Motorworld

Italy

I’ve been fortunate enough over the years to stay in many truly outstanding hotels where obsequious waiters compete for your attention with the view — hard when it’s Hong Kong harbour, San Francisco Bay or St Mark’s. But my favourite is the Locanda del Sant’ Uffizio-Da Beppé in Asti, where I stayed when we were filming the Fiat Coupé for Top Gear.

It’s a beautiful building, the food is as good as you’ll eat anywhere and the owner redefines the concept of friendliness. Here’s a man who would very probably stick his tongue down your throat if you ever went back for second helpings.

But I enjoyed my four-day stay there most of all because over lunch, on the second day, we shared the dining room with an Italian family.

I’m not talking here about a bearded father in grey shoes, a woman called Janet in Marks and Spencer’s finest and two children. I’m not talking about the near-silence that accompanies most British family days out.

No, here we had granddad and grandma, her mother, their six children, various in-laws and an indeterminate number of grandchildren. It was impossible to say how many exactly because they were never all at the table at the same time — they’d get one seated and another would be off, making tyre-squealing noises round the dessert trolley.

It was a huge feast which appeared to have been ruined as the eighth course was being cleared. Two of the sons started to argue so loudly that pretty quickly everyone within twelve feet was sucked in. Minutes later, it was out of control.

Arms and legs were flailing from one side of the room to the other. Granny was on her feet, pointing at one of her daughters, who looked fit to burst. The babies were screaming. This was one big family bust-up.

Which turned out to be about the Fiat Tipo — or, specifically, how economical it is. In Italy, a family hatchback can tear apart a family.

Now, if they get this passionate over the Fiat Tipo, can you begin to imagine what it’s like to drive there? Well, I’ll tell you. Like a roller-coaster without rules.

The road from Turin down to the Italian Riviera is one of the most beautiful in Europe, but on this occasion it was being ruined.

It wasn’t that the ancient Fiat Ritmo in front was being driven slowly — far from it — but I had a 3.0-litre V6 Alfa Romeo and I wanted to go even faster. I wanted to hear that magnificent engine sing because stuck behind that Fiat it was only humming.

Eventually, the road straightened out and, as I passed, I noticed that the driver of the Fiat was a toothless peasant farmer who’d seen at least 80 summers. His face was as wizened as a walnut and about the same colour too. It could well have been a walnut, actually.

But then I got down to the job in hand — having fun with a great car, on a great road, in a great country — and Walnut Face was erased from the memory.

This was a mistake because, fifteen miles later, he was back. I’d pulled onto the wrong side of the road to make the oncoming hairpin less tight and he shot through on the inside, wheels locked and grinning the grin of a madman. He really was as nutty as he looked.

For fifteen miles I’d strained to read the road ahead, not realising that the real danger was darting about in my rear-view mirror. Walnut Face had been overtaken and he was going to get back in the lead if it bloody killed him. Welcome to Italy, where all the world, it seems, is a racetrack.

You want proof. Okay, here it comes. Two years later, I was flat out on the autostrada but this wasn’t good enough for the car behind which desperately, and very obviously, wanted to get past. It was close enough for me to notice, through the glare of its headlights, that it contained four nuns.

Shortly afterwards I was testing a Sierra Cosworth in Sicily and wanted to see if Ford’s claimed top speed of 150 mph was accurate. The road was straight and so I went for it.

But as I was eking out the last vestiges of power, doing about 147 mph, I encountered a police van trundling along the inside lane which caused me to brake, shall we say, pretty violently. The door of the van slid back and out came a uniformed arm.

This was big trouble… except for one small thing. This was Italy, and the hand was ordering me to go faster. These guys also wanted to know how fast a Sierra Cosworth would go so they could discuss it, noisily and with much fork pointing, over supper that night.

As Professor Franco Ferrarotti of Rome University put it, ‘We have a speed limit in Italy, of course. It is the top speed of your car.’

Giovanni Agnelli, the most powerful man in the country and the owner of Fiat, among other things, goes further. ‘Let’s say the Italians are very hard to discipline, especially if it’s something they don’t like.’

If someone introduces a law there which doesn’t go down well with the people, they don’t organise protest marches, they just ignore it. And because the police are people too, they don’t bother trying to enforce it either.

Speeding is a big thing. Only very recently, a social democratic minister made a big stand on the issue, getting on one or other of the country’s 1200 television stations every night to talk about the dangers of driving too quickly. He imposed new laws, whipped up the police and was rewarded with the sack.

In Italy, you sometimes get the impression they’d be happier to lose the Pope than to lose their right to drive like maniacs.

The question that immediately springs to mind at this point is, why? I mean, we’re talking here about a country that thinks an emergency plumber is someone who can get to you within seven weeks.

That’s six weeks to process the order, six days to order the parts and 23 hours and 59 minutes arguing with the suppliers.

The actual drive from his workshop to your house, 19 miles away, is done in 30 seconds. Now, why should this be so? Why should Italians be so much faster and wilder on the roads than, say, the Germans or the British or the Spanish?

Experts point to the fact that Italy has been governed over the centuries by a myriad of different rulers. Just when the people got used to one set of ideas and one set of rules, another guy would come along and change everything. Remember, Italy has had 50 governments since the war.

So, individualism is a big thing. In Italy, the most important thing is to enjoy life, and if that means a few rules are broken, so what? The rules will change pretty soon anyway. The foot, they say, is more important than the shoe.

On top of this, Italy has only been a consumerist, industrialised country for one generation and they still can’t really believe that they can actually go down to the town and buy a car.

There was never a lengthy period when only the rich drove cars, giving them the cachet they’ve earned elsewhere in the world. One minute there were no cars and then bang, all of a sudden everyone had a replacement for their horse or bicycle.

The car in Italy has no appeal as a status symbol, says Professor Ferrarotti. ‘Italians love the way they are made. They have a fascination with machinery and driving a car blends in with our anarchistic bent.

‘You know it’s not difficult to govern the Italians — just unnecessary. You can have all sorts of laws here, just so long as they’re not enforced.’

And you only need to look around Rome to see what he means. The law says everyone has to wear a seat belt. But no one does.

The professor thinks he has a reason for this. ‘Of course, seat belts are very important and the Italians are the first ones to admit it… theoretically. But if you had to use your damn seat belt every time you got into your little Punto or your big Ferrari — if there are any such things in a Ferrari — well, it is like betting against yourself. It might invite disaster.

‘Italians are very superstitious and if you wear a seat belt it displays a lack of confidence in yourself. Seat belts are a real threat to public safety. They should be abolished.

‘If you put your seat belt on before you even start the engine, that means you are, at a minimum, a mediocre driver. You should not be behind the wheel. Your permit should be taken away.’

So here we have a country where people don’t obey rules that aren’t really enforced anyway, a country that is in love with machinery and, most of all, a country that was only recently introduced to the car. The love is still strong.

Elsewhere in the industrialised world, except Switzerland, the first flush of the relationship has gone, the mistress has become a wife and everyone’s more interested in its ability to cook, to sew and to be safe. I know my Mercedes is fat but she makes great hollandaise sauce. In Italy, on the other hand, they don’t give a damn if the windscreen wipers foul the steering wheel so long as it looks good. They want the car to be a pouting teenager, to be great in bed and with legs that go on for 26 miles.

They may drive a Fiat Punto but what they want is a Ferrari Testarossa. And until they get one, they will pretend the Punto has a 5.0-litre V12 with red camshaft covers.

In the world there are five serious supercar manufacturers and it should be no surprise to find that three are based in Italy — Ferrari, Lamborghini and Bugatti. What is odd is that they’re all made within fifteen miles of one town — Modena.

I’ve been there and it’s an ordinary, communist-run, peasanty sort of place which you might even call a bit shabby. The people have that Mediterranean look about them — ill-fitting suit trousers, belts fashioned from bailer twine, bad hats and even worse teeth. They sit around in medieval squares, chatting and smoking, only looking up to stare at a car. And there’s the difference.

I asked Giovanni Agnelli what makes the people of Modena tick and he said, ‘They have a mania for mechanics there. When a motorbike goes by, they can tell you what sort of engine it has. Ferrari is there. There’s a tractor factory there…’

A cruel one that, because Lamborghini started out as a tractor manufacturer and remains one of just two Italian car firms that Mr Agnelli doesn’t own. He already has Fiat, Ferrari, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Piaggio. But then he also controls around 25 per cent of all companies quoted on the Italian stock exchange, Juventus football club, the newspaper La Stampa, Sestriere ski resort and a few small concerns outside Italy — like NASA.

On official business, Snr Agnelli has a Fiat Croma — a bicycle — but for pleasure I happen to know he has a Ferrari 456.

That makes him pretty special in Italy. When you drive a car like that over there, you are revered as a sort of cross between the Virgin Mary, Gilles Villeneuve and Roberto Baggio.

When we were over there making the BBC series Motorworld we drove through a selection of hilltop villages with quite a convoy. Up front, I led the way in a Ferrari 355. Behind was the director in his Bugatti EB 110 and bringing up the rear was the producer in a piece of purple haze, a dollop of rolling thunder they call the Lamborghini Diablo.

To see one of these cars in a lifetime is a special thing, but to find all three in a village is like coming home from work to find Halley’s Comet sitting by the fire. The Ferrari brought people out of their houses, the Bugatti got them cheering and the Lamborghini caused more than a few to faint.

In England, if you took a convoy like that through a village, the parish councillors would storm off down to the scout hut where plans would be drawn up for a bypass and 6-foot-high speed bumps on the High Street.

But I shall take to my grave the sight of a small boy in Italy. He couldn’t have been more than six and he was beside himself with excitement — he didn’t know whether to point or to tug at his mother’s dress and, if he did point, which car should he point at?

We stopped there for a drink and the town just ground to a halt. They came out of the school, out of the shops and out of their houses and they wanted to see the engines, the interiors, the suspension. And when we left, they wanted to see six black lines right down the main street.

Sadly though, because the Bugatti had four-wheel drive, they only got four.

That said, the Bugatti had disappeared from view first. It’s an interesting car this; mainly because someone, somewhere, sat down and said, ‘I know. Let’s give it twelve cylinders, sixty valves, four camshafts and two turbochargers.’ And then someone else must have said, ‘No, let’s not be homosexual about this. Let’s give it four turbos.’

It’s the fastest Italian car but it’s not the loudest — that accolade rests with the Diablo, which really is a 5.7-litre vibrator, a truck and a chest of drawers with a rocket motor. If you want a wild ride, this is where you queue.

But if you want the best car in the world, you must have the Ferrari, which is by far and away the nicest car I will ever drive. I love the way it looks, I love its engine and I love, most of all, everything it stands for. Ferrari, in my book, is a pagan god, a steel deity, sex on wheels. And that 355 represents automotive perfection.

Ordinarily, when the rear end of a car starts to slide, I undo my seat belt and get in the back, but in the 355, you just dial in a touch of opposite lock and then marvel as the car simply sorts itself out.

In an instant, you’re back on the power, willing that 40-valve, 3.5-litre V8 onwards, slamming the gear lever through its chromed gate and glancing occasionally at the simple white-on-black rev counter. This car has the delicacy of a quail’s egg dipped in celery salt and the power of a chicken chilli jalfrezi.

But that’s only half the story. I could derive as much pleasure from putting this car in my sitting room and just looking at it as I could from driving it every day. And never mind that it sounds better than Puccini and can outrun a Tornado jet.

That’s not it.

This is a car that was made by people who love cars, and it shows.

They don’t love cars in Germany or Japan or even America. Car manufacturers there strive to get each of the component parts right, to make the product fulfil the dictionary definition of a car as closely as is possible. But passion is not part of the equation.

You could probably drive a big BMW round a racetrack faster than a Ferrari 355 and the BMW engineers would be pleased. ‘Our car is faster than their car,’ they would say as they put on their checked jackets and stroked their pointy beards.

They would be so busy congratulating themselves that they’d miss the point. The man in the Bee Em will feel like he’s just had a bath, and the man in the Ferrari will feel like he’s just had sex with Claudia Schiffer and Elle Macpherson. At the same time.

That’s because a Ferrari has soul and a BMW does not. A BMW is an engineering masterpiece but a Ferrari is so much more than that.

Look at the fuel filler cap. It’s not simply a device to keep your petrol in the tank. It’s actually been styled. Then there’s the gear lever. It’s a work of art. Every component in a Ferrari has to do more than simply fulfil its function.

And it isn’t just Ferrari, either. Look at the 3-litre Alfa Romeo engine. This is fitted to their equivalent of a Ford Mondeo. If it weren’t for some pretty stupid taxation laws over there, this is the engine that would power Mr Fertiliser Salesman to his next meeting.

Now, elsewhere in the world, an engine is simply a collection of bits, nailed rather inelegantly together. I love cars but engines bore me even more than double chemistry did on a Saturday morning. Engines are simply there to make cars move. The end.

Er… not quite. I haven’t a clue what makes the Alfa V6 different but here is a power unit that’s pure opera. While every motor in the world sounds like someone singing in the bath, this is the full Pavarotti.

When the rev counter climbs past 5500 rpm, conversation in the cockpit just stops. People who would rather have their legs amputated than talk about cars will actually ask what on earth is under the bonnet — the London Symphony Orchestra or the Berlin Philharmonic? One girl asked me to stop revving the engine so high because she kept sticking to the seat.

Then there’s the styling. At the end of the eighties, all cars were beginning to look not just similar but absolutely identical. Car companies were employing designers from all over the world in their styling centres and national identity was going out of the window. The same set of parameters were being fed into the same computers all over the world and the same answers were coming back.

And the investment became so high that car companies began to counsel ordinary people for their opinions. If you’re going to spend a billion dollars on a new car, you want to make absolutely sure it will sell, so you drag people off the street and show them the various design options.

And, ten times out of ten, these dreadful people in their cardigans and their sandals will opt for the least imaginative.

Italy saved the day, first of all with the Punto which, initially, looked like something from Iceland, it was so radical. But now, a few years down the line, we can see it for what it is: a truly neat piece of design. And then there was the Fiat Coupé and, more recently, the wonderfully wild Alfa Romeo 145.

Cars like these have put Italian styling houses back on the map, which is a good thing because no one can create a car quite like them.

This is perhaps because Italy has a monopoly on style. I don’t care how many times Jeff Banks tells me that this year, London or New York, or even Paris, has taken over the mantle and become fashion torchbearer, I know the world fashion capital is Milan.

In England on a hot day, women are happy to walk around with their bra straps showing. In Paris, they don’t shave their armpits. And you just can’t mention Germany and style in the same book, let alone the same sentence.

It’s the same story in America, too, where the Farrah Fawcett hairdo of 1975 still reigns supreme.

In Italy, even the policemenists look like they’ve just come off a catwalk. One I found, standing on a rostrum in the middle of a Roman square, was immaculate, as was his routine. Each wave of the hand, each toot of the whistle and each twist of the body was Pans People perfect. Never mind that the traffic was completely ignoring him, he looked good, and that’s what mattered. Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you’re going.

Which is why I made a special effort to ensure my linen jacket was especially crumpled on my visit to Turin. The supercars may hail from Modena, and Alfa is up in Milan but, historically, Italy’s coach-builders clustered around the big boy — Fiat — Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino.

And as they sat there, waiting for Agnelli to commission this or that, or maybe a customer to want something a little different, they were surrounded by the best art in the world. Show me someone who says there are more beautiful buildings than those in Italy, or more beautiful art, or clothes, and I’ll show you someone who’s never been there.

When you’re surrounded by such magnificence, it’s bound to rub off. And that’s why, when a car manufacturer wants something really special, he picks up the phone and calls one of three men: Giorgio Guigaro, Sergio Pininfarina or Nuccio Bertone.

Let me list a few of their past credits so you get the picture. The Mark One VW Golf and its coupé sister, the Scirocco. The Lexus Coupé. Every single Ferrari. The Isuzu Piazza. The Peugeot 205. The Peugeot 504 convertible. The Alfa 164. The Peugeot 605. All the recent Maseratis, the Fiat Coupé, the Opel Manta… how long have you got?

And on top of this, the chaps roll up at various motor shows from time to time with ‘concept cars’ which then influence all the world’s other designers. It is not unreasonable to say that 80 per cent of all cars on the road in the world today were designed in, or influenced by, Turin.

Turin is to car design what Melton Mowbray is to pork pies. I put this to Mr Guigaro. He said, ‘Er… I think Turin is to cars what Silicon Valley is to computers.’

I didn’t catch what Mr Pininfarina said because you don’t listen when you’re in the presence of greatness, and believe me he is great. He designed the 355. That makes him God in my eyes.

And there’s a priest in Maranello who might agree with this. Don Erio Belloi is the spiritual leader in the village where Ferraris are made and where the race team is based.

On a Sunday, when the scarlet cars are out doing battle somewhere, this place is like a scene from The Omega Man, only Charlton Heston is at home watching the Grand Prix as well.

I wanted to interview Erio badly about the town’s obsession with Ferrari, because I thought he’d moan a little bit about how the Formula One calendar clashed with his services.

The first indication that this might not be the exact tack of the interview came when he said we could meet at any time on Sunday except when the Grand Prix was on. And the second came when I was shown into his study. Instead of bibles, the bookshelves were groaning under the weight of Ferrari memorabilia, and the walls were plastered with technical drawings of the 456, pictures of Enzo — to whom he administered the last rites — and Gilles Villeneuve, his favourite driver.

Did he, I asked when the race finished, ever think unsaintly thoughts about other teams in the Grand Prix circus. ‘Yes,’ he replied a bit too quickly. ‘It is bad to think if someone else dies [Ferrari] will win, but there is a bit of that.’

That’s what you’re dealing with in Italy when it comes to Ferrari. They don’t have a Queen or a Princess Diana. They don’t have cricket. They haven’t had an empire for 2500 years. But they don’t care because they’ve got Ferrari.

Here is the only team to have won Le Mans and the Formula One World Championship in the same year. And not just once either, but three times. Here is the only team in the world that makes its own engines and its own chassis. Here is the team which has won more Grand Prix than anyone else.

Italy has always been at the top of the sport, even before Ferrari came along in 1947. There was Maserati and, right up to the late fifties, Alfa Romeo too. In one year, Alfa were so dominant that their driver pulled into the pits on the last lap to get his car polished. Then it would look smart as it crossed the line.

If Michael Shoemaker did that today, Murray Walker would have a duck fit.

But do you know where all these old racing cars have ended up? Well it certainly isn’t Italy. If you want to find the best racing Alfas of yesteryear or the great GT Ferraris from the sixties, look in Switzerland or Britain or Japan.

This is because they became so valuable no one would ever dare to take them out on the road. Largely, they sit in hermetically sealed museums, roped off and assaulted with air conditioning. Many will never turn a wheel again.

And that, to an Italian, is just incomprehensible.