Mark Walton: reproductions at the Revival

I’m driving a 1960 Ferrari 250 SWB – one of the undisputed crown jewels in automotive history. As I mash my foot to the floor, the gargling V12 instantly hardens, like an orchestra transitioning from a chaotic warmup into a single, penetrating, rising note. The noise ascends from a deafening roar to a hollow howl to a spine-tingling shriek above 6500rpm.

I reach for the gearlever – the metal ball falls perfectly into my left hand, even though the stick looked way too tall when I first climbed in. The SWB never had an open gate like a 250 GTO, so it needs concentration and force to place it right; but when third is engaged, the V12 picks up where I left off: with all the guts and mettle and shove of a weightlifter snatching a 150kg bar. God, what an engine. What a heavenly, ear-splitting noise.

Shame it’s a fake. Yes, I’m afraid it’s a fake. Or, if you want to use modern parlance, it’s a facsimile… a reproduction… a recreation… a continuation. Or, to be more precise, it’s the GTO Engineering 250 SWB ‘Revival’.

GTO, based outside Reading, is a Ferrari specialist formed in the ’80s by Mark Lyons. For decades it’s been restoring Ferrari road and race cars, and I don’t mean a once-over and a lick of paint – GTO has an engine workshop that can turn out a brand new, race-spec 3.0-litre V12 to slot into your 250 Testa Rossa.

The SWB Revival actually dates back more than a decade, to the 2008 financial crash, though the project has only come to light now. Mark Lyons explains: ‘We’d been making a lot of parts for race cars, and we thought, “What can we do to keep the workshop busy?” We came up with the idea of building complete cars.’

So, each Revival (about 30 have been sold already) starts with a donor car. This is misleading, because the SWB is all-new from the ground up; but the donor gives you the all-important Ferrari chassis number. GTO recommends you find (with its assistance) a 250 GTE, the SWB’s uglier, 2+2 cousin. Mark insists this isn’t sacrilege. ‘We use donor cars that will never be repaired,’ he stresses. ‘They’ve had engines and gearboxes taken out, they’ve been on fire, they’ve been crashed.’

Your neglected GTE costs around £150k, and over the next 18 months GTO will build you a gorgeous alloy-bodied 250 SWB that will set you back a further £500,000-£700,000, depending on spec (you can add air-con or upgrade to a 3.5 or 4.0-litre V12).

So far, straightforward. But two things surprise me: first, how unbelievably awesome this SWB is, given it’s from a company that doesn’t normally build entire cars. And second, how did this kind of barefaced fakery become acceptable? Just a few years ago, originality was EVERYTHING. A car’s history was what made it attractive, and to drive a replica Ferrari was like admitting your Rolex was bought off a street market in Bangkok.

‘A lot of copy cars were there before people actually realised,’ Mark tells me. ‘Someone owned a 250 GTO or GT40 and they had another one made, quietly. Not many people would know it wasn’t the original car.

‘It had to happen,’ Mark goes on. A 250 GTO is now worth $60 million; an alloy SWB perhaps $15 million. ‘There’s a different type of owner today,’ Mark admits. ‘The guy who bought a car and drove it, had fun, enjoyed it – that doesn’t really happen any more. It’s an awful shame and I hate it, but you’ve got to accept it’s happened.’

So if you’re a billionaire collector and you’re invited to attend a highprofile historic race or rally event, why risk the $60 million investment, if you can take a million-pound facsimile and no one – not even a black-belt marque expert – will know the difference? This has become a major headache for events like the Goodwood Revival, which prides itself in racing the very best, original, historic cars.

And so – bizarrely – driving a perfect copy has become the ultimate demonstration of wealth. Buy an £800,000 replica like the 250 SWB Revival and drive it like a boss, and not only will you have the time of your life, you’ll also leave people guessing, ‘Do you think he owns the $20 million original at home?’