True story: I once asked my parents to buy me a Porsche 911 for Christmas. Amazingly, they did, only it was a lot smaller than the one I wanted. They bought me a toy car. I should have just made one, like this amazing pedal-powered Porsche, the Ferdinand GT3 RS, aka the World's Slowest Porsche.

The car-bike is an art project, perpetrated by Hannes Langeder of Austria. It took a year to build, and cost as much as a real car: 13,000 euro, or $17,700. Inside, as you can see from the extensive photos (there are even more on the project's Flickr page), the main structure is steel. This was then built out using a toy 911 as a model, covering the skeleton in plastic tubing and then skinning the whole thing with packing-tape and gold foil. Thanks to these simple materials, the entire car weighs in under 100 kilos [220 pounds]. That's not exactly light for a bike, but you probably wouldn't want to take the Ferdinand out for a spin on a windy day.

The car debuted in June 2010, as Autopia's Keith Barry reported, but we got our hands on some additional photos, and the project's pretty outlandish, so we think it's worth a reprise.

The car looks fantastic on the road. Even though there's a bike inside, it has the presence of a car. I'll bet the rider gets a lot more respect from car drivers just because he looks like one of them. Even if he is tootling along at just 10 mph.

Ferdinand GT3 [Ferdinand Johannes L via Core77]

Ferdinand GT3 RS BikePorsche/Flickr

Artist Creates the Slowest Porsche in the World [Daily Mail]