The Art of Faking a Ferrari

Ferrari made only 39 GTOs. In 2014, one of them sold at auction for $38 million, a world record. But Mr. Lyon will build you one that Enzo Ferrari’s mother couldn’t tell from the real thing for $1 million. Ring back in 18 months.

I put GTO Engineering on my British spring tour because I am fascinated with these objects’ ontological status. Sure, cynics might say I was only there to drive one of Mr. Lyon’s fabulous counterfeits—that pewter-colored 250 SWB over there, for instance. People...

But seriously, what are these things? In what sense are they unreal Ferraris if they are identical, apart from the carbon-14 dating? Mr. Lyon will sell you every little period-correct replacement part that makes up a 250 SWB, but what threshold is crossed when he puts them all together?

“They’re fakes,” said Keith Martin, publisher of Sports Car Market. “If the Met put on a show of the greatest replicas of paintings, would you be just as excited?”

Mr. Lyon is by no means the first to build Ferrari manquées. There was a spate of forgeries in the 1990s, when collectible values first went through the roof. Now, as then, the cause was a dam-burst of new wealth and speculators entering the market. Too many rich guys, too few Ferraris.

What is different is the legitimacy of what you might call freshly manufactured old cars. In 2015, Jaguar Land Rover, rummaging around in the back of the shops, discovered they had six leftover ID numbers from an unfinished build of the Lightweight E-Type competition car of 1964. In 2016 Aston Martin offered 25 “Continuation” DB4 GTs, fresh as paint, built at the sheds at Newport Pagnell, just like old times.

Ironically, the quest for authenticity has driven the business in reproductions. Because any Ferrari is more valuable with its original engine, owners will replace it with one of GTO’s that is, shall we say, expendable. When it comes time to sell, the original engine can be put back and the race engine goes with it as a spare.

The finished engines in the shop are correct right down to the crinkle finish on the cam covers. “That paint is getting very hard to source, actually,” Mr. Lyon noted.

GTO Engineering now occupies a gated country house with the shops behind. As we walked between the parts department’s shelves stacked with spares—wiring looms, windshields, gated shifters, oil gauges, eggcrate grilles complete with silver horse, Ferrari’s Cavallino Rampante—my grip on what’s constitutes authentic grew less secure.

From a curatorial standpoint classic cars have the same problem as most contemporary art: The materials are perishable. Rubber rots, glazing splits, steel corrodes, horsehair seats crumble to dust. There is no “preserving” a classic car in its original condition for centuries.

Maybe it is only the design that is meant to transcend time and not the unfixed, temporary material it inhabits? I run these thoughts by Mr. Lyon. He takes a pass with a friendly shake of his head. “The important thing is that we’re not trying to fool anybody,” he said.

In particular anybody in Maranello. While Mr. Lyon competes directly with the factory’s Classiche division, the two organizations cooperate on a number of fronts. For instance, for every whole-car build, GTO’s client must provide them a serial number of a retired Ferrari, one beyond repair. Mr. Lyon actually buys the Ferrari badges and escutcheons from the factory.

I took a long look at a silver 250 SWB. “Real?” I guess. “No, it’s one of ours,” Mr. Lyon said. “We can have a drive if you like.”

The door latch clicked precisely and I swung open the aluminum skinned door, as lightweight as a tent flap. The smell of gear oil and gasoline wafted as if from a silver bottle. All the charismatic details were in place: the black-faced Veglia gauges; the Nardi wood-rim steering wheel; the long-throw shifter topped with an aluminum ball.

It being a client’s car, Mr. Lyon warmed up the V12 for me (the high compression and triple Webers make them a bit cold-natured). After a minute of broken staccato, the thudding of the 60-degree V12 engine fell into a rhythm under the chiming of well-oiled steel.

I dropped Mr. Lyon at the shop and headed into the countryside. These cars’ pedals are very close together, making downshifting footwork a challenge. The clutch is heavy, the brake stroke lengthy. And, the steering being period-correct, it’s a bit washy on center.

I saw an opening and punched it in second gear. BWAP-BHAWAHH! The engine snarled and the hood rose like a gunned Jet Ski. Oh yeah, baby. Alas, there wasn’t much running room for a car like this. I backed off. The throttle overruns crackled out of tailpipes that hung out the back like a Billy goat’s nads.

I drove back to the stables with a growing conviction: These cars are not history, but they do marvelously document history. And that’s good news to us unable to drop millions on a red car. I personally will never bash down a country road unescorted in a 250 SWB; but I have driven a machine that’s 99.9% the same.

Or is it 102%? “This is a problem with new-old cars,” said Mr. Martin. “The engineers always wind up making them just a little bit better than the original, a little straighter, a little safer.”

In fact, the car I drove makes a bit more horsepower than the originals, thanks to its increased displacement (3.5 liters vs. 3.0 liters). It has a five-speed synchromesh gearbox when most had four-speeds. The paint is beyond the factory’s wildest dreams at the time.

I’m surprisingly OK with that.