MEMORIES OF... ITALY
IT HAD TO BE DONE
ESTHER NEVE, BRAND MANAGING EDITOR
WHO:
Wind the clock back to 2006 and the launch of the 20th anniversary Saab Cabriolet. It’s winter and I’m in the Dolomites – the sun is blazing down, the thermometer is reading -5°C... and I’m coasting along with the roof defiantly down. Every person I see waves enthusiastically, lorry drivers on the motorway blare their horns in admiration, respect or maybe bewilderment. Very cool. But very cold.
PLEASANT POLIZIA
STEPHEN DOBIE, DEPUTY EDITOR, TG.COM
WHO:
The cliché is that Italian police see a nice car and gesticulate for its driver to speed up, not slow down. Something I’d always believed to be hogwash until I was driving an Alfa 8C Spider toward the Stelvio Pass early in the morning (tough gig, I know). Upon slowing down through a sleepy village, I was waved over by a Polizia Punto... and succinctly told to absolutely gun it through the tunnel just around the corner. I wonder how many people I woke up. Under the command of the law, I might add.
SPECIALE CAR
ELLIOTT WEBB, ART EDITOR
WHO:
My first Marenello visit was in 2014 to shoot Fezza’s 458 Speciale. Being a proud half Italian, I was excited beyond belief. More so, as I could tell my Nonno (Grandpaps) that I was going to a place he’d always wanted to visit, regaling me with tales of how the Cavallino Rampante was his dream car when I was a kid. After the shoot in the surrounding hills of Maranello, I got to show him the final shots and the finished feature to which he replied, “No, no, no, è una brutta Fiat, non una Ferrari!” I’ll let you work that out. He was most definitely wrong.
BATMANIA
OLLIE MARRIAGE, HEAD OF CAR TESTING
WHO:
Painting Batman on the bonnet. If the question was ‘How do you make a Pagani Zonda even more outrageous?’ this would be a very acceptable answer. From what I remember, it had been painted by the owner’s (new and much younger) girlfriend as a surprise. His reaction wasn’t available to us, but his whole car was. I drove it up past Lake Como and St Moritz to the Stelvio Pass. It was driving heaven. In Bellagio, Batman got a group hug from a gaggle of rapturous schoolkids. They’d have done the same for a plain Zonda, too.
HERO’S WELCOME
SAM BURNETT, SUB-EDITOR
WHO:
Driving from Munich to Milan in the Lexus LC500 – Germany was an autobahn blur, the Swiss were studiously cold, but it was night and day descending through the Italian Alps – people were standing up at pavement cafes, waving from mountain hairpins and cheering the V8 coupe along, I felt like a hero that day. They love a good car in Italy, particularly the sort that wouldn’t be let out of a side street in Blighty.