Fourteen thousand runs don’t take up much space but a Ferrari does. So Sachin Tendulkar has got rid of his scarlet beauty.

The master blaster has sold off the Ferrari gifted to him by the automobile major in 2002 when he equalled Don Bradman’s record of 29 Test centuries.

The car, then worth Rs 75 lakh, was snapped up by Surat builder Jayesh B. Shah for about Rs 1.5 crore earlier this month.

A source close to Sachin, who has over 14,000 Test runs, said he was keen to dispose of the car before he shifted to his new five-storey bungalow on Perry Cross Road in Bandra.

The house, built on a 10,000sqft plot, has two floors below the ground level, one for his cars. Sachin has 40 cars, which he parks at different places where he owns properties. The fleet includes a BMW, a Porsche Boxster and a Mercedes C-36.

“The Ferrari would take up a lot of parking space, besides he never used it much in any case since the 2002 controversy,” the source said.

In September that year, then finance minister Jaswant Singh had promised Sachin the government would waive customs duty on the car. But the rules said duty can be waived only if a car was received as a prize, not as a gift.

In May 2003, the NDA government tried to change the Customs Act to accommodate “gifts”. The Ferrari was allowed to be brought to India without payment of duty of Rs 1.13 crore.

When the move to waive the duty became public, it led to a raucous debate, and a PIL was filed in Delhi High Court.

Fiat, which owns a considerable stake in Ferrari, later paid the import duty.

The source close to Sachin said the cricketer decided to sell the Ferrari, handed over to him by F1 champ Michael Schumacher, when he was awarded a Volvo S80 luxury sedan last February as man of a one-day series.

So the Ferrari, which used to turn heads on Mumbai’s streets whenever Sachin took it out for a spin on a rare day, is now evoking the same response in Surat, if not more.

But Jayesh, the new owner of the 360 Modena, is not comfortable.

“Many have got to know it used to be Sachin’s car. So it generates a lot of attention on the streets and it can be unnerving at times,” says the builder, who at 38 is the same age as Sachin.“I was on the phone with my trusted chauffer who drove the car from Mumbai all through the three hours it took for the Ferrari to reach Surat. I was asking him to drive at not more than 120kmph, though the car can reach a top speed of 360kmph,” he said.

For Jayesh, it’s a collector’s item. “It was handed over by the legendary Michael Schumacher to the legendary Sachin Tendulkar for equaling the feat of the legendary Don Bradman,” he said. “So it’s a hat-trick.”