Gemballa Mirage GT

With the roof-mounted air intake and a host of other addenda, Gemballa transforms the standard Carrera GT into a very near interpretion of the Le Mans winning GT1.

A conversion carried out by Gemballa will cost you over £200,000, excluding the cost of the donor car. For that, you would be anticipating the increased power output (up 65bhp), greater acceleration (3.6 seconds for a 0-60 time), and a wider torque band. But that wouldn't be enough for those, mainly Middle Eastern customers, who would want something visual to really feel that all that money was well spent.

So a roof is added, providing a mount for the aforementioned roof air intake that funnels almost 40% more cooling to the V10 than the standard GT manages. The structural amendments also allow for greater rigidity, emphasizing it's on-track qualities.

The donor car is known for liberal use of graphite in it's construction, however with the conversion, is taken to another level. The car is now, almost completely reworked in carbon fibre. This extends to the interior, giving a motorsport look to a cockpit that might previously have been described as verging on the bland.

Two extra exhausts now protrude from where the reverse lights would normally reside, and it's this feature that underlines the additional cost. The standard GT is no pavement pussycat when the ignition key is turned, but nearly a quarter of a million euros later, when the Mirage engine turns over from cold, the sound is enough to make passersby yelp and leap in surprise. An awesome sounding machine.