The official replica/re-creation thread

So is a drogo a fake, a rebody, how is this so different from a good SWB rebuild of a 250 GTE. And no one has answered the question about the DB4gt zagato sanction 2. Or how would you classify the new build Lola T70, or Chevron B8. FIA thinks these cars are OK. And how much of a supposedly
original GT40 or Lola T70 is actualy car built in the 60's. Ill bet given the rust issues very few if any track driven GT40 has its original tub, and the body work on many has been crashed and replaced. Suspension pieces discarded after cracks found. We are talking about Geoprge washingtons ax here. What seperates some of these cars is provenance. Provenance adds value, not necessarily desirability. As they say in Italy, all may be geuine, some are original too.

I think it is time to get with the reality of the situation, lets try follow what the FIA has done.

How much of that gacier p38 is original? Even a p51 is ulikely to have a whole lot of orinal plane left. One could argue that a great recreation is a better option as it can really be driven in anger without risking ruining or bending a "genuine" historical aritfact.

Frankly while there are lines to be drawn between plastic fakey doos, the objection to great recreations is car snobbery. Hey no one objects to the new build auto unions, or what about the lancia F1 cars that were built from drawings using original motors.

 

I don't think that a Sanction by FIA should be a valid reference to consider a car a fake or recreation... It only means the car can run in historic races sanctionned by them (?), but you just need to see their ruling in F1 races... just pathetic.

Recreations approved by Manufacturers is another story... For me it's really a grey zone...

 

But FIA sanction does point to a wide swath of "legitimacy" for many of these cars, amongst manufacturers historic racers and fans. Clearly this is not as simple a debate or discussion as many "historic" racers in the US would like us to belive. A lot of the snobbery related to these cars is tied up in value both in retaing absurd prices for some cars and creating an exclusive club based on extreme ammounts of $$$ to join. BTW historic racers started as a relatively inexpensive entry(the cars were cheap) for those who really just loved the machines for whast they were and wanted to run them. Much like many recreations and or replicas today, exept great recreations and replicas are inexpensive only in comparison to the price paid for an original..

 

There are certain 'what if' situations that get some people rubbing their collective chins regarding what to do with these chassis when there is almost nothing left one could possibly do with them.

In a situation where a 250gte is wrecked beyond repair or is a fire victim, I can almost understand when that person may chose to rebody the car into something else rather than the original GTE. At that point a person is thinking, do I want to put $200k+ into making my car back into a GTE like it was which is worth $100k or so, or do I want to put $200k+ into making it GTO, SWB, CA spyder, or whatever where the value is still going to be roughly the same or perhaps somewhat greater. The biggest opponents of what they are doing are the originality crowds which, let's face it, not every owner is all that mindful of anyway.

Personally, I would not have the heart to do it, but for those who have been faced with the above situation I do not blame if they took an original GTE chassis (or whatever similar Ferrari chassis for that matter) that was going to be scrapped, parted out, etc, and made it into something that does some good for themselves personally, if not necessarily all that great for the marque's most enthusiastic.

 

When posting this thread I should have suspected a can of worms to be opened, but I didn;t see it going in the direction of a general discussion on originality.

What an owner does with the chassis he has, or complete car for that matter, is his choice, wether we like it or not. In the seventies and eighties, especially 250 GTE's and 330 2+2's were not terribly expensive, and many fell victim to those who chose to alter them. With prices of the 'real deal' being what they are now, the relative difference is apparently big enough to pursuade some to still practice along these lines, and there is precious little anyone can do about it. Wether we like it or not, or wether the original car was salvageble or not is not the point, it is being done.

What the FIA rules, does have little to do with what the car at hand constitutes. To me it looks more like if a car conforms what it was at the date of homologation of the original, it can race, and this can be interpreted with some space, seen what is raced these days. It is not a parameter for the collector's world. A perfect E-type lightweight can be built from scratch quite easily, and so can anything else. I aplaud that, for it avoids the original cars to be destroyed. Wether this car is built with the sanction of the factory is irrelevant, it is not, nor will it ever be, an original. Didn't we have a GTO owner who had a copy built for racing? To me that makes perfect sense.

Where the waters get really clouded is, when a car is given an identity that is un-just. This has nothing to do with the quality of the car or what it purturbs to be, but everything with the owner/seller. Even provenance can not be trusted blindly, as an example, who would have not trusted Brocket before he was unmasked, and wasn't, for instance, the SWB he sold a very good replica/recreation? At that point, the car became a fake. It was passed as the real thing. Only weeks ago a 250 TR was discussed, where doubts were raised. There are many others.

Marcel said it right: due dilligence. That is of course true. I am hoping that we can accumulate the information on those cars that were identified as fakes in this thread. And discuss those who may or may not be fakes. This without the essense being lost in a wide discussion wether one can or cannot.

To quote Ed Niles: Post pics. I'll add: Chassis and engine numbers.

 

A genuine rebody by Drogo was done in time (in the 1960s) and NOT after Drogo closed its shop and after Piero Drogo died. The problem is that today even Drogo rebodies have been copied! Same for Nembo (Neri & Bonacini).
If it was done in time, it can be considered different than if today somebody uses a 250 GTE as donor car and builds a GTO or SWB Berlinetta out of it.
The MAIN problem however are the owners (and dealers) of these fakes and replicas, simply because they often declare it as a real and genuine car, fooling the people with less knowledge. Unfortunately I know since 30 years a well-known car dealer (and f-chatter!) on the US West Coast who repeatedly told me very clearly his own philosophy: "I have no problems with replicas, all you have to do is to find a victim, every morning somewhere in this world a blockhead wakes up, a guy who doesn't know the difference between a genuine car and a fake, all I have to do is to find that idiot and I can sell it to him......". With THIS mentality and philosophy it is really dangerous. Said dealer is still in business today!! No, I will not mention his name.

Marcel Massini

 

Long before his games were uncovered I was approached (by fax) by the good Lord. He asked me to "improve" the history and provenance of the 212 Inter Coupé Vignale #0239 EU that he owned at the time and to make it look like/describe it henceforth as a 250 Mille Miglia (which it never was). He offered good compensaton for this "service". I refused and he was not amused. Neither was I.

Marcel Massini

 

Boiling down some of the themes here. It seems that misreprenting a CAR as to originality is the major crime people are objecting to and these are termed and defined as "fakes".

Yet when it comes to recreations or replicas many seem to find them acceptable and even desirable whith the differntiators being faithfulness and quality of the vehicle.

This view is different to that espoused by SCM and some other posters here who find any car, no matter how accuirate a copy, rebody etc nothing more than a FAKE, and they use this tern not only as a form of representaion but also as a statement of vehicle acceptability or desirability.

 

I don't think this is a can of worms but a very legitimate discussion as such a thread may help buyers to be more aware when they decide to purchase a vintage Ferrari...

 

Wow, Marcel, amazing story.

I think a lot of the previous posts boil down to the same thing - if the replica/fake/whatever is used to portray itself for what it's not, then we should have a problem with it. But I fear we will have a debate about it as long as we still burn fossilized fuels and probably long after....


Onno

 

I'm sure this thread is a replica of a real one somewhere ...

Do we really have to keep discussing this?

Here are the rules:
1. Using a genuine Ferrari to create a replica is simply wrong, shameful and should require a person to hand in their ability to be considered a car enthusiast. If your 250GTE is burnt to the ground and you do not want to restore it back to a GTE due to cost, sell the car to somebody who wants to. Otherwise if we allow this there will be a stack of suspicious fires through out the world resulting in burnt 250GTE's so owners can not feel so bad about creating a replica. If 250GTE's revolt you that much, shame on you ... again hand in your ability to be considered a car enthusiast.

2. Cars that were converted in period ARE NEVER replicas, even if they were made to replicate some other model. A replica/fake/'piece of cr@p' means a car that is built to look like an old more expensive/'sort after model' today (or since the pathetic '80s). This whole concept is a modern one because newer cars are utter rubbish and many enthusiasts continue to dream about the days when cars were more involving (ie. required driver input instead of some soulless computer thingy), etc.

3. Creating a replica of a Ferrari using non-Ferrari components, making own chassis, whatever should be applauded because while the end result might not always be perfect, the builder had morals and simply wanted to get as close as they could to their dream car. As long as they don't miss-represent the end result.

Pete

 

Well said, Pete ! (I was wondering when you were going to chime in ).

PS: I know Marcel gets particularly annoyed about two Swiss P4 replica owners, who regularly mis-represent their (albeit Ferrari V12-powered) P4 replicas. Having had a couple of incidences of this kind of thing, in the UK this year, one of which was tantamount to an attempted fraud, by the owner, that needed the involvement of Ferrari S.p.A.'s UK Classiche representative to get the car withdrawn from sale (see post #3), I'm beginning to get a bit annoyed with the 'fakers' myself.

 

It's nice to see a thead dedicated to replicas, recreations or fakes, however, we have discussed the morality of using existing chassis from "lesser" Ferraris as donors many times before in other threads. I would like to see this thread used as a forum for photos of these cars, that is the only way we are going to be able to identify them when they are displayed. I don't want to see the philosophical discussion go away, but more photos to illustrate this thread would be nice. I only post photos I've taken myself so I have just two examples so far.

 

This is a copy and paste of a post I made in 'P4 Replica' thread in the 'Other Cars - General Discussion' section recently.
Many of these photos, on Flickr, were orginally captioned incorrectly - as the real cars, e.g. "Ferrari P4" or "Ferrari 330P4".
In most cases, by adding comments, I've requested that the photographers re-caption the photos, adding the word 'replica'.
If they declined (or simply couldn't be bothered), I've re-tagged their photos, accordingly, once in they were in the group pool.

There are dozens of other photos of 'fake Ferraris' on Flickr - particularly 250GTO's - if you're prepared to do a bit of searching.

 

Towards the end of my little campaign, I was getting more than a bit fed up of finding photos of a certain Noble P4 replica, which appeared at the Knockhill Speedfair, Scotland, in June, hilariously described as 'Jackie Stewart's 1967 Brands Hatch Ferrari 330P4'.

Here's an example of me, beginning to 'lose it'.

Photographer's caption, under photo: Ferrari 330P4 as driven by Sir Jackie Stewart in 1967.

Comment left by me (copied and pasted onto all 10 of his photos in that set):

There's 30+ images of this particular car in our Flickr group pool: http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=%236&w=809640%40N24&m=pool

It also appears in a couple of (similarly erroniously captioned) YouTube videos: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_djzPcUc9zA

Obviously, anyone on FerrariChat would know that this was just a replica. Seems the local Scottish punters were more easily fooled.

 

Here is the Barraclough-Nembo-REPLICA. I don't know the chassis number. And here you can find #5805GT: http://www.barchetta.cc/english/All.Ferraris/Detail/5805GT.330.GT.htm
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Thank you Francis:

Much appreciated!

Barracloughs car looks quite correct from that angle but it is the rear 3 quarter view that shows it to be too flat. I had met Barraclough during the Norwich RAC union run, in the infiled at Silverstone, in 87 or 88...

5805 looks too short...wish you could make it longer like a rubber car!

 

Marcel, I am very pleased to see you entering the discussion on this subject. As you well know from your long experience with Ferrari history and provenance, without rules and organizations to enforce those rules there is no way to bring any legitimacy to these creations that Enzo Ferrari left us. I hope that if anything ever gets started to to bring some sense of order to the "replicars" that you will lend you support and advice. If nothing else it could help make your efforts with the "real thing" a great deal less complicated. just one man's opinion tongascrew

 

It's really too bad that so many car dealers with the "a sucker is born every day" attitude regarding the selling and misrepresenting replicas. Wasn't there a number of Italian companies in the mid '80s pumping out SWBs and the like?

A well-known Maserati collector I know takes the originality and preservation of his Maserati GT cars very seriously. He does have some very serious cars, but when he restores a car he does not take into account the value of the car so much as he amplifies that he wants it done correctly regardless of cost. I suppose that is the mindset one should have when considering changing a GTE into a SWB.

 

Check this one from SPS Automotive in Hong Kong: http://www.sps-automotive.com/en_sps/works/250gto_p1.htm. Looks like 4153GT in her 63 Le Mans class win livery... Too bad she was repainted in red (too many red GTO's)... Anyone has information on that car?

Also they claim to have a genuine scaglietti 1962 GTO body: http://www.classicdriver.com/uk/find/4100_results.asp?action=simple%5Fsearch&lmanufacturer=10042&lmodel=%2A&whatbutton=Show&whatbutton.x=0&bsubmit=true&lmodelflag=12215&page=0&lCarID=1765262... True story?

 

What about choppin up a rusted 400I to make a replica or pastiche?

 

That would double the cost and change a business into a hobby. Getting everything right takes a thousand hours or more and the people buying these cars could not care less. Best wishes, Kare

 

now, i would love to hear the voices of others on this. today, the 400 isn't loved by many, just like the gte of years ago. i am not justifying the slaughter, but when we have $30k ferrari v-12's, it is amazing the reasons for making something "better" rather than restoring it

 

So what do we do in regard to Classiche's certification of 01C/010I?

 

The blue one at FOC concours in 2004, I forget chassis number
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