Wal-Mart CEO Commisions One-Off Ferrari

Gold plated cars are always as symbol of excess. Primarily we've seen them done in oil-rich countries in the Middle East, like Quatar, Dubai and Saudi Arabia, commissioned by oil magnates and princes. There might be an unusual one now though, by Wal-Mart's CEO.

Seems pretty crazy huh, a gold plated Ferrari being bought by Wal-Mart's CEO. Two polar opposites you might say! However due to the recession, Wal-Mart has actually been more successful and profitable than ever.  Many new customers have been gained. Whether that continues when the economy rebounds, we don't know.

A stark contrast to CEO and Founder Sam Walton's famous no-frills style too. Anyways, the car is being designed by famed Italian design house Pininfarina. The "Golden Ferrari" as it is called is based on the 599 GTB.

The design is more retro then we are used to in recent creations from Ferrari and indeed Pininfarina, with it's styling offering a heavy throwback to the Ferrari 330 LMB. I like it a lot, you really do have to check out all the pictures of it, to be found at Autoblog.nl (That link takes you to the page, but translated by Google from it's original Dutch).

It'd be nice to see Ferrari implementing some more retro elements in it's vehicles. I'd imagine that is something we'll probably see sometime in the future.