroën to Rolls-Royce. Ferrari is one entry among them, judged against companies that sell more cars in a morning than Maranello builds in a year.
Ferrari's argument is that it never set out to be a car company. Enzo Ferrari founded the racing team in 1929 and only started selling road cars in 1947, to fund it.
Toyota's argument is the opposite one, and it has a very recent piece of evidence. On 14 June 2026 the No. 7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid won the 24 Hours of Le Mans — the company's sixth victory there — beating the works Ferraris on the way.
The trouble with the question is that it never defines "best". Volume, reliability, desirability and racing pedigree point at four different answers, and this list contains brands that win on each.
The broadest car question there is, and Ferrari is one of thirty-two answers. Play it →
## Ask for a single car, and Ferrari competes with itself
Sixty-five individual cars are on this list, and three of them are Ferraris: the 250 GTO, the F40 and the Testarossa. The brand's own models are therefore each other's closest rivals here.
The 250 GTO is the one with the money behind it. Thirty-six were built between 1962 and 1964, and a 250 GTO/330 LM sold at RM Sotheby's for $51,705,000 — a record for any Ferrari at auction.
It is still not the most expensive car ever auctioned. That is a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut coupé, which went for roughly $142 million in May 2023.
The Porsche 911 makes a different case entirely: it has been in continuous production since 1964, which is an argument about endurance rather than rarity. The Ford Model T and the Jaguar E-Type are on the same list, and they are arguments about something else again.
Sixty-five cars, three of them Ferraris — so they compete with each other. Play it →
## Narrow it to hypercars and the field gets specialised
This ranking covers 28 hypercars, and Ferrari has two entries: the Enzo and LaFerrari, its first hybrid flagship.
Bugatti has four cars here — the Veyron, Chiron, Divo and Bolide — which is more than Ferrari manages.
The McLaren F1 has the purest claim on the list. Built from 1992 with a central driving seat, it held the production-car speed record for years, and it did it without a turbo or an electric motor.
Then there are the specialists who exist only for this category: Koenigsegg with three entries, Pagani with two, and Rimac's electric Nevera. Ferrari helped invent the class, which is not the same as owning it.
Narrow the category to hypercars and Ferrari stops being the default. Play it →
## Remove every other brand and it gets harder, not easier
Here Ferrari is not one option on a list. Ferrari is the whole list: 18 of its own cars, spanning six decades.
The F40 is the sentimental favourite. Presented at Maranello in June 1987 for the company's fortieth anniversary, it was the last car Enzo Ferrari personally approved before his death in 1988, and 1,311 were built before production ended in 1992.
The 288 GTO came first, in 1984, and it is the reason the F40 exists — a turbocharged homologation special that proved Ferrari could still build something extreme in small numbers.
Against them sit the 250 GTO, the F50, the Enzo, LaFerrari and the Testarossa. Enzo Ferrari's own line on the subject was that the best Ferrari ever built is the next one, which is a convenient way of never answering the question.
Take everyone else out and the argument does not get easier. Play it →
## Same word, different sport: the most iconic Formula 1 car
Twelve single-seaters are on this list, and three of them are Ferraris from three different eras — the 312T of the mid-1970s, the 641 of 1990, and the F2004.
The F2004 is the one with the numbers. It won 15 of 18 races and carried Michael Schumacher to a fifth consecutive drivers' title, in what remains the most dominant season Ferrari has ever had.
Red Bull's RB19 has better numbers still. In 2023 it won 21 of 22 races, which is the highest win rate in Formula 1 history.
The rest of the list is a tour of other people's peaks: McLaren's MP4/4, the Williams FW14B, the Lotus 72, and the Mercedes W11. Ferrari holds the records for most wins, most points and most podiums in Formula 1 — but "iconic" is not the same measurement.
Three Ferraris on a twelve-car list, and all from different decades. Play it →
## Ferrari as the question: who drove it best?
Eleven drivers are on this list, and the only thing they have in common is the car they drove. Nine different drivers have won a world championship for Ferrari.
Alberto Ascari was the first to do it twice, taking back-to-back titles in 1952 and 1953. He is the start of the line this ranking is about.
Lewis Hamilton is the newest name on it. He arrived in 2025 with seven championships already won elsewhere, in one of the largest driver moves the sport has seen.
Michael Schumacher is the benchmark between them, with five consecutive titles and 72 Grands Prix for the team. Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz are also here, and both left Maranello without adding a Ferrari title — which is what makes this list an argument rather than a roll of honour.
Here Ferrari is not on the list — Ferrari is the list. Play it →
## A list you can only enter by winning Le Mans
Every car on this ranking has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and Ferrari has two of the fifteen: the 250 LM from the 1960s and the 499P hypercar.
Ferrari owned the race once. It won six years in a row from 1960 to 1965, which is the streak the whole Ford v Ferrari story is built around.
The Ford GT40 ended it in 1966 with a 1-2-3 finish, sixteen laps ahead of the nearest car, and then won Le Mans again in 1967, 1968 and 1969.
The 499P brought Ferrari back, winning in 2023, 2024 and 2025 — and then losing in 2026, with the best of the three cars fifth. Porsche has three entries on this list, more than anyone, so the club Ferrari joined is not one it dominates.
A club you can only enter by winning — and Ferrari has two cars in it. Play it →
## Pick one decade and the picture inverts
This ranking asks for the greatest Formula 1 cars of the 2010s. Six of the thirteen are Mercedes and four are Red Bulls, which leaves Ferrari with two: the F2010 and the SF70H of 2017.
The Mercedes W07 is the reason. In 2016 it won 19 of 21 races, and Mercedes took eight consecutive constructors' championships from 2014.
Ferrari's own timeline explains the shortfall. Its last drivers' championship was Kimi Räikkönen's in 2007 and its last constructors' title came in 2008 — so the decade this list covers is precisely the one Ferrari did not win.
That is the honest counterweight to everything above. Ferrari holds 16 constructors' championships, more than any team in the sport, and none of them arrived in the ten years this ranking is about.
Choose a decade instead of all time, and the picture changes completely. Play it →
## Now the name is a film, and the film is about beating Ferrari
From here on, "Ferrari" stops being a car. On this list of 20 sports films it is half of a title — *Ford v Ferrari*, the 2019 drama about the American effort to end Ferrari's run at Le Mans.
The film did well by every outside measure. Made for $97.6 million, it took $226.3 million worldwide, won the Academy Awards for Film Editing and Sound Editing, and became the first motor-racing film nominated for Best Picture.
*Rocky* is the obstacle. It won Best Picture outright in 1976 and it defined what a sports film is allowed to be.
The wider list is mostly baseball and boxing — *Raging Bull*, *Field of Dreams*, *Bull Durham*, *Million Dollar Baby*, *Moneyball*. Motor racing gets exactly one entry, and Ferrari is the antagonist in it.
Now the name is a film title — and the film is about beating Ferrari. Play it →
## Change the filter from genre to studio
*Ford v Ferrari* was made by 20th Century Studios, so it also lands on a list of that studio's 16 best films — and the company it keeps there is much heavier.
*Star Wars* is on this list. So are *Titanic*, *Alien*, *Die Hard*, *The Sound of Music* and *Avatar*, several of which held the all-time box-office record.
*Ford v Ferrari* is the newest film in the group by a decade, which means it has had the least time to become anyone's favourite.
The same film, judged twice: on the sports-genre list it is the only motor-racing entry, and on the studio list it is a 2019 racing drama standing next to *Star Wars*. Neither reading is wrong — they are different questions.
Swap the filter from genre to studio and the company gets much heavier. Play it →
## Ferrari, filed under Christian Bale
Bale plays Ken Miles in *Ford v Ferrari* — the British driver who develops the GT40 and takes it to Le Mans in 1966. That performance is one of twelve options on a ranking of his whole career.
*The Dark Knight* is the immediate problem. Bale's Bruce Wayne anchors Christopher Nolan's 2008 film, and for a lot of people it is the only Bale performance they can name.
His other entries are the ones critics reach for: *American Psycho*, *The Machinist*, *The Fighter* — which won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2010 — and *Vice*.
So a racing driver in a film about beating Ferrari has to beat Batman, a Wall Street psychopath and an Oscar. This is the point in the article where Ferrari has stopped being the subject altogether and become a credit on someone else's CV.
Ranked as an actor's work, the Ferrari film is up against Batman. Play it →
## And filed again under Matt Damon
Damon plays Carroll Shelby in the same film — the man Ford hires to build a car capable of beating Ferrari. On a ranking of his 13 best films, that is one line item.
*Good Will Hunting* is the film he is measured against. Damon co-wrote it with Ben Affleck and the two of them won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1998, when he was 27.
The rest of the list is a career built on scale: *The Bourne Identity*, *Saving Private Ryan*, *The Departed*, *The Martian*, *Interstellar*, *Ocean's Eleven*.
Two of Ferrari's four cinema appearances in this article come from a single 2019 film, and in both of them the brand is a plot obstacle rather than a subject. That is a very different kind of fame from the one it has on a list of the best cars ever built.
A thirteen-film career list, and the racing one has to fight for space. Play it →
## The list where the option is simply called "Ferrari"
On this ranking of Adam Driver's 16 films, one option is titled *Ferrari* with nothing after it — Michael Mann's 2023 biopic, with Driver as Enzo Ferrari in the summer of 1957, when the company was close to collapse.
Commercially it went the opposite way to *Ford v Ferrari*. Made for about $95 million, it took roughly $43 million worldwide, though it holds a 73% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and later found an audience on streaming.
*Marriage Story* is the performance that anchors this list. Noah Baumbach's 2019 film earned Driver a Best Actor nomination.
He also has two *Star Wars* films here, plus *BlacKkKlansman*, *Paterson* and *Inside Llewyn Davis*. A film named after the company is competing with Kylo Ren.
The one list where the option is just "Ferrari" — and it is a film. Play it →
## Four steps from a racetrack: Ferrari on a Spanish-cinema list
The last stop is a ranking of Penélope Cruz's 14 best films, where *Ferrari* appears because she plays Laura Ferrari, Enzo's wife and the co-owner of the company.
*Volver* is the film she is judged against. Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 drama earned Cruz a Best Actress nomination, and it is the performance most often named when critics discuss her work.
Her Academy Award came two years later, for Best Supporting Actress in *Vicky Cristina Barcelona*. Both films are on this list, along with *All About My Mother*, *Parallel Mothers* and *Pain and Glory* — four Almodóvar collaborations in total.
Which puts the Italian car company on a list dominated by Spanish auteur cinema, in a supporting role, five questions away from anything with wheels. That is as far from "best car brand" as this name gets.
Four steps from a racetrack: Ferrari on a Spanish-cinema list. Play it →
## One badge, fourteen different subjects
A brand, a racing team, a single car, a decade, an actor's filmography — change the frame and Ferrari changes with it. The company with the most constructors' championships in Formula 1 is also the villain of a Best Picture nominee, and both of those are true on the same afternoon.
That is why a single "best Ferrari" list was never going to settle anything. The question does the work, and the answer just follows it around. It's the same trick behind every ranking here — judging things [two at a time](/articles/what-is-pairwise-comparison).
All 14 rankings, in one place:
- [What is the best car brand?](/ranking/what-is-the-best-car-brand)
- [What is the best car of all time?](/ranking/what-is-the-best-car-of-all-time)
- [The 28 Greatest Hypercars of All Time](/ranking/the-28-greatest-hypercars-of-all-time)
- [The 18 Greatest Ferrari Cars of All Time](/ranking/the-18-greatest-ferrari-cars-of-all-time)
- [What is the most iconic Formula 1 car of all time?](/ranking/what-is-the-most-iconic-formula-1-car-of-all-time)
- [Top 11 Ferrari Formula 1 Drivers of All Time](/ranking/top-11-ferrari-formula-1-drivers-of-all-time)
- [The 15 Best Le Mans-Winning Cars of All Time](/ranking/the-15-best-le-mans-winning-cars-of-all-time)
- [The 13 Greatest F1 Cars of the 2010s](/ranking/the-13-greatest-f1-cars-of-the-2010s)
- [The 20 Greatest Sports Movies of All Time](/ranking/the-20-greatest-sports-movies-of-all-time)
- [Top 16 20th Century Studios Films of All Time](/ranking/top-16-20th-century-studios-films-of-all-time)
- [What is the best Christian Bale performance of all time?](/ranking/what-is-the-best-christian-bale-performance-of-all-time)
- [What is the best Matt Damon movie of all time?](/ranking/what-is-the-best-matt-damon-movie-of-all-time)
- [What is the best Adam Driver movie?](/ranking/what-is-the-best-adam-driver-movie)
- [What is the best Penélope Cruz movie?](/ranking/what-is-the-best-penelope-cruz-movie)
Pick the question you actually care about, and vote it out.
## More rankings, more angles
- [How Many Ways Can You Rank Fernando Alonso?](/articles/how-many-ways-to-rank-fernando-alonso) — a Ferrari driver, ranked every way
- [How Many Ways Can You Rank Matt Damon?](/articles/how-many-ways-to-rank-matt-damon) — the other side of the *Ford v Ferrari* list
- [How Head-to-Head Voting Works](/articles/how-head-to-head-voting-works) — why two options beat a long list
