World's most expensive car book: Under the hammer

Need a Christmas present for the car bookworm? If you have a spare £10,000, here's the perfect gift

Car books - I love 'em. In fact, I've got way too many, or at least that's what the missus says. I was forced to concede she's right when we moved house last year, and I filled 77 boxes with car books. The man from the moving company even uttered the immortal line, "We're going to need a bigger truck."

See, literally the size of Bernie

I always seem to find space for one more book. But I think even I may have reached my limit with a pair of legendary Ferrari 'Opus' books which are coming up for auction this weekend.

For starters, they're enormous. Each one measures 50x50cm (20x20in), has 852 pages and weighs in at fully 37kg (82lb). "You can literally feel the weight of the Ferrari story," says Ferrari of its official tome, helpfully.

Some more factoids: the book has 200,000 words, including interviews with Ferrari greats, and over 2,000 individually varnished images. It's bound in hand-sewn leather and comes in a carbon-fibre clamshell case. And it's officially bigger than Bernie Ecclestone (pictured here signing a copy).

The 2006 example of Ferrari F1's Opus book up for sale at auction has been autographed by 22 then-living F1 World Champion drivers, including Lewis Hamilton, Alain Prost, Fernando Alonso, John Surtees, Sir Jackie Stewart, Sebastian Vettel, Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher, as well as the late Phil Hill and Sir Jack Brabham. Plus some interloper called Bernie Ecclestone.

That's quite a collection of signatures!

It's said that just 100 of these books were made "with only two not yet in private collections." And the price? The auction house's estimate is an eye-watering £7,500 to £10,000.

Too much to splash out on your Ferrari-loving relative? How about the 'regular' version of the Opus - the Enzo edition - signed by Alonso, Massa, Surtees and Moss, which is up for a 'bargain' £6,000 to £8,000. It celebrates the first 60 years of Ferrari in 1,000 images, as thrown in are prints of Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, taken on "the world's largest Polaroid camera" and measuring 20x24 inches.

But if you do happen to have extra wedge to spare this Christmas, you could try and hunt down a copy of the Opus Enzo 'Diamante' edition. As far as I'm aware, this is the only book about cars that includes diamonds on the cover. The prancing horse logo on the front has fully 1,500 diamonds sprinkled on it. The folio page (made of silver foil) is signed by every living Ferrari world champion. And the price? When it was released in 2011, it cost as much as a brand new Ferrari: £166,000. Which makes it easily the most expensive new book in the world. But since the Diamante edition was limited to just one copy per country, finding one is going to be tricky.