A $7,000 Ferrari?
Wish you could park your favorite car in your office? Amalgam Fine Motor Cars can make the most perfect replica you're willing to pay for.
Cars. A lot of people consider them to be works of art, especially the exotic and classic models. It’s too bad you can’t use them to decorate the office.
Or can’t you?
Amalgam Fine Model Cars makes near perfect 1:8-scale replicas of dozens of vehicles, including the Ferrari 250 GTO, the Ferrari F40, and the Ferrari LaFerrari. OK, they make a lot of Ferraris, but also Bugattis, Lamborghinis, Bentleys…you name it.
Literally. If they don’t already have something in their portfolio, they’ll come to your home, conduct a laser scan of your car, maybe even disassemble it a bit to get a good look at some of the parts, and recreate it to the exact same specifications as your baby. And yes, it’ll cost you.
Most of their products are priced in the $5,000-$10,000 range, and are purchased by customers that do own one of the actual cars. That’s for the stock models, which are each constructed from about 2,000 parts that take about 3,000 man-hours to design and develop, and another 350 man-hours per example to build.
The custom work starts at $50,000, but if it’s, say, a 1966 Jaguar E-Type 4.2 fixed head coupe, and other owners of the real thing decide they want to buy a Mini Me version for the desktop, Amalgam will send some royalties your way for getting the ball rolling.
The work really is astonishing. I had my hands on a LaFerrari for a few days, which goes for $6,775.00, and the detail is obsessive. With newer models, Amalgam works off CAD blueprints from the production car. The engine bay in the hybrid Ferrari is dressed with all of the appropriate electronics, and up front there are even two black nubs for the headlight washers. Just like the genuine article, only 499 will be made.
The steering works, and the wheels turn, but these aren’t powered R/C toy cars. That said, you can order it with operational LED lighting that mimics the original’s outside and in.
If you have a really big desk, Amalgam can do 1:4-scale versions, too. Expect a six-figure bill to go with them.
Worth it? All I can say is that anytime I left the LaFerrari out in a public area, everyone went out of their way to check it out. I doubt a small Rodin sculpture would’ve drawn as much attention from such a broad spectrum of folks, and the ability to sidle up to them and say, “yep, it looks just like the one I have in my garage,” seems pretty priceless to me.