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Ferrari F50 Replica Doubles as a Wooden Boat in Venice

Italy has many more traditions than just making the world's most famous supercars. For example, they make some of the best traditional lake boats, plus they're a cultural and artistic hub of Europe. This next story probably combines all these elements, which either makes this very weird or very cool. We'll tell you which is which by the end.
Ferrari F50 boat 1 photo
Photo: screenshot from Youtube
With over 16 million people following Ferrari on Facebook, it's pretty clear that everybody wants to own one of Maranello's wondrous supercars one day. But with prices firmly fixed in the six digit range, few people can afford one. And so many Ferrari fans decide to build one themselves, based on an old Pontiac Fiero or Toyota MR2.

But for Livio De Marchi, that wasn't good enough, so he decided to make his own Ferrari out of wood. "A wooden Ferrari? That will never work!" everybody said. Except its creator didn't want a car that could keep up with Lamborghinis, he wanted a boat in the shape of the famous F50.

The craftsman then spent 5 full months replicating everything from mirrors to the famous Ferrari logos. The eye catching amphibious vehicle is now the only car that can "drive" in Venice, sharing the historic waterways with gondolas and water taxis.

Proving that cars really are at the pinnacle of technology, the boat weighs around 0.9 tons (2,000 lbs), which is only fractionally less than the real F50, made from hard steel and aluminum. And while the real Berlinetta came with a 4.7-liter double overhead cam 65 degree V12, the boat has to make due with a lowly Yamaha boat engine to pot-pot its way at a leisurely pace.

So at the end of the day, what do we think of the Ferrari boat? Well, the guy clearly knew exactly what he was doing and only spent 5 months to make his dream happen. Very few people in the world can say they did that, so Livio gets two thumbs up from us.

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About the author: Mihnea Radu
Mihnea Radu profile photo

Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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