Moon Over Miami Vice: A Sailor Star Ferrari Story

Here’s a deep dark secret: I’ve been obsessed for almost thirty years with a Japanese anime cartoon called Sailor Moon. It came out right about the time I was hitting middle school, and it tells the story of a clumsy, self-conscious girl named Usagi who finds out that she is a Chosen One. Her superpowers are awoken by a talking cat named Luna, who informs her that she is the princess of an ancient fallen moon kingdom, and it is her job to save earth and all of humanity from whatever evil that may strike.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what in the world all of this has to do with a car blog, and I’ll tell you - there is a huge Venn diagram of Ferraris and popular culture that sort of explains my obsession with the Testarossa as the greatest car of all time. And yes, we do talk a lot about Porsches and American Muscle and Euro speedsters, but my heart and soul is firmly with Ferrari at the end of the day. Our longtime readers will remember an early blog that I wrote about Miami Vice and the Ferrari Daytona that gets destroyed by a stinger missile in one episode. It was replaced with a white Testarossa for later seasons, and that car has never let go of my heart.

Well, Sailor Moon’s fellow Sailor Guardian, Haruka, is a young race car driver who has a similar white Testarossa in the comics; it’s red in the 1990s version of the show and then baby blue in the recent remake film on Netflix. As a car guy and a Japanese cartoon and comic book nerd, there is no better crossover in my mind than Ferrari and Sailor Moon. It is well known among us Moonies that author Naoko Takeuchi’s favorite car of all time is the Testarossa 512, so when I was driving to Walmart last weekend, I was absolutely gobsmacked to see a Testarossa with the license plate “MOONIE” in classic Ferrari red in the parking lot. Like, who even drives their classic Ferrari to Walmart? And there was even this clever little window sticker of Sailor Moon peeking out of the rear quarter glass.

Unfortunately, I had to crop the picture really closely because Usagi was giving a rude gesture with one finger, and it ruined the cuteness. Still, it was an epic find in the wild, and I’ll treasure it forever. I even considered stalking the owner in the parking lot just to give them a high-five, but taking a closeup picture of their car was creepy enough already. So, that’s my deep, dark secret, dear readers. I hope you enjoyed this week’s entry as much as I did.

-Trey Fennell