Take a careful look at this Ferrari

It might look like a classic 1960s Ferrari but there's not a lot of Italian in it — this P4 was made in a back street factory in Thailand.

 It has a Subaru engine, but could pass for one of the three genuine versions made in 1967.

The bright red copy of the one that took the chequered flag at Daytona more than 40 years ago is not a replica, but a bid to fool a buyer that it is the real thing. It was shown at the Fakes Cost More anti-counterfeit summit in Belgium this week to show just how extensive the rip-offs have become.

Yasmin Le Bon, the wife of British pop star Simon, was at the summit to launch a global campaign to combat the rising tide of counterfeiting and piracy of well-known, top-brand goods. And she issued the warning that counterfeiting is a really serious problem.

“We are no longer talking about just fake watches, but the counterfeiting of car parts, aircraft parts and even complete cars, such as this Ferrari, which could have very serious consequences — not just in terms of fraud but in terms of people's safety,” she says.

About 10 per cent of all car spares in the European Union could be counterfeit, statistics show.

The theme was that fakes cost more than the real thing — whether they are brake pads for cars fabricated using sand, medicines with unauthorised ingredients, or toys with dangerous parts.