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Plenty of Ferrari tributes borrow the 250 GTO's shape. This 575M-Powered Ferrari 250 GTO Re-Creation 6-Speed, live now on Bring a Trailer, goes further: its owner started building it in 1985, and has been refining it ever since. The no-reserve auction ends Friday, October 30, at 1:00 p.m. ET, and the bid sits at £205,000 as of this writing.
A GTO Body on a 400i Skeleton
The car was built at Badsaddle Stables, the owner's restoration shop in Northamptonshire, England. The foundation is the oval-tube frame from a right-hand-drive 1978 Ferrari 400i, shortened to the 250 GTO's 2,400mm wheelbase and used as the base for a GTO-style spaceframe. The aluminum body is a replica sourced from Eurospares, widened by two inches per side to suit the 400i's wider track. According to the selling dealer, Eurospares claimed at the time that Scaglietti built the body, which is worth treating as a seller-side claim rather than a documented fact.
The original 250 GTO is a short list: 36 were built between 1962 and 1964, and one sold for a record $70 million. A re-creation is a different thing, and the listing is upfront about that. What makes this one worth a look is how it was built and how it has been used since.
How a 575M V12 Got Here
The first engine was a 4.4-liter four-cam Colombo V12 from a 365 GT4, and the car spent years on the road, including a tour of Europe, plus occasional club races and hillclimbs. In 2009 it was re-engined with a 5.75-liter F133E V12 from a Ferrari 575M Maranello, the same engine found in the 2002 575M Maranello we have featured.
The owner did not simply drop it in. The V12 gets Jenvey individual throttle bodies with trumpets, a custom cast intake manifold, custom-fabricated exhaust manifolds without catalytic converters, and a DTAFast sequential ECU. Power goes to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transaxle said to come from a Ferrari 550 Maranello, the same type of gearbox used in the 18k-mile 550 Maranello we showed on Bring a Trailer. Wilwood discs with adjustable bias, adjustable coilovers, and 365 GT4 suspension and hubs round out the chassis, and the car rides on staggered 15-inch Borrani wire wheels.
What Is Documented and What Is Not
A 2009 dynamometer sheet shows roughly 601 horsepower at 7,000 rpm and 471 at 6,000 rpm for the 575M-powered setup. That is a dated document rather than a fresh measurement, and the dealer adds that the engine can be run to 8,000 rpm. The odometer reads 33,000 miles, marked TMU (true mileage unknown), and the dealer estimates about 18,000 of those came after the build. The speedometer is not connected, which is the kind of detail you only get from a car that has actually been used.
On the paper side, the sale includes build photos, invoices and the British V5C registration, which lists the car as a Ferrari with a 1979 first registration date. Maintenance includes timing belts replaced in 2025 and throttle body rebuilds with a new battery in May 2026. The car was repainted red about six months ago, after previously wearing yellow.
The Cockpit and the Catch
Inside, you get fixed-back bucket seats trimmed in black leather, blue Willans harnesses, a gated shifter, a Nardi wood-rimmed wheel, Veglia gauges with an 8,000-rpm tachometer and a fire suppression system. A Perspex bulge over the intake gives you a look at the trumpets. The car is offered in Bicester, England, on dealer consignment from Sports Purpose, a BaT Local Partner, so international buyers will need to plan for shipping and import.
That is the catch, and it is also the appeal. This is not a replica that exists to fool anyone. It sits in the same world as the Norwood 412P re-creation with its 512 BB flat-12 and the Tempero 250 Testa Rossa: cars where the builder's own engineering is the point. Here that means a GTO silhouette, a modern Ferrari V12 and a manual gearbox, put together over decades by one person. Watch the auction on Bring a Trailer before it closes Friday afternoon.
