European travel with a replica

[Drew355]

Has anyone any experiance of taking their UK replicas abroad for a holiday?

I am planning on taking mine on a road trip to Italy next year (It WILL be finished by then!!) & wondered how I will go on when I pass through foreign borders. It will be registered correctly as Extreme 430 & not peugeot but I cant help but get a little worried that the italian police may get a bit funny about it if they decide to do a spot check on the car (quite likely given the looks).

Hoping the worry will be worth it when I get a pic of it outside the ferrari factory gates!!

Maybe its worth getting a set of badges made up with the Extreme wording & maybe an alternative dancin donkey on the back. So it looks very similar, but if they actually stop and scrutinise it there is nothing actually stating ferrari?

[AIG1355]

Hi, read this, I heard/read somewhere before seeing the following article that the Italian police are quite hot on this.

Italian police seize fake Ferraris
February 29, 2008 Subscribe to: RSS, Email

Italian police said they have seized seven counterfeit Ferraris from a Mafia-run factory in Campobello di Licata on the island of Sicily.

Police said engineers at the factory used photographs of the expensive vehicles to turn secondhand cars into Ferrari replicas, The Telegraph reported Friday. They said they have also seized 14 cars that were already on the road in the cities of Milan, Rome and Puglia.

Investigators said the cars were sold over the Internet, primarily to businessmen who were aware the cars were fakes and frequently rented them out.

The counterfeit cars, which were often converted from Pontiac Fieros, were easy to distinguish from genuine Ferraris, however, because the frauds have thinner wheels, narrower chassis and make a different engine sounds than the real thing.

The sound of the Pontiac's V4 engine is nothing like the Ferrari 348GTS's V8 which it would be turned into, said Francesco Carofiglio, who headed the law enforcement operation.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

UPI-1-20080229-16185700-bc-italy-fakeferraris.xml

[EVANS MOTORSPORTS]

mmmm ...... just not worth it dude,could end up like the poor old lamborghini miura at the start of the italian job...............

[Morgan]

Have a look at this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-521952/Would-mistake-real-thing-Italian-police-bust-multi-million-pound-Mafia-run-fake-Ferrari-racket.html

[Drew355]

Yeah I had thought of dabadging the car. Putting pug badges back on I think would just draw attention to the car (yeah I know its already going to be a reasonable attention getter!!) The chances of getting stopped in a fully badged up spot on rep with UK plates and fake engine etc are realistically pretty low.

I did see the article people have linked to, but I dont think that will be the problem other than potentially raising the normal police's awareness. That was a sting against a known gang, the extreme 430 is easily convincing enough not to be spotted as a rep unless you open one of the panels.

The risk really is that it only takes one border official that loves cars to want to break up his boring day by having a look around a ferrari to cause me problems. Immediately they asked to look under the bonnet alarm bells will sound & before I know it my car will be being stripped looking for drugs initially (All my baggage being stored under a fake engine cover isnt going to be at all suspicious in there eyes!! honest!) & then they will turn to if it is legal to have the car in the first place. Even if they do give it me back, its not really what I need for a relaxing holiday!

I priced up getting a set of EXTREME logo'd ferrari badges a while ago & they were quite reasonable, I think if I did go for it it would need to be as you said with no reference at all anywhere to ferrari. Different prancing horses (maybe reversed or a bit different design) and the front badge etc should say Extreme. That way only looking very closely would reveal the differences & you wouldnt be done for badging it a ferrari.

Just wondered if anyone else had experience of europe travel.

Maybe just a trip to Le-mans would be better, go with all tha other supercars & im less likely to get stopped & its only the uk/france border I need to worry about.