You may not be able to afford a real Ferrari but you sure can have the driving experience online. Photo Gallery

Who could honestly say they?d turn down the chance to drive a Ferrari?

Certainly not us. So we were fairly excited to get a press release from the Prancing Horse stable detailing how we could choose a brand new Fezza, spec it up to our individual taste and then drive it around the Mugello race track in Italy in a joust with Michael Schumacher.

After shaking the press release vigorously and finding that no airplane tickets or car keys fell out, we read it more carefully and found that it would all happen online.

Ferrari has set up a virtual section of their website that allows you to do all that, plus take a tour through their factory and museum. And of course the merchandising area, with more than 2000 products ... and wouldn’t it be great to work out one day how much of their Formula One bill is covered by $100 Ferrari t-shirts being bought by people who will never be able to get within high-octane petrol-sniff of the cars.

But we can’t resist the prospect of driving one of them, so we dived into www.ferrari.com to have a shot at it.

You could walk around Mugello faster than it takes to get proper access to the site and the goodies you’re after. Perhaps it’s a persistence test. Or some kind of Ferrari exclusivity weeding process. You really have to want to get there.

You have to sit through a bit of welcome blurb from the badge’s impeccably-dressed chariman Luca di Montezemolo, but he’s so charming it’s a pleasure.

The semi-animated tour of the assembly line, machining and paint technologies part of the factory is fascinating and well worth a look. Curiously, the workers all seem to have been sourced from the Italian head office of Supermodeli’R’Us … not a beer belly or plumber’s cleavage in sight .. and they’re mostly sporting neat little tufts of designer stubble and slickly groomed hair and manicures.

In the showroom, we took the California just because it’s gorgeous. But then our unerring taste was aghast to find that you can’t order it in Barbie Pink. So we had it specially ‘resprayed’ in-house for the image here. Yes, we knew you’d appreciate it too.

We figure that if you’re shelling out for a Fezza — especially in today’s economy when repossessed ones are cluttering the auction house floors so thickly that in some places they’re being used to prop up wonky desks — you should be able to have it in any colour you damn well want.

From there, you can select interior trim and wheels. We were tempted to go for the almost lingerie-skimpiness of the 20” sport wheels, and try and match with pink callipers.

But after a lot of consideration we picked the five-spoke diamond finish with black callipers, because the website promised some virtual laps around the Mugello race track against Michael Schumacher, and we thought the 20” footwear might undermine our handling.

But to race, first you have to download their racing simulator. And here is where you can run into trouble because while Ferraris might be fast, their download is not.

Twenty minutes later (and after all that effort with the pink spraygun) the site informed us that the California we’d chosen and salivatingly accessorised was not available for racing.

Never mind, we chose a Scuderia instead, rolled out to the start line and hit the accelerator.

And once you’re there, we have to say it’s worth all the effort. The graphics are clear, the track is well-rendered and the noise is impressively realistic. We swear there was a smell of burning rubber in the office a few minutes into the first lap.

And that was as far as we got, because after taking out several sections of wall, every tyre bank — and a couple of race stewards, for all we know – we thought it best to retire.

Apparently, instead of simply racing against Schuey, there’s a section where you can get him to give you driving advice.

We didn’t need to bother. It would have been a resounding “Give up now. Please!”