For Italian Automakers, Beauty Has Always Come Before Horsepower

This is a confirmed true story: during a recent group media tour of Rome highlighting the city’s lifestyle attractions for men, one young journalist from Brooklyn noticed that the cars packing the Eternal City’s hyperactive streets lacked the sort of bling he often saw in New York (i.e., sport stripes, spinning rims and tinted windows). Then he shrugged it off, saying “Italy must not have much of a car culture.” Notably, no one spoke to that guy for the rest of the trip. You simply can’t be that wrong about something so obvious and survive the moment.

No nation has the same sort of overtly emotional love affair with the automobile, and the innate sense of competition that properly driving one provides, as Italy. Yes, the car built the U.S.A. and forged its self-image. And the Germans pour their meticulousness into their automotive engineering. The Japanese rebuilt their postwar economy with cars. But Italy will always see four wheels and an engine through the eyes of love and artistic expression.

Consider the spiaggine, Italy’s iconic open-air beach cars that became symbols of the Dolce Vita jet set and the ultimate summer accessory along the Amalfi Coast. The annual Mille Miglia is known as “the most beautiful race in the world,” in which hundreds of vintage automobiles travel an 1,800-kilometer loop from Brescia to Rome and back. Italian sports cars are tailored like the finest suits, and Emilia-Romagna’s “Motor Valley” houses world-renowned marques like Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati.

As a result, a majority of the most desired and expensive cars at auction or among private collectors are Italian, led, unsurprisingly, by the creations of Enzo Ferrari and his team. The racing powerhouse built consumer cars primarily to fund the boss’s ambitions on the track, and a mix of those competitive speed machines and the road cars they inspired dominate the auction podiums.

Ferrari specializes in stacking just enough editions of its rare breeds to drive bidding hawks insane. Consider the 1962-1964 Ferrari 250 GTO. Enzo only made 36 of the dominant racers in those three years, making the 250 GTO perhaps the most precious of auction targets. In 2014, Bonhams brought the hammer down on a 250 for $38,115,000, while Sotheby’s sold another in 2023 for $51,705,000.

From Modena, Ferrari consistently puts more entries on the most prized auction lists than any other company, because its ’50s and ’60s creations are both gorgeous and agonizingly rare. Only four 1955 Ferrari 410 Sport Spiders ever left the factory, and RM Sotheby’s sent one to a private buyer in 2022 for $22,005,000. Four examples exist of the 1956 Ferrari 290 MM, so cue RM Sotheby’s again in 2018 for $22,005,000. Finally, two of the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spider Competizione legends made it out into the world, and Christie’s sent one to a new home for $25,305,000 in 2025.

Moving forward from the 1960s, it’s consistently difficult to say precisely which additional Ferraris rise above their supercar kin. There’s the 1987 F40, with its mid-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive. Its F50 successor in 1995 improved on the formula with a 4.7-liter V12 powerplant. Still, the Ferrari 458 emerged in 2009 to surpass them both. Putting out as much as 597 horsepower, there’s something about the cut of its Italian tailoring that identifies it as the stereotypical modern Ferrari.

While the brand may not possess Ferrari’s trophies or price tags, Alfa Romeo is Italy’s most charming automaker. With their unmistakable tri-oval shield grilles and utter dedication to driving fun, there are few old-money auto lines with as much consistent style. The insane lines of the 1952 Alfa Romeo Disco Volante and the 1967 33 Stradale perfectly thumb their nose at the rest of the auto world as “love us or you don’t really like cars” candidates. The light and sporty 1965 Giulia Sprint GTA improved on its then-boxier relatives with pugnacious lines to become an all-time favorite.

But the perfect Alfa Romeo is the Spider. The convertible roadster defined its genre in various forms from 1966 to 1994. Trading the full grille for a shield badge, and posing an ergonomic challenge for some of the world’s taller drivers, there really is no more classically Italian car than Alfa Romeo’s arachnid.

Staying among the smaller car classics, the Fiat 500 rivals the U.K.’s Mini as the cutest pocket car in history. Built off and on from 1957 to 1975 (and reborn via an American partnership in 2007), the three-door hatchback can fit in any city in the world, but looks most at home in Venice or Florence.

Finally, Italy leads the world in the flashy car class, home to machines that demand attention and are never shy about their capabilities and MSRPs. While Lamborghini continues to make a fuss this century with the Gallardo, Aventador, Huracán and Revuelto, the Lambo that adorned the most pubescent teenagers’ walls in history must be the Countach. In production from 1974 to 1990, its low, angular lines rode the design traction from the ’70s through the ’80s with aplomb. They didn’t come with a supermodel standard, but they could have, and no one would bat an eye.

One lesser-known, but defiantly hard-edged, hypercar rounds out the Italian supercar crop. The Pagani Zonda lived under various guises from 1999 to 2019, but each had a gaudy spoiler, brawny wheel wells and up to a 7.3-liter V12 engine. In keeping with its Roman ancestors, a Zonda wanted to be the boldest of the bold, letting lesser cars know they were looking at another Caesar.

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