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Looks good, doesn't it? This is a 1:3.6 scale model replica of the world's most expensive car, arguably the greatest Ferrari ever made. This is a marble Ferrari 250 GTO, and it has just shot up to the top of Top Gear's ‘yeah-we-know-it's-useless-but-we-still-need-this-in-our-lives-now' list.
It comes from a company called Lapicida, which specialises in carving bespoke objects from natural stone. For the 250 GTO, Lapicida used LASERS to scan an actual, full-size Ferrari 250 GTO, and then fed this data into a computer for 3D modeling.
Then, taking a step back to the Stone Age, Lapicida employed a bloody enormous five-axis diamond-tipped drill, housed inside one of the planet's largest shaping mills (the only one of its kind in the UK and just one of three in the world), one capable of sculpting objects from a single block of stone weighing up to 25 tonnes.
The drills themselves spin up to 7,000rpm, and spent 100 hours carving out this Ferrari from a single piece of Arabescato marble, after which Lapicida's craftsmen spent several calloused days hand-finishing the replica to perfection.
The result? A 1.2m long, 46cm wide replica of the car that Jeremy Clarkson couldn't drive on Top Gear telly, the car that sold for £32 million last year, and £22 million the year before.
Remember, just 39 actual, non-marble Ferrari GTOs were built, though this replica does without the 3.0-litre V12 and racing pedigree.
But then it doesn't cost £32 million. It costs a mere £30,000, and looks, frankly, amazing. Lapicida asks: "Would Enzo [Ferrari] approve of our marble Ferrari GTO?" Good question.
For our part, we reckon Il Commedatore might have got on board with the model's, erm, chiseled looks. Its 0-60 acceleration, on the other hand...
Written By:- Vijay Pattni
More of this article on the Top gear website
