TUSCANY Style Behind the Wheel
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TUSCANY Style behind the wheel History | Land | People CONTENTS 10 26 TUSCANY STYLE BEHIND THE WHEEL Lands and cars, cities and men, engineers and me- chanics, towns and stories to be told and frozen in 4 time. HISTORY LANDS ITINERARIES Describing Tuscany as seen through the windows The long road The most beautiful race in the world 28 Casentino of a car, captured in the driving mirrors, lit by the Passion and nerve headlights of a Spider means talking about the land where the spark-ignition engine was invented, where 32 Florence the pioneers of car racing were forged and where the Four-wheel aristocrats great champions were born. This book takes you along the straights, the bends, 40 Maremma The land of ‘The sorpasso’ the uphill and downhill roads of a region that seems designed to bring out the car lover in all of us, through 44 Tyrrhenian Coast tours and stories which may not be exhaustive, but Spirit of local patriotism are definitely representative of a land and traditions that have no equal. 48 Apuan Alps, Garfagnana A journey made up of dates, celebrities, circuits, driv- Marble, woods and speed ers, races and roads that all classic and modern car enthusiasts should experience and admire at least 52 Abetone once in a lifetime, combining the passion for roaring Hillclimbing and genius engines and the thrill of discovering new and won- derful places behind the wheel. 56 Tuscan-Emilian Apennines 18 22 Rallies and fabrics 60 Siena, Val d’Orcia FROM THE DIRT ROAD PEOPLE Travelling, how lovely! TO THE CIRCUIT Winners and losers Mugello racetrack 67 Events and shows HISTORY THE LONG ROAD WHERE THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE WAS BORN Boboli Gardens, 1948, cars on show at a Concours d’Elégance Archivio Foto Locchi Images 5 In Tuscany a huge part of Italian but also European cul- In 1854, they obtained a first certification in London tural history was made. It is the land of the Medici and which was followed by patents in several European coun- the great writers and artists, the land where the Italian tries. language was born. We only have to think of Dante, Over the years, they continued to improve the engine, de- Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini. And Giotto, veloping various models and depositing them. They then Cimabue, Masaccio, Caravaggio, Brunelleschi, Ghiber- founded a company and produced their devices at major ti, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Galileo Galilei. Italian and foreign machine shops. Nicolò Barsanti was Just to name a few. Tuscany is also where banks were born in Pietrasanta on October 12, 1821. born and later the bill of exchange. But this is first and At age six he began attending the Pious Schools of the foremost a land of cars. Precisely here, in the 1800s, the convent of Sant’Agostino, where classes were taught by first internal combustion engine was born, used in its earli- the Piarist fathers. He attended the school up to age 17, showing great interest and ability in mathematics and physics. He became a Piarist father, taking the name of Tazio Nuvolari cracked the 335 Father Eugenio. He became a teacher of moral philoso- phy and then of mathematics and physics at the College km/h barrier along the Firenze- of San Giovannino in Florence and then a lecturer in me- Mare motorway, near Altopascio chanics and hydraulics at the Ximenian Observatory, the famous institution founded about a century before by the Jesuit Leonardo Ximenes and run at the time by the Piarist est stages to operate mechanical tools. It was invented by fathers. Felice Matteucci was born in Lucca on February Father Eugenio Barsanti and engineer Felice Matteucci, 12, 1808. In 1824, he began his studies in hydraulics who had begun work on it together in 1851. Their goal and mechanics in Paris for which he showed special ap- was to create a more practical engine than the steam titude that continued later at the University of Florence, engine that would employ the combustion of a gaseous where he also continued with his scientific research. mixture to produce movement. They managed to build this The meeting with Father Barsanti influenced his interests mechanism in 1853. and studies to the point of leading him to devote himself In the absence of a national Patent Office to protect the solely to mechanics. He attempted to verify the validity of invention’s priority, they deposited a memorandum at the his friend Barsanti’s intuitions regarding the equivalence prestigious Georgofili Academy in Florence. between heat and mechanical energy. Together they be- 6 7 gan some important experiments, and by June of 1853, the Consuma Cup, which ran from 1902 until 1964 and had built the first prototype of an internal combustion en- the Florence - Fiesole from 1948 to 1952. A separate gine in history. The main part of the research was carried chapter is the legendary Mille Miglia, Thousand Miles, out at the Ximeniano Observatory. But for the invention that in all of its 24 editions from 1927 to 1957, exclud- of the first car we have to wait until 1886. After that ing the World War II years, has always crossed out re- date, the studies and experiments, the important research gion’s roads. In Tuscany, however, the car is not just about programs greatly accelerated the development of this in- speed, but also elegance. In Florence, in the seventeenth- vention which was to reach the height of its expression century architecture of the Boboli Gardens, one of the in the last century, involving conceptual artists such as most important examples of the Italian garden, with the first Boccioni, Balla and Severini. But back to our Tuscany, edition of the Concorso d’Eleganza per Automobili, an the land of cars. The car grew and evolved mainly due to international calendar event was born in June 1948, at- competition. Their aim was to not only make it faster, but tended by the most beautiful limited edition cars of the era. also to make all mechanical parts reliable and safe for A good 46 Italian and foreign cars met a memorable the driver as well as others. Throughout the 1900s, in our challenge. A committee of experts was called to assess region alone, there were numerous editions of more than not only the forms of the bodies but also the fine instru- 20 rallies, 16 uphill races, and 25 road races. Currently ment panels inlaid with prestigious materials, fabrics and leather upholstery. The declared winner was the Alfa Ro- meo 2500 Sport of Prato’s Signor Magnolfi, followed by In the mid-1930s, the first the American Chevrolets of the Florentine Enzo Bocci and the Studebaker of Signor Angelo Masini. In the evening, studies on aerodynamics led at the event’s conclusion, in the beautiful setting of the to performance improvement Sala Bianca in Palazzo Pitti, a dance was held in honor of the participants and awards ceremony. A special com- mendation was given on that occasion, a beautiful 2500 there are 12 rallies that annually take place on our roads Alfa Romeo with a body by Boneschi of Milan. But back and 3 uphill races. There are also 3 speed records: on to the competitions. Two big names in international sports what is now the Firenze - Mare motorway in 1935, Tazio car racing were born in Tuscany: Ermini and Bizzarrini. Nuvolari in an Alfa Romeo in the Altopascio - Lucca broke Pasquale Ermini, best known as Pasquino, was a race all records on the kilometer reaching 336 km/h. Again, car driver and entrepreneur, founder of the car factory on the same stretch, the same year Hans Stuck in the Auto that bears his name. Union reached 320 km/h, while in 1937, the engineer Bizzarrini’s father was the engineer, test driver and entre- Giuseppe Furmanik improved the class F1 leaders in the preneur Giotto Bizzarrini whose history is linked to the kilometer going at an average of 238 km/h in a Ma- very extraordinary and unique Italian Gran Turismo cars. serati 1500. It was right in the mid-1930s that studies The last model came out of his factory in Cecina, prov- in aerodynamics were beginning. Maserati, Alfa Romeo, ince of Livorno, in 1969. Of the Tuscan car makers we and Auto Union used our region as a car laboratory. The cannot overlook Clemente Biondetti, the greatest Italian car was evolving rapidly. The original body had changed road racer and winner of 4 Mille Miglia. With his “Jag- with the creation of an almost complete fairing with the uar Special”, a car with a Ferrari chassis, he came first aim of creating increasingly more fluid and continuous in the uphill Florence – Fiesole race in 1951, setting a lines. speed record. The owners of the first cars circulating in On the tail there appeared a large fin stabilizer. The pas- Florence, like the other provinces of Tuscany as well as senger compartment was closed by a fairing that made a few notables, were representatives of the highest nobil- the car look like a torpedo. But the race that best covered ity: the Gherardesca Counts, Baron Franchetti, Marquis the whole region was the “Coppa della Toscana – Tus- Gerini, the Counts and Marquises Guicciardini, the Duke cany Cup” which from 1949 to 1954 crossed all the Massari, the Prince Strozzi, the Marquis Torrigiani, the provinces with the start and finish in Florence, apart from Piccolimini Conti, and Prince Ruffo della Scaletta. Not In questa pagina, in senso orario, concorso 1949 when the start was in Livorno. Competitions that to mention, in the province of Lucca in Massaciuccoli, di eleganza a Boboli nel 1949 e nel 1962, were internationally known and still live on with evoca- Giacomo Puccini, who often used a De Dion & Buton to Anthony Steel e Anita Ekberg al passaggio tive re-enactments are the Mugello circuit which ran from move to Viareggio and to participate in the car gymkha- della Mille Miglia del 1956, 1914 to 1970 with various editions in different periods, nas that were so fashionable at the time.