The new Ferrari 458 has arrived in Bangkok. So is anybody buying?

Cavallino Motors, Thailand’s official Ferrari importer, recently introduced their latest beast to Thai shores: the 458 Italia. This beauty rocks a 4499cc V8 engine along with all those other qualities one would expect to find in a typical supercar.

But there's nothing typical about buying a top class vehicle in Thailand. In the United States, the 458 sells for a cool US$250,000. To own one of the famed prancing horses in Thailand, you're going to have to shell out nearly three times that amount thanks to the government's hefty 300 percent import duty on foreign cars.

So is it worth it? A handful of exceedingly wealthy Thais seem to think so, wasting no time to get behind the wheel of the 26 million baht toy (that's about US$800,000). “We have already sold 10 units of the left hand drive model, and we have 10 more on a waiting list for the right hand model,” says Thanon Pongtana of Cavallino motors. To put that price tag into perspective, here are a few things you could do with the money in Bangkok if Italian dream machines are not your particular cup of tea.

• Even with a Ferrari, you won’t be able to escape Bangkok’s notorious traffic. But you would in a helicopter. For just 94,000 baht an hour, the good folks at Advance Aviation Thailand will provide you with your very own chopper, pilot included. In fact, once you’ve depleted your 26 million baht budget, you would have spent over 276 hours in the sky, long enough to take you to, ooh, the united States say, to buy a Ferrari at a third of the price.
• On the other hand, Bangkok does have a lack of helipads (unless you’re a frequent hospital visitor), so why not hire a police escort for a reasonable 5,000 baht per one-way trip (within the city limits only). It’ll definitely get you where you want in presidential style -- 5,200 times if you want to burn the full 26 million baht.
• You're still going to need a car. Buy yourself a Toyota Camry for about a million baht, then with the leftover cash snap up a super luxury apartment in one of the dozens of under-development high rises. With the exception of the penthouses, units in even the fanciest of Bangkok condominium buildings rarely go above 20 million baht. Among the city’s most luxurious now under construction are the Sukhothai, Ritz Carlton Residences, 185 Rajadamri and Royce.

For those of you who simply can't afford to spend that much on a car, console yourself with the knowledge that the dough you would spend on a 458 could buy 800,000 plates of khao mun gai, 650,000 rides on the Skytrain or more than 170,000 dvds from MBK.