It's mid-morning on the press launch of the Ferrari 458 Spider and a member of the local Polizia is grasping my driving license like he's discovered the Holy Grail. This is not good. He has a cool looking handgun and I am a useless Brit in possession of a Ferrari that isn't mine.
It's not even clear why I’m being arrested. He speaks no English and my Italian amounts to 'ciao' and 'bella, bella'. Maybe it's the dodgy number plates. Ferrari hasn't bothered fitting our 458 with normal Italian 'plates because they upset the front-end styling. But his wild gesticulations don't point in that direction. Nor does he have a speed gun.
The most likely explanation concerns the Ferrari's acoustics. I've just climbed a hill in second and third gear, letting the V8 scream to 9000rpm. At full chat the 458 is cartoonishly loud. Parked at the top of the hill, our officer must have reached a simple conclusion: a Ferrari barking so loudly must have been travelling stratospherically fast.
Now, out of nowhere, a Lancia appears, two twenty somethings jump out wearing Ferrari t-shirts and say, "it is no problem, this is Ferrari." A cell phone is summoned and a call is made to a higher authority; there's a bit of banter in Italian and then the officer meekly hands back my license. "It is no problem, this is Ferrari."
Proof that in Italy, Ferrari is not just a car company.
-Alistair Weaver, European Correspondent
wjtinatl says:
01:18 PM, 10/ 6/11
Guessing that doesn't work in Detroit with a Ford or Chevy.
missmymiata says:
01:29 PM, 10/ 6/11
+1 wjtinatl
Lol...
stoppre75 says:
01:40 PM, 10/ 6/11
That video was terrible.
Don't ever post a video of this car going up a mountain road, sometimes slightly sideways without engine/exhaust sounds ever again.
stress83 says:
06:49 AM, 10/ 7/11
I concur with missmymiata -- +1 wjtinatl lol
someguyposting says:
07:38 AM, 10/ 7/11
It's kind of fun to assume he was set free because he was with Ferrari and Ferrari rules the area. I bet the truth is more boring, though.
That the officer pulled him over is not at all surprising giving the circumstances. At that point, this officer has a very expensive car with iffy plates driven by someone who can't prove he owns it. Maybe he can't ticket him for speeding - no indication he actually clocked him - but he also can't just let this driver go. The car might have been stolen. In come the Ferrari guys who are able to verify that the driver has permission to have the car, and he is set free.
Or maybe Ferrari is such a local legend, so loved by all Italians, that anything Ferrari says goes. Plus they are paying off the local PD to allow them to speed at will while running drugs for a notorious crime family that includes the local chief of police inspite of the fact that the man was previously indicted on murder charges.
OK, forget the boring version.
fredmarktwo says:
08:15 AM, 10/ 7/11
And of course on Monday we learned more about how Italian justice works...
agentorange says:
07:28 PM, 10/10/11
They are a bit careful about checking Ferraris in Southern Europe. When Top Gear did a race between a powerboat and a Ferrari Daytona, Richard Hammond nearly got a night in the cells due to "ownership concerns" about the car.