JEKYLL OR HYDE?

ENZO FERRARI WAS A BORN SALE SMAN, knew how to spin a yarn, and loved playing up to the showbiz and monied elite that were knocking down the Maranello door by the end of the Fifties. True, he wasn’t always wholly complimentary about them, and the road car enterprise was a lucrative means to an end. That end being motor racing.

Take your pick from a list of extraordinary competition Ferraris during that decade: the 750 Monza, 290 MM, and 250 TR alone would be enough to dine out on forever after, though there were countless more where they came from. But the truth is that Ferrari’s GT cars are the foundations upon which the House of Enzo was built, a series of stunning front-engined V12s, almost exclusively bodied by Pinin Farina (the name was changed and contracted by presidential decree in 1961), and enjoyed by the likes of Roberto Rossellini (legendary film director), Herbert von Karajan (legendary conductor), and Porfirio Rubirosa (legendary lothario).

is in prime territory today. We’re in Italy’s northern-most region of Piedmont, using just a rumour of throttle as we pass through the viticultural hotspot of Barolo. The unconventional blue corsa paint of Ferrari’s svelte new Roma contrasts with the vivid, verdant green of the hillside terraces. Do we need to go chasing the red line to get the measure of the Roma? Not right now. This is a car to get lost and lose yourself in. Head north-east and we’d soon be in Turin, cradle of the Italian car industry, and ancestral home to the Agnelli dynasty whose empire still encompasses FCA and Ferrari. The French border is a few hours away in the other direction, and with it the saturnine twinkle of Monte Carlo. The Roma, whose name and marketing spiel invokes the spirit of rather than taste-free Russian oligarchical excess, is the sort of car that turns a drive like