2008 edition of Modena Terra di Motori was probably the best year so far, in my short experience that is. The event itself is pretty young, with the first edition taking place in 2000.
I've been pleasured with the main square, Piazza Grande, crowded by red Ferraris of all kinds.
From the first Dino 206 GT, to the last, at the time, 599 GTB Fiorano. An interesting and pretty rare F355 Challenge was present too, among with a couple of 412i and a bunch of 308s and 208s. Which I happen to like them all.
As usual, the event was organized by the local Ferrari Club, without any official or direct involvement of Ferrari itself. That was a shame, since it could have added a few cars to increase even more the level of the event.
Right behind that square there is a smaller one, dedicated to Pagani and his cars. Two of them were exhibited, a black and orange Zonda F, featured at the Montacarlo's Top Marques a week after, and one of the company's own cars, a dark gray and silver S Roadster.
It was the third time I was in front of a Pagani, with the first being a short sighting on the Alps in 2004 (Zonda S 7.0) and then a Zonda S 7.3 during 2006 Mitomacchina exhibition in Rovereto (TN, Italy).
Still I was again really impressed by the car and the attention to every little detail, the softness of the shape while still being very mean and aggressive.
The best surprise was the Pagani crew though. There were a bunch of young Pagani workers at the stand, giving free posters of the Nurburgring record achieved some months before of the event, and answering the weirdest and most pointless questions the attendances had to ask, like “which Ferrari is this?”.
That's right, the Zonda is designed, assembled and tested 11 km from Modena's downtown since 1999 and still people don't know what it is. That's not correct though, but let's elaborate about this and other things later.
At the end of day 2, when the guys were reading the two cars for the take off, I noticed a man, walking through the crowd and looking at the cars, but in a different way.
That was Horacio Pagani. He was like a father looking at his daughter while debuting at the ballet SHOW.
Since the cars were still getting ready to leave, I followed him and asked for a picture of him.
He kindly answered “No, we are going to take it together”, and he pointed to his wife, who was to take the picture. The same elegant lady was present on the first day, as if she was one of the crew, giving posters and answering questions. Amazing.
If you take a look at the other image, you can see them enjoying their own creation.
I really like when the men who create cars actually drive them too, even for photoshoots.
Another attraction was the Maserati stand, being the other only official brand together with the aforementioned.
The three cars present were a blue Quattroporte V mk1, a silver Granturismo and the recently unveiled GranTurismo S, in black. There was also the whole engine, drivetrain and suspensions group exhibited under a tent. To be honest, I didn't measured it, so it could have even been an 8C underpinning, who knows?!
A thing I noticed: the whole stand area was half that of 2007, just half the square, which is usually used as a parking lot. Too bad.
Moving forward, the usual alley of the racing cars was still interesting, but a disappointment too, as the cars were basically all the same of the 2007 edition, apart from a couple of cars.
One of them being a lovely Lancia Fulvia Sport by Zagato, small, aggressive and even cute at the same time, something pretty rare these times.
I was literally excited after the weekend, two days full of beautiful cars, some of them very rare too, the meet with Pagani and tons of pictures to document it.
But at the same time there was something not really working.
Something saying the event had been organized almost for the sake of it, something like “let's do it for the kids”, sort of.
Musings coming soon.
dark red Pagani Zonda S Roadster image copyright: Pagani Automobili
All other images Copyright: Damiano Garro
P.S. Probably you just figured out why there are progressive numbers in front of each post's title. When it was time to publish my first posts, it was clear that some of them, if not the main part, were going to be connected, but I also thought new ones could have been posted even before the end of a certain argument, therefore following the overall evolution of such argument could have resulted as confusing.
So the numbers are here as a sort of reference to a certain argument I'm talking about at that moment.
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