Fake Ferraris in Italy, and one vintage in China
China Car Times would have thought that cloning cars is an era that has come, and nearly gone, but it seems the Italians have brought the game to a new level:
Operation Red Passion netted its first counterfeiters yesterday as Italian police arrested 15 people in a nationwide crackdown on imitation Ferraris, Lotuses and Lamborghinis.
Carefully copied versions of the original cars have been emerging from secret workshops for years. They are usually based on secondhand Pontiac Fieros, the production line model apparently best suited to reincarnation as a Testarossa, says Francesco Carofiglio, commander of the police operation.
The customers, who normally order over the internet, are fully aware that they are buying a counterfeit, and the deceit is spelt out in the log book. Prices range from €20,000 (£15,000) to €50,000.
Finance police raided offices and workshops in the Agrigento area of southern Sicily and several other cities across Italy, including Milan. They confiscated 14 finished cars and eight more under construction.
The police were acting on tip-offs provided by Ferrari’s headquarters in Maranello, near Modena. They claim that at least 1,000 cloned supercars are already at large on Italy’s roads, of varying degrees of verisimilitude.
But of course the phenomenon is by no means restricted to Italy. Other countries, including the US and Britain produce plenty of cars which “pay homage” to the great brands and legendary models. So common has the postmodern compulsion become that the clones have obtained a sort of legitimacy and celebrity of their own.
Two years ago the EU’s justice commissioner, an Italian, Franco Frattini, claimed to have spotted a fake vintage 1967 Ferrari 330P4 at large in China. Although copied with exceptional care, it was readily identified as a clone because only four of the cars were manufactured in that year, and the whereabouts of all of them is known.
Mr Carofiglio said not only had copyright been breached but the cars were a hazard to other road users.
China Car Times often receives emails about this legendary fake Chinese Ferrari, but we have never seen it, nor can we find any information on it. Do any of the China Car Times readership know any of the dirty details on the fake Ferrari?
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“Fiero”…now there’s a blast from the past!
Fiero based Testarossas have been around since the ’80s thanks to the craze introduced by Don Johnson and “Miami Vice”.
Actually, the white Testarossa in Miami Vice was a real one, although it had been later fitted with a Corvette (C4) engine!
The Daytona was actually a Corvette-based (C3) replica
There was a few different vehicles used in the show. Good write up here. http://www.miami-vice.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=193
I found it once after watching a few old episodes online
Show us fake ferrari!
Actually Miami Vice did have one Testarossa Kit car used for camera mount work. Seems they did not want to scratch up a real one. Anyway, my point here is who cares if people are making fakes on junky Fieros? The buyers knew what they were buying and the sellers never hid the fact they were fakes! Even by the admission of the government, most of the public could spot the fakes! So the government wasted tax payer money cracking down on kit car look a likes that didn’t fool the public or cheat the buyers? I am not sure that’s a crime! Maybe the companies should have left the badging off and let the customers decide to put it on as trademark is the only real issue here.
The crackdown probably came about from pressure from Ferrari itself. We all know Ferrari doesn’t like playing with other kids in the sandbox so having so many fakes/replicas close to home was too much for them to handle.
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Replicas are great in my opinion, most are not trophy queens and are driven on a regular basis (in China’s case on a daily basis). I think many replica makers get around the trademark licensing by naming the vehicle differently. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong
“fake vintage 1967 Ferrari 330P4 at large in China”
Some Thai newspaper said wrong news about that fake Ferraris are made in Thailand!
I do not believe this