Andrea Vecchi in front of Dallara’s secret, space-age, super car race simulator. Image by Harrison Shiels
Upon touching down at LAX, after 12 hours in the air, I walked non-stop to the 7-11 convenience store near the baggage claim belt for a Big Gulp to quench my thirst. The attendant at the counter, an earnest young man named Corey, asked politely where I had been.
“Bologna, Italy…it is in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region,” I answered.
“For business or pleasure?” Corey asked as I paid.
“Italy is always pleasure.” I admitted. “But I was also there to attend the annual Motor Valley Festival in Modena.”
He looked interested, so I explained the Emilia-Romagna region is called the “Motor Valley” because it is home to legendary car companies Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Dallara, Ducati and more. “I was lucky to visit the racetracks and museums and headquarters. I went inside the factory of this company called Pagani. It was more like an art studio than a manufacturing plant because Pagani handcrafts only 50 cars each year and they cost…”
“Oh, I know all about Pagani,” Corey interrupted and assured me. “I dream of driving the Pagani Utopia.”
For an extremely limited-edition, hard-to-get sports car with a “sticker price” that starts at $3.5 million and can be customized for millions more, I was amazed that the young attendant was aware of Pagani! Corey had deep knowledge about a car he will never see rumble by the window showing the clogged “arrivals” lane outside the LAX baggage claim. How did he know about these rolling works of candy-colored art for the ultra-wealthy? “Car & Driver” magazine describes Pagani vehicles, built since 1992, as “radically-styled, low-volume supercars sporting over-the-top embellishments.”
“These are emotional cars – not rational,” the Pagani spokesperson admitted before paraphrasing Oscar Wilde by saying, ‘Unnecessary things are our only necessity – and one admires art intensely.’ Our customers engage us like a family. They have a beating heart for mechanics.”
When you tour Pagani Automobili’s “atelier” as I did, you will walk through not only a dynamic museum of the company’s history and evolution of Horacio Pagani’s sports cars, but you will also get inside the actual factory and see the cars being handmade by, all told, 50 manufacturing artisans. They are working in a setting designed to look like an outdoor Italian piazza rather than a factory, including natural light, street lamps, brick walls, a bell tower, a classic bicycle rack, and greenery.
At the end of the Pagani tour, I was presented with a small steel Pagani Utopia logoed hood ornament manufactured on-site. I reached into my carry-on bag and presented the collector’s item to Corey to thank him for being friendly and to encourage him. A better gift to Corey might be an introduction to the Dallara Academy, also based in the Emilia-Romagna Region.
“It is a museum center where we encourage and teach young people to be the automotive engineers of tomorrow to support the future,” said Dallara executive Andrea Vecchi. “16,000 companies in the Motor Valley contribute to creating about 30,000 high-performance vehicles each year by Dallara, Maserati, Ferrari, and Lamborghini. Not only are the race car drivers cool, but the engineers, safety testers, wind-tunnel technicians, and manufacturers of the automobiles are also cool.”
Dallara’s interactive display center showcases the career of Giampaolo Dallara: his own eye-popping speedster vehicles, historic race-winners, and the iconic ones the aerospace engineer built with Maserati and Lamborghini and more. Tourists are inspired by the stories of Dallara’s impact on Indy 500 racing, Space X, and America’s Cup racing.
Vecchi showed me a just-built car: it was a matte-green Dallara Stradale. “Fighter-jet windshield, carbon-fiber chassis, no doors, no radio, no airbags or navigation system, and the seats do not adjust. This car is built only for speed and driving from 0-100 in 3.2 seconds,” said Vecchi. “Giampaolo said he wanted to create a car that was fun to look at while driving down to the sea…and yet kick everyone’s ass when stopping at the track.”
Vecchi recalled seeing grown men crying when taking delivery of their custom-made Stradale for the first time.
Dallara is the exclusive supplier for the IndyCar Series, so they created the Dallara Experience Hub, with a factory and racing simulators, near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The company also founded the new Motorsport and Sports Engineers Program at Purdue University. Giampaolo and the legendary Detroiter Roger Penske, an automotive titan, have been friends for 60 years.
Fly to Bologna for speedy access to the Emilia-Romagna Region’s world-class racetracks; 13 car museums; 18 car collections; and visit the headquarters of legendary Lamborghini, Ferrari, Maserati, or drive a Ferrari F 296 race car on the track at the Modena Autodrome.
These historic and high-tech experiences are in the birthplace of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, Balsamic Vinegar, Luciano Pavarotti, and super chef Massimo Bottura in historical towns such as Parma, Modena, and Imola along the Adriatic Riviera.
Plan your trip at EmiliaRomagnaTurismo.It or via ICBellagio.com
Contact Michael Patrick Shiels at MShiels@aol.com His new book: Travel Tattler – Not So Torrid Tales, may be purchased via Amazon.com. Hear his radio talk show on WJIM AM 1240 in Lansing weekdays from 9 am – noon.
