- This Miata wears a hand-formed carbon-fiber body inspired by the Ferrari 250 GTO.
- The design is imperfect, but it remains a lovely coachbuilt creation.
- Modern Mazda safety systems and a retractable hardtop make it everyday usable.
Replicas and tribute cars often fall apart when it comes to proportions or funding constraints. This 2017 Mazda MX-5 Miata RF is not a perfect facsimile either, but it may be the best kind of fake Ferrari. A car that looks gorgeous, performs like a Miata, and doesn’t require a billionaire’s balance sheet to drive regularly.
Read: This Isn’t A Real Ferrari, But It Has A Real Ferrari Price Tag
Crossing the block at Mecum’s Nashville auction, this machine began life as an MX-5 Miata RF Club before Darrin Wood of Northern Alabama’s Modern Custom Classics got to work. The transformation is not a bolt-on kit. Mecum says it has hand-formed carbon-fiber bodywork, including new front and rear clips, door skins, quarter panels, and a custom trunk lid.
Photos: Mecum
There is no pretending that it is a real 250 GTO, nor should there be. The windshield, doors, roofline, and overall stance expose the Mazda bones. Its nose is a little too modern, and the rear end is a little too squat to fully capture the long, muscular elegance of Ferrari’s early-1960s racer. Still, the sculpted front fenders, triple side vents, wire-style wheels, and quad taillamp clusters pull off something most replicas cannot. They create an appealing car in its own right.
That’s key because there can be some awkwardness around a car that dips into the uncanny valley too much. Instead, this keeps several of the donor car’s hard points to its advantage. For example, the power-retractable hardtop is fully functional. Under the bodywork is Mazda’s 2.0-liter Skyactiv-G four-cylinder, a six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive, and a Borla exhaust.
Better still, the factory airbags, ABS, stability control, traction control, air conditioning, navigation, Bluetooth, backup camera, and factory gauges all remain. These are all benefits for everyday usability that you cannot get in even the very nicest genuine 250 GTO. That’s to say nothing of the comically different insurance costs and maintenance between the two. No, this Miata is far from as flashy and exclusive as a real Ferrari. But that’s some of the charm.
Real Ferrari 250 GTOs trade for tens of millions and live in climate-controlled bubbles, driven twice a decade. This one you could take for tacos on a Tuesday. If a Miata in a Ferrari suit sounds like your kind of contradiction, the listing’s over here at Mecum’s Nashville auction.
