GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Glickenhaus goes public

When wealthy car collector and finance boss, James Glickenhaus, turned to Pininfarina to build him a uniquely bodied car off Ferrari's Enzo, it turned out a jaw-droppingly beautiful coupe evoking memories of Ferrari's P4 racing cars of the 1960s.

Now Glickenhaus has built his second-generation car; only this time he's selling it to the public through a car company named SCG (Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus) and the car will be the SCG003C. The "C" is for "Competizione".

It all started life as an idea to use a modified version of the Alfa Romeo 4C chassis with a Maserati Biturbo V6 in it and unique bodywork. Ferrari, never known for generosity of spirit when threatened, kyboshed it.

Instead, Glickenhaus went straight to carbon chassis maker, ATR (as used by Ferrari themselves) to create a unique tub. He hired a designer from Pininfarina to craft him a car that complied with GT racing rules.

It uses a twin-turbo V6 powerplant, about which he is being coy, but is believed to be based on a Honda block, fiddled by Autotecnica Motori.

This time around, Glickenhaus is targeting the Le Mans 24 Hour race and the 2016 Bathurst 12 Hour race. He's already hired Dario Franchitti's brother, Marino, as the lead driver of a two-car team.

But it doesn't stop there. He's also talking about it as a car you can drive to the track, comfortably swap in some more track-focused bits, play or race, reswap and drive home again.

It's the sort of thing you can do when you've moved beyond your actor/producer/director roots into your dad's finance operation and have a nett worth beyond the US$300 million mark. And probably over US$100 million of that is in old Ferraris alone.

It also helps that you love cars so much that you have the oldest Ferrari road car in existence – a 159 S Spyder Corsa (chassis number 002) – and you drive it regularly on the street.

And you have a 1967 Dino Competizione, a restored Ferrari P3/4, a Ferrari 412P, and you're happy to let Pininfarina chop up your Enzo. And you also drive your one-off P4/5 on the street. And have an Alfa 8C as a daily driver. And you own Steve McQueen's old Baja Boot beach buggy.

He also directed, wrote or produced movies like The Exterminator and Basket Case 2 and 3 and McBain.

And if you think he couldn't get any cooler, he was the first person on the scene when Miles Davis broke both his legs when he wrecked his Lamborghini Muira. Along with Jay Leno, Glickenhaus is probably one of the most famous car nuts in the US, and to prove so you should have a glance at his race team's facebook page.