STEPHEN BAYLEY

The Aesthete

True, the ludi circenses, the chariot races with their expectation of bloody and violent disaster, laid a cultural foundation for Roman driving. And there are times when circulating the Grande Raccordo Anulare seems positively gladiatorial. But really, there can be few major cities less suited to the car than Rome. And fewer still where cars are so much a part of the city’s story.

I was there recently for a dinner at the Circolo della Caccia in the Palazzo Borghese, a club of such ancient grandeur that it makes White’s look like Center Parcs. My lugubrious neighbour, sadly pushing a slice of

vitello tonnato around his antique plate, said he hardly ever drove into the city any more since the congestion was terminal and there was nowhere to park.

This was anticipated in the cinema more than 50 years ago: the opening sequence of Federico Fellini’s 8½ shows a suffocating traffic jam to suggest the tense drama to come. And in his masterpiece La

Dolce Vita, the cars again suggest psychological states: a race between a Giulietta and a Thunderbird is as profound as a contest between good and evil represented in a medieval fresco.

I spent hours in Rome leaning against the bar of the Caffè Canova, Fellini’s favourite haunt, because it was in the shade. They have a loop of his films playing continuously, and you marvel at the sight of a Lancia Aurelia B24 motoring very slowly, in black-and-white, across a deserted Piazza del Popolo. The beauty of the car, the strange emptiness of the space, the uncertainty of the destination: the sequence looks like no less than an emblem of Dante’s road-of-life. Especially after six viewings, several glasses of Frascati and a bowl of green olives. That same lovely piazza today has Asian peddlers selling dayglo silly putty and counterfeit iPhones.

I mused on this decline and fall as I picked my way through the mess of Toyota Auris wagons on the Via Babuino which have replaced Fellini-era Fiat 1500s as the Roman taxi. And then I found a 1970 Rolls-Royce Corniche parked outside Rocco Forte’s Hotel de Russie. It was olive-green metallic, with cream hide as battered as a rhino’s scrotum, and had English plates. It looked perfectly at home. There was a Panama hat on the rear shelf: the sight was like the synopsis of a short story. Twenty minutes’ walk later, I found a fabulous cream-coloured Fiat 2300 Coupé outside the rococo church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle. The fit was perfect.

Crossing the river by the Ponte Sisto, I walked into Trastevere looking for dinner and instead found a 1955 Fiat 500C Belvedere parked in front of a heaving, noisy

trattoria. For me almost nothing could be more perfect than this delightful little machine, an ‘estate car’ version of the last Cinquecento before Dante Giacosa’s epochal 1957 Nuova Cinquecento.

Now FCA, which sounds like a provincial firm of accountants and not Italy’s premier carmaker, is considering moving Fiat manufacture out of Italy into low-cost Poland, where current 500s are made. This is to free up space for high-value premium products.

And who will notice? Because, very sadly, no-one cares much about Fiat any more, least of all the Italians. Two generations of stultifying product mediocrity – 500 apart – have nearly eradicated a century of patiently accumulated affection founded in the customer’s appreciation of innovation, style and charm. What question did the new Tipo answer? Even Fiat does not know; it has been culled after years of infectious apathy.

The ‘t’ in Fiat stands, of course, for Torino, the city that created

grissini, so a unique territorial sense is inherent in the company’s name. But Fiat is now reduced to a single letter in the FCA acronym, and FCA is a faceless financial vehicle severed from its roots. Debt reduction, not vision, is the corporate preoccupation.

Shakespeare spoke of the folly of selling cheap what is most dear. And what is most dear about Fiat is its association with Italy, the land of Giacosa, Lampredi, Jano, Farina, Ghia, Bertone, Giugiaro and all those other resonant names of bold, singular engineerdesigners who, for a while, made la macchina italiana so distinctive and so alluring.

Genius loci was another idea donated to civilisation by the Romans. This sense of place, of identity and belonging, is extremely precious and will become more so in a heartlessly digitalised and drearily globalised world. In terms of brand value, a Fiat made in Silesian Tychy will be worthless. After all, who would ever want Polish pasta?

‘THE ROLLS-ROYCE WAS OLIVE-GREEN, WITH CREAM HIDE AS BATTERED AS A RHINO’S SCROTUM, AND ENGLISH PLATES’

STEPHEN BAYLEY SB is the individual for whom the term ‘design guru’ could have been coined. He was the founding director of London’s Design Museum and his best-selling books include Sex, Drink and Fast Cars and Taste: the Secret Meaning of Things.