That recent news item – about the Mafia-run factory in Sicily building fake Ferraris – made me laugh. Surely a potential buyer would hear the difference between an American V4 and a full-blooded Ferrari V8? Even the Police said the fakes were easily spotted because they have ‘narrower chassis and thinner wheels’.
There was a fake 250 GTO which used to come to Italian classic car events – the last place on earth the ill-advised owner should have shown his face. A collective shudder would go up from the other participants when the car tippy-toed, all tall and deformed, into the display area. People would look away, embarrassed. Except for one chap next to me who muttered, “What a terrible waste of a perfectly good Datsun 240Z.”
I’m sure that the market for these fakes is populated predominately by “Poseurs” who are fully aware of the fact that their cars are “look-a-likes”, and are quite happy to pose them at street level.
However anyone capable of subjecting a 240Z, a more recent classic in its own right, to such undignified hacking and then displaying it at Italian classic car events as a 250 GTO, can only be described as a “Plonker”
AlfaMartini | 14 Apr 08 - 14:40