When news broke that the groundbreaking 1980s TV series Miami Vice is being made into a top-shelf Hollywood film, there was one question on many fans’ lips, and it wasn’t who’d play detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs: it was which Ferrari will they be using, the Daytona or the Testarossa?

And now we have our answer. Miami Vice ’85 features Austin Butler playing Crockett, Michael B. Jordan playing Tubbs and, more importantly, a white Testarossa in the automotive starring role.

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The action thriller – which takes the series back to its roots in the ’80s as opposed to the 2006 movie starring Colin Farrell, set in the present day – is currently filming, and new spy footage from the set has confirmed the mid-engine Prancing Horse has won the role over its front-engine predecessor.

Footage from the set (below) clearly shows Butler climbing out of the driver’s seat of a white 1986 Testarossa that appears identical to the one Crockett drove from the show’s third season. Naturally, he’s wearing a stylish, loose-fitting pastel suit in the sort of fashion statement the series became famous for.

The story of the two Vice Ferraris features as much drama as an episode from the show. When it kicked off in 1984, Crockett was driving a replica black 1972 Daytona Spyder 365 GTS/4 (pictured, top) so he could convincingly pose as a drug dealer during a period when the city was awash with cocaine.

The replica was a bloody good one, but not good enough to win the approval of Ferrari, which refused to give the producers the real thing. So they turned to McBurnie Coachcraft to build two stand-ins, both based on chassis from the Corvette C3.

Ferrari even fired off letters to McBurnie, accusing the firm of devaluing the brand and making a mockery of the marque’s heritage. The problem was solved in the first episode of season 3, when an arms dealer showed the detectives that his Stinger missiles worked by using one to blow up the “Daytona”.

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The Italian manufacturer had a change of heart and gave the show two white Testarossas to portray the Daytona’s replacement. “Three hundred and forty horsepower, 180 miles an hour, new paint, new rubber,” Crockett says the first time he lays eyes on the car (pictured above), with Tubbs chiming in, “Absolutely essential for any type of serious police work.”

There haven’t been any major leaks about the plot of Miami Vice ‘85, but it’s rumoured to be heavily based on the pilot episode of the show, Brother’s Keeper. It sees Crockett and Tubbs – who hails from New York – team up for the first time in an attempt to take down a Colombian drug lord.