Cars in Miami Vice - Daytona Spider

Daytona Spider

During the first two seasons and two episodes from the third season, Detective Sonny Crockett drove a midnight black 1972 Ferrari Daytona Spyder 365 GTS/4 replica with a Florida license plate ZAQ178. Ferrari North America had turned down the request by Miami Vice for authentic Ferraris (they did the same with Magnum P.I., forcing that production to purchase 308 GTSs). Although Tom McBurnie is credited with planting the Daytona Spyder in the mind of the public, it was actually Al Mardekian, an importer of gray-market exoticars, who sold Miami Vice the two look-alike Ferraris for $49,000 each. In total two Corvette daytona replicas were used for the show, car 4 and then car 1 after the pilot which acted as the stunt car. McBurnie was hired to build the bodies for the Corvette-chassised cars. It was blown to pieces on the show with a hand-held Stinger missile launcher during an illegal arms deal. The Ferrari used in the first two seasons were rebodied corvettes based on a 76 corvette (car 1) and a 81 (car 4) Chevrolet Corvette C3 chassis that had been modified with Pininfarina-designed body panels by specialty car manufacturer McBurnie. The first appearance of the Daytona in the pilot episode is actually a real Ferrari. It only gets about ten seconds of screen time. The car is stationary, and Sonny is sitting in the driver’s seat, reading a newspaper. It can be clearly identified as a real Daytona (American version) by the door handles, side markers, windshield rake, and side vent windows.