Psst. Let me tell you a secret. Don’t mention it to anyone but the beautiful Lamborghini Diablo you see to the right is not quite what it seems. As any car enthusiast will tell you, Lamborghinis are built in Sant’Agata, an Italian town whose very name evokes a sense of craftsmanship and tradition. The Diablo pictured here was made on an industrial estate in Mitcham, south London. It is, in short, a fake.

Although from the outside it looks identical in every way to the Lamborghini, it is in fact a Torero, one of 22 made last year by a new British company called Parallel Designs.

And they aren’t the only ones at it. While fake supercars are still rarer than the real thing on Britain’s roads, almost any taste can be catered for. Ferraris, classic Porsches, Lotuses and Jaguars are all available as fakes. For many who have lusted after a supercar since leaving their childhood Ferrari duvet cover, this could be the only way of realising their dreams.

Of course, the men behind these cars would bristle at the word “fake”, preferring “replica” or even refusing to admit to more than drawing “inspiration” from a particular supercar.

“This will give you the same ride, the same power, the same thrill as any supercar — but you’d have to spend at least £100,000 to give you the same buzz,” says Naz Manis, managing director of Parallel Designs.

Indeed his car is so good that it recently starred in the ITV series Footballers’ Wives. The latest series of the glossy show was to have used an original Lambo, but the car met with an accident shortly before filming was due to start. No other was available, so Lamborghini directed the producers to Manis’s company.

The unreal thing is not cheap, though — the cars range from £40,000 to £55,000. When compared with £152,500, the list price of a real Diablo when new, however, it begins to seem a bit more reasonable.

“I always owned original Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis but they were costing me an arm and a leg to keep on the road,” says Manis, who started out as an engineer working on Rolls-Royces, and was apprenticed at Jack Barclay in London. “I live in London and if you have a car of such power in an urban setting you will go through a clutch a year, which will cost around £5,000 to change. Then you need to service it, which will cost £2,500. I really wanted to keep driving supercars, but I thought the spending had to stop.”

Manis therefore decided to recreate his own Diablo, but started to receive so many requests to build more replicas that he set up his company two years ago. It now has seven staff and three workshops.

This is the top end of the replica world. Parallel Designs makes a large proportion of the parts itself, including the chassis. The engines used are either TVR-tuned Rover V8s giving 425bhp, or V12s from the BMW 850. As with all replicas, each car must pass the Single Vehicle Approval test to ensure its safety before it can be licensed.

“The whole car is bespoke,” says Manis. “Every part of it has been designed by me, except for the outer shape, of course.”

At the other end of the market are more shameless fakes — kits, often bought via mail order, which literally disguise an existing car. In the comfort of their own garages the buyers will remove body panels from cheap old donor cars and replace them with the new panels, typically fibreglass, which give the look of something far more valuable.

In many cases the transformation borders on the ridiculous. Paul Banham, for example, makes a kit that will turn a battered old Skoda Estelle (typical value under £100) into a lookalike for a 1950s Porsche Spyder (typical value around £350,000). If you have a Mini Metro, Banham has a kit that will turn it into a classic Porsche 356 Speedster, or alternatively something that looks rather similar to an Audi TT Cabriolet. Another company even produced an Aston Martin Vantage based on a Capri.