Road-legal Venturi 400 Trophy for sale

There’s something a bit odd about the current fad for converting track-only hypercars into street-legal monsters. While they’re close to being race cars for the road, there isn’t the authenticity of competition pedigree or motorsport history; they can’t be competed in; and they can’t make for very nice road cars. Because they were built for track use. It all feels a bit unnecessary, a huge investment of time and money just to show off. Because what road, really, are you going to use a Porsche 935 on?

Anyway, excuse the rant. It’s pertinent because very closely aligned is the road-registered race car, and that’s very cool. Something with a bit of provenance, that’s competed on track when there are crowds in attendance (and not just catering trucks). There’s history, and perhaps some success, a story to tell beyond what can be achieved when the shackles are off. Racing cars are cool because they’re built specifically for motorsport and competition, not just ‘luxury’ track days. A rare racing car is even better, and one converted by the factory that built it even more so…

The Gentleman Driver’s Trophy is one of those things that could only have happened in the ’90s, when seemingly every car manufacturer was flush with ideas and cash. It was Venturi’s one-make series, where racers would go against each other across Europe in identical 400 GT Trophys. It was reasonably popular, too, running across four seasons and with 72 cars built. Hardly the Caterham Academy for cads, but surely many more Venturi Trophy cars than you’d imagine would have been built. 

Only a fraction are like this one, though. With road car sales slow in the middle of the decade, Venturi offered its motorsport customers the opportunity to convert their racers into road cars (presumably for a handsome fee). The original owner of this 1993 car, a Monsieur Francis Andriveau, was one of 10 who took Venturi up on the offer. Let’s all be very happy that he did, because this looks fantastic. 

It wasn’t a one-size-fits-all conversion, either, as clients could pick and choose which bits they kept from the Trophy and which came in from the road car. So this one had the cage retained (apparently one of just two to do so), the sliding windows switched for electric ones (good idea), air-con installed (also wise) and a few other bodywork tweaks to make it a little more agreeable on the road. The superb wheels are OZ Magensios, rather than the Futuras used on the race car. 

Despite the effort (and presumably expense) of the work, the Trophy hasn’t been driven a great deal on the public highway. It was sold to a French hillclimber after the conversion, though he didn’t do a great deal either, and it’s been in a collection since 2020 with just over 5,000km recorded. Factor in the race distances and it really hasn’t done very much in the near-30 years since. 

So here’s your chance! It’s not clear from the ad whether the Venturi is registered in the UK yet, though it is out on the road in the pics, so that’s encouraging. While incredibly rare, power comes from the old PRV V6, so there’s expertise around that. More than 400hp for 1,100kg will be incredibly exciting, and no less than Tiff Needell reckoned the Venturi was a really well-sorted mid-engined supercar. Everyone’s familiar with the Ferrari Challenges and the Porsches GTs; here’s something just a little different that’s cut from the same cloth. Why have the same classic road racer as everyone else, after all, when you could be the owner of a Venturi Trophy?