Mario So Funny

NEW YORK — Style icon Ralph Lauren has surrounded himself with models this holiday season, but not the long-legged kind. He has taken four favorites from his world-renowned classic car collection and replicated them as scale models, selling them online and in Ralph Lauren Home stores for $9,500 each.

The chosen cars are 1:8 scales of the Bugatti 57 SC Atlantic Coupe, which Lauren acquired in 1988. It was the last of the chassis built and ordered originally in 1937 by Richard B. Pope of London. The other models are a McLaren F1 LM, Ferrari 250 GTO and Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa.

To encourage collectors, each sports a unique edition number and certificate.

Creating them is an exercise in patience. Each car was digitally scanned to capture each detail and curve. The technology is accurate to one tenth of a millimeter over the length of the car, which translates to an authentic scale reproduction of the original.

From there, artists create a master model using a combination of digital machining, traditional engineering and hand craft skills. This process takes about 3,000 hours of work by a team of model makers. Each individual model then takes approximately 350 hours more to complete.

Some of those hours include hand spraying each model with authentic automotive paint and then hand polishing it to create a shiny finish.

The wire wheels are assembled from approximately 140 tiny and precisely machined aluminum components, with separate spokes and nipples to mirror the originals. When all the parts have been fettled, sanded and polished, each model is assembled by a small team of model makers.

Inside Line says: Such an elegant stocking stuffer.