Chris Woodyard

USA TODAY

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- Try outrunning this police car.

And even if you did, you'd have to acknowledge it is one of the sharpest looking cop cruisers you've ever seen.

Ferrari didn't just make one police car for Rome's police force. It made two, says Giancarlo Tonoli of Brescia, Italy, who brought it to the giant Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance here over the summer.

One of the 250 GTE Pininfarina coupes was lost in a crash. But here is the other, a black,1962 model that he says was used for security during the visit of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Why a Ferrari when a modest Fiat would have done just fine?

Apparently, the cops were asked what would better help them fight crime.

"One of them, as a joke, said 'we need a Ferrari,'" Tonoli says.

Along came the 250 GTE with its 3-liter, V-12 engine, pretty much able to keep up with anything that Rome's finest were ever to encounter.

But it makes us wonder if some Romans might have turned to a life of crime just in hopes of being arrested so they had a chance of riding in it.