Books about cars can often cost more than actual cars, but even the expensive ones are just bits of shredded tree designed to look good on your coffee table.
But this incredible Ferrari book doesn’t need a coffee table. It comes with an incredible stand styled to resembled the rocker covers and exhaust headers of a vintage V12 sports car.
Written by motoring journalist and Ferrari expert Giuseppe Allievi, and published by Taschen in 2018, the 514-page book delves into the history of the marque and includes hundreds of previously unseen photographs and documents from Ferrari’s own archives.
A total of 1,947 books were printed in commemoration of Ferrari’s founding in 1947. Of those, 1,697 were the regular “Collector’s Edition” books, but the remaining 250 “Art Edition” versions came signed by former Ferrari head honchos Sergio Marchionne, John Elkann, and Piero Ferrari, and mounted on a stand that looked like something a racing-obsessed clergyman might stand behind to give a sermon.
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Created by industrial designer Mark Newson, the stand is fabricated from hand-bent TIG-welded and chrome-plated steel tubes shaped to look like the exhausts manifolds on a classic V12 Ferrari. On top of this rests the book’s cabinet, a flip-open aluminium case styled to resemble the crackle-finish rocker covers of a 250 Testa Rossa. Buyers received the stand in a special delivery crate that kept it safe during transportation, and even got a pair of white gloves so they could avoid leaving greasy fingermarks on the pages (or chrome legs).
Despite costing an eye-watering $30,000, the Art Edition books sold out instantly, so there’s bound to be more than a few Ferrari collectors watching this listing on the Collecting Cars auction site, which ends on Sunday. Number 236 of the 250-unit run, it comes with the original packing crate, gloves, and the pre-launch “prelude” book.
It’s certainly going to look better in your living room than that dog-eared copy of Motor Trend you’ve been meaning to throw in the trash, and it’d make the perfect companion piece to a Bentley sofa, or one of those engine-block coffee tables, provided it was a real Ferrari one, of course. But bids are at £14,250 ($19,000) with three days still to go, and while you can no longer buy a used Ferrari for that money, we can think of plenty of other driveable ways to spend the cash.
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