Take four: my favourite driving experiences in Italy

Passion, flair, beauty… and rules be damned. For a petrolhead, there’s no place like Italy.

Driving the Mazda MX-5 in Rome

People often assume that Germany is my favourite place to drive, because of their hell-for-lederhosen attitude to speeding, but in actual fact I far prefer Italy, and not just because even the truck-stops have great coffee.

Italy has speed limits, and other laws, but Italians treat them the way we treat flies – dismissed with a wave of the hand. They love driving more than any other nationality, and do it with a combination of pride and flair that I find utterly enchanting. I’ve been harried down mountain passes by old farmers in three- wheeled trucks, and I’ve had police see me coming up behind them and wave me past, gesticulating at me to go faster.

These four cars represent just some of my 4000 fondest memories of driving in Italy.

Maserati Levante

Maserati Levante

Driving the new Maserati Levante – the company’s first attempt at a premium SUV – in Italy was always going to garner a lot of attention, and grins, from the locals, but in retrospect, taking it on a family holiday to Lake Como was as wise as testing one of our natty new nuclear submarines in the local swimming pool.

On the plus side, I did look svelte while driving it, because I was constantly breathing in – a kind of involuntary physical reaction when another vehicle approaches you, often at daring speed, on a narrow road with brick walls on either side.

I found that shutting my eyes, or averting them to take in the superlative Ermenegildo Zegna Mulberry Silk package of the Levante’s interior, was the only way to cope – but one particular incident, when we had to reverse around a blind corner so that a bus full of fuming locals could get past, may well have scarred my children, or at least their ears, for life.

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Alfa Romeo 4C

Alfa Romeo 4C

When Alfa Romeo launched its Faux-rrari, the beautiful and bravura all-carbon-fibre 4C, to the world’s motoring media in 2013, it built a temporary conference room to loom over the main straight of its private race track in Balocco.

As soon as the boring talking was over, a fleet of these fabulous cars were unveiled in front of us and we were told we could drive them until they exploded or we crashed. If you pulled up after a few laps and there was smoke coming out of the brakes and the whole car smelled like a bin fire, the Alfa engineers didn’t get upset with you, they slapped you on the back and told you to keep going.

This is not how other car companies behave when they let you drive their expensive new cars on race tracks. Usually they put a professional in the passenger seat to shout at you, and they make sure to limit the number of laps so you don’t have time to get overconfident. At Balocco, I nearly made myself sick, and very nearly crashed, more than once. As I recall, they only lost one car, though, which wasn’t bad.

Sure, I later discovered the 4C was painfully hard and shockingly loud on public roads, but by then I’d already given it a glowing review. This model has been discontinued, but you can get a second-hand one from about $80,000 to $130,000.

Lamborghini Huracan Spyder

Lamborghini Huracan Spyder

My teenage son is almost actively disinterested in cars, and always has been, and yet, like most parents, I am an eternal optimist. When I dragged him, as a 10-year-old, to the Lamborghini factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese to pick up a box-fresh Lamborghini Huracan Spyder, I was pretty sure it would change his life.

He was almost as impressed as I was by our private tour, and definitely excited by the drive we then took up one of Italy’s more scenic mountain roads, the Passo della Futa near Bologna. Brushing the clouds from our shoulders, his little ears were battered by the screaming glory of the absurd Lambo’s V10 engine as we looked down on valleys filled with giant wads of cotton wool, bathed in autumn-vineyard-yellow sunlight.

I think, today, he vaguely remembers the experience, but it didn’t work. He loves Italy, thank goodness, but still not cars.

From $422,606

Mazda MX-5

Mazda MX-5

Driving around Rome on any summer evening in a sporty little convertible would be a joy, but when Mazda enlisted the help of the carabinieri to shut the streets so we could drive right up to St Peter’s Basilica and the Forum without being molested by traffic, it turned into something unforgettable.

No one was allowed to drive anywhere near our fleet of 20 shiny red Mazda MX-5s, but we could surely hear their fury as we created a traffic jam of biblical proportions on our way to an outdoor cinema that had been set up for us as part of Mazda’s sponsorship of the 2016 Rome Film Festival.

The highlight for me, though, was the discussion as we got into the cars and a number of giraffe-like influencers suddenly announced they couldn’t drive manuals. The dumbfounded Italian representatives pointed out that, in Italy, where they love driving, you can’t even buy an automatic MX-5. Which just made me love them even more.

From $36,090