SMALLVILLE

The Little Car Company's toy-like Astons and Ferraris have a very grown-up price tag. We grab our full-size spanners to help built one - and go for a brief test drive

- COLIN GOODWIN

IN THE LATE 1990s I SPENT A DAY AT MARANELLO working on the production line. It was an amazing experience, kitted out in official Ferrari overalls and eating lunch in the staff canteen. In truth I wasn't on the line helping to build F355s, I was next to it in a sectioned-off area in which a small team of people were hand-building F50s.

My partner was a guy from Sicily who spoke no English, which, with my limited Italian, meant that we had to use hand signals. It worked well enough for me to fit a whole powertrain into the back of one F50. I signed the chassis while nobody was looking and, assuming that the complete rear-end of the car didn't fall off due to Goodwin finger trouble, that car probably still resides in a collection somewhere.

Today, greyer but no less excited, I am helping build a new Ferrari. It is a much simpler car than the F50, although still rear-engined, and I am in Bicester, England, rather than Maranello, Italy. I suspect also that there will not be pasta for lunch. Or football on the screens in the works' canteen as there was at Ferrari.

At first I didn't get the point of the small-scale, electric replicas of the Aston Martin DB5, Bugatti Type 35 and Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa made by The Little Car Company. Too expensive and with a limited use. This from someone who on a trip to Harrods with his mum in around 1967 saw a child-sized replica of a 1920s Bentley and nearly hyperventilated, if a four-year-old can do such a thing.