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For Italian Automakers, Beauty Has Always Come Before Horsepower

While America built its identity around the car and Germany focused on engineering it, Italy fell in love with it.

This is a confirmed true story: during a recent group media tour of Rome highlighting the city’s lifestyle attractions for men, one young journalist from Brooklyn noticed that the cars packing the Eternal City’s hyperactive streets lacked the sort of bling he often saw in New York (i.e., sport stripes, spinning rims and tinted windows). Then he shrugged it off, saying “Italy must not have much of a car culture.” Notably, no one spoke to that guy for the rest of the trip. You simply can’t be that wrong about something so obvious and survive the moment.

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No nation has the same sort of overtly emotional love affair with the automobile, and the innate sense of competition that properly driving one provides, as Italy. Yes, the car built the U.S.A. and forged its self-image. And the Germans pour their meticulousness into their automotive engineering. The Japanese rebuilt their postwar economy with cars. But Italy will always see four wheels and an engine through the eyes of love and artistic expression.

Consider the spiaggine, Italy’s iconic open-air beach cars that became symbols of the Dolce Vita jet set and the ultimate summer accessory along the Amalfi Coast. The annual Mille Miglia is known........

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