Hobby horse

What you’re looking at, then, is as close to an identical visual replica of an original Testa Rossa as can sensibly be achieved. And I’m not just talking about that beautiful rolled and beaten aluminium body.

Look below to the chassis design with its longitudinal parallel tubes upon which a spaceframe is mounted and you’ll see the design of a 1957 Testa Rossa. It has the same double wishbone front suspension, even the same geometry. And of course this information could have been gathered from an original Testa Rossa, but it wasn’t. It was gathered from original drawings of the Testa Rossa, supplied by Ferrari.

Another way you can tell it’s a Ferrari is the price, which is quoted only in Euros and amounts to €93,000 before extras. This for a car with a 12kW electric motor for which a 0-62mph is not available because the only way to persuade one to reach 62mph would be to push it off a cliff. It is both the cheapest and – in terms of bang for your buck, punch for your pound, or effort for your Euro – by a distance the most expensive Ferrari on sale.

But there are a couple of things here you can’t really argue against. One is the quality of the workmanship; if you had to quibble it would only be because it is probably better built than an original TR. And the attention to detail, right down to the bonnet hooks and straps, the fonts on the instruments and the precise and historically accurate radii of the crenellations on the back of the wood rimmed steering wheel, is astonishing.

Nor have corners been cut with suppliers. That steering wheel is made by Nardi, as were the originals. The option wheel is a Borrani, just like those they fitted back in 1957. The coilover spring/damper units are made by Eibach and Bilstein respectively and are unique to this car, as are the Brembo brake discs, though they are clamped by off the peg Ducati calipers.

Sticklers for accuracy will probably now be pointing out that the 1957 Testa Rossa had drum brakes, but Ferrari thought that on this point alone, safety was probably a more important consideration than staying absolutely true to the script. And yes, it has been to Maranello and, more importantly, to Fiorano too, where none other than Ferrari’s chief chassis engineer Raffaele de Simone signed off the chassis settings. It is, of course, a toy, but a toy that some very serious people have taken very seriously indeed.

Did I mention you can’t register it for use on the road? Actually if you listen carefully to The Little Car Company’s boss Ben Hedley, he will tell you that they can’t register it for use on the road, leaving open the tantalising possibility that you, the owner, just might. I understand that in North America, where the Testa Rossa J will find the most homes and where the rules are rather different, some customers plan on doing just that.

Power comes from a single electric motor at the back, fed by three lithium ion batteries at the front. As these cars are likely only ever to be used on private facilities such as country estates, savvy owners will order rather more batteries because you can have one set on charge, ready for when the set in the car runs flat, because replacing one is literally a case of plug and play. I’m told that by using this method a Testa Rossa J can go from completely discharged to fully charged in less than three minutes.

I feel slightly ridiculous behind its wheel, a 6ft 3in heftily built bloke in his mid fifties clambering aboard something aimed primarily at younger teenagers. But I’m not sure I care. Our circuit today is the small test track at Bicester Heritage and once I’ve familiarised myself by driving slowly around the access roads, it’s time to see what it can do.

There are some other nice Ferrari touches here: a genuine manettino which allows you to scroll through four driving modes – Novice, Comfort, Sport and Race – allowing top speeds of 12, 28 and ‘over 37mph’ (which I estimate to be about 50mph) for the two fastest modes. And then you press a pedal identical to that in an F8 Tributo and wait for all hell to be let loose.

And you’ll still be waiting when the car accelerates gently up to and nudges into its inbuilt speed limiter – yup, this is also the slowest Ferrari ever built. But here’s the thing: I’ve not driven an original Testa Rossa, but I have been lucky enough to drive another Ferrari sports racing car of a similar age, and it has a certain feel, brought on by the structural rigidity of its chassis (or lack thereof), a somewhat brittle ride quality and very immediate response to each steering input. And you sense some of it here.

Of course in other ways, like the fact it hasn’t got a snarling 3-litre V12 under its bonnet and won’t do 180mph, it’s not like a Testa Rossa at all, but it was interesting to me to see that the Testa Rossa J doesn’t just look like a car from the Fifties: powertrain aside, it drives like one too.

Happily it’s a lot more friendly on the limit than Ferraris from that era tended to be. It felt absurd to be skidding about on a damp track in such a device but so too did the incongruity appeal, and no one said I shouldn’t. In those conditions at least, there’s pronounced understeer, the front Pirelli CN54 tyres (period fit on a 1957 Fiat 500) giving up long before the rears. Happily, however, this can be dialled out simply by being wildly over ambitious on entry and turning in on trailing throttle. The car then tries to spin, so the game becomes seeing how far you’re prepared to let it go before first stabilising then killing the slide with the accelerator.

With a product such as this there is no point ruminating endlessly over whether it’s worth it or not. Just 299 will be built and if they sell it will have been worth it. At the time of writing, before any driving impressions have been published, over half already have homes, accounting for all production from now until the start of 2023. For me, I found it entertaining to drive and fascinating to pore over.

I just hope the offspring of fabulously rich individuals who will be gifted Testa Rossa Js for Christmas have some appreciation of the craftsmanship that has gone into it and the legacy of the car it was put on Earth to honour. Failing that, I just hope they have a bloody good time driving it.