3.2 2009 Modena Terra di Motori - Day 2: RAIN, Back to the Future edition

It rained during the night. And it was raining when I woke up. When it wasn't raining, it was going to rain in a couple of minutes.
The result is that I didn't even come out of my house, let alone visited the squares looking for something new, perhaps Piazza Grande covered by Ferraris as last year.

Despite this, I have something to say nonetheless.

Back to 2007.

That was the first time I visited the event, and I dind't have a photo camera with me.
At the Maserati stand I found a couple of Quattroporte V mk1 in Automatica and Sport GT- S, if I remember correctly, the brand new GranTurismo, the MC12 Versione Corse and an A6GS.
At first the GranTurismo disappointed me, especially due to the rear light and short tail being too low between the rear window and the small integrated spoiler. I thought it was also too similar to the Aston Martin V8 Vantage's tail, an impressions I confirmed when, at the 2007 Adria race of the FIA GT championship, the whole line up from Gaydon was parked side by side with the GranTurismo in the paddock.
In Modena I bought a 1:43 die cast model of the road going MC12, while in Adria I bought a similar model but of the 24 hours of Spa winning racing car.

The same day, in Modena, I met Maserati PR director, and while talking about the MC12 Versione Corse, I informed him of the black one, purchased by an ex-DTM German driver, that had been “converted” for road use, and that was present in those days at the 2007 Concours d'Elegance in Villa d'Este, Cernobbio (IT).
He was a bit surprised, and a bit upset too.
Lately it came out that the car wasn't registered at all at that time, and other modifications were successively done in collaboration with tuner Edo Competition.


Pagani was absent. The main square, supposedly reserved to the Ferrari Club, was instead occupied by a small representation of a couple of exotics dealers of Modena, Autoluce and AutoSpeak.

I don't remember exactly which cars were exhibited, except from three of them.
The first is the moke up of an IMSA racing version of the Ferrari 308 GT/M. Then there was a Maserati MC12 and an Ferrari F50 Coupe with a bespoke carbon fiber air scoop. This modification quite ruined the soft and curvaceous shape of the car, together with all the small mosquitoes smashed on the front that no one bothered to clean.
The MC12 is a car that I particularly like due to its sophisticated design covered with aerodynamic surfaces, even if I'm aware it isn't generally regarded as “beautiful”. It was the second time I met it, with the first being the 2004 Imola round of the FIA GT, where both the road and the race car debuted.



























There weren't, as far as I can remember, other cars if not the racing ones of the alley.
Among the more interesting an Alfa Romeo 155 V6 TI, a Ford RS200, a Fiat Topolino and a De Tomaso Pantera.

All in all it seemed to be a nice event as a first contact. It was the eighth year they were running it, and despite lacking of a real event going on that I was aware of, it was the right way to carry on the tradition of exotics in the city which gave birth to a certain number of small and big manufacturers, from Stanguellini to Ferrari, and so many others.
I saw fathers walking around the cars remembering when they were young and Enzo Ferrari was already a legend, and explaining which were the cars present and some trivial about them to their sons, as a true tradition passing from a generation to the follower.

Post header source: Ferrari's umbrella
Photos sources: Maserati stand, Ferrari F50
Maserati MC 12 images copyright: Damiano Garro