29/10/2025
Effeffe Berlinetta
Stories to read.
The "Dolce Vita" Pass.
A Friday in late May at dawn, when the light is as magical as only in early summer can be.
Clear and clean.
Winter is behind and Milan just a memory.
In front of your eyes is the Via Emilia, magical and full of stories.
Stories of passionate men and fascinating women, stories of gentle and violent passions, as only true passions are.
The river Po, sinuous and majestic, with its bends, and beyond the banks vast views of wheat fields almost ready for the harvest festival days.
The Gold.
The sly hum of the ‘Bialbero’ plays in the background.
Safe and silent.
Fifth, fourth, third gear.
The Via Emila narrows, a sharp curve on the left and immediately a second one on the right, the high bank, then down the accelerator pedal, the needle of the mechanical rev counter rises fast, very fast.
The ‘Bialbero’ no longer hums, it screams like a summer storm.
Then calm.
The horizon has changed, outlined by endless rows of poplars.
Undiscovered villages emerging among the fields and hidden by the embankments.
Gonzaga, Visconti, Estensi.
You can read these names as you pass through the villages.
Oases of values, of agricultural opulence.
The Po River again.
Wonderful sleepiness and divine torpor flowing placidly, slowly.
Its times.
The sun blazing down.
“La Bassa”
Things are said to happen here that happen nowhere else.
Piacenza, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena and Bologna are now a memory.
We begin to climb.
The Tuscan-Emilian Apennines.
The senses tense, the feet begin a tribal dance, the wrists firm and precise.
The eyes go beyond what they see.
The stress rises, the Weber DCOE 45 carburettors are hungry for air.
From the ground comes all the information, without any filter.
The driver processes, Berlinetta executes.
In a perfect symbiosis.
The first ridges, moors and then oak and chestnut groves broken by fields embroidered with sheaves of hay and cattle grazing.
The Raticosa and Futa Passes, lands of epic duels, of ‘Knights of Risk’, of unforgettable cars.
Memories go to Castellotti, Fangio, Musso, Collins, Gendebien, Behra, Farina, the Marzotto brothers, and to the many unknown Gentlemen Drivers who wrote epic stories on those Apennine passes.
Maserati A6GCS Zagato, Lancia Aurelia B20, Fiat 8V Zagato, Osca MT4, Ferrari 250 MM, Alfa Romeo 1900 Zagato their companions.
Companions even on Monday mornings when going to the office.
The Driver smiles, and even the ‘Bialbero’ seems less hoarse, in the memories of so many Mille Miglia.
The descent towards the Tyrrhenian Sea, the olive groves and the vineyards anticipate the magic of Tuscany.
Livorno, Pisa, Firenze, Cecina, San Vincenzo, Grosseto, Tarquinia.
Like frames of an old Cinemascope movie, they passed quickly before eyes along the beautiful Via Aurelia.
The maritime pines, rows of trees on either side of the road arching into natural tunnels.
Full sun and sudden shade.
Heather, arbutus, mastic tree.
Junipers.
The scent of the Mediterranean.
The Santa Marinella straight, that of the Mille Miglia in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Berlinetta and her Driver have travelled through history.
Backwards, almost 800 kilometres of that road race that made the whole world dream.
And they are deeply satisfied with it.
Night has fallen on the Mediterranean Sea.
Friends on the seashore,
the sun embracing the water
and everything turns red.
The sand and bare feet.
Night has fallen.
Relaxed, warm and deep atmospheres.
Intense, refined and elegant.
In the air the notes of ‘My Way’.
The ‘Voice’ singing to the world.
« And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way»
In the eyes distant, evanescent images.
The Trevi Fountain.
Anita Ekberg.
One of the most iconic frames of
the international Cinema.
A mythological nymph in the Roman night, she plunges into the waters of the miraculous fountain, an enchanted place.
“Marcello, come here. Hurry up.”
On the small outdoor tables
Dirty Martini
Old Fashioned
Tom Collins
Gibson
The night has no time, no boundaries.
ph. M.Sole78
