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You know something weird is going on when old, beat-up Pontiac Fieros are being bought up and shipped to Italy.

A ring of Italian car counterfeiters has been using the Fiero's chassis as the skeleton for a knockoff of a Ferrari Modena 360. Italian police recently shut down the operation and seized 14 cars. In Italy, messing with the Ferrari trademark is serious business.

ENLARGE Old engines get a fake plate. Photo credit: REUTERS

With their cheesy 1980s GM parts-bin interiors and wheezing 140-hp engines, the bogus Ferraris were obviously fakes. But the people who bought them for about $30,000 each didn't care. Italian police said the sleek road machines were bought for their ability to impress neighbors (assuming the neighbors don't get too close, don't see very well or aren't very smart).

In the 1980s, Ferrari shut down an operation in the United States that used the Fiero chassis as a basis of a Ferrari knockoff called the Mera.