While Italian automobile production has increased from 1,738,315 units in 2000 to 796,394 in 2022, the elitist sports car sector is doing better than holding up. (credit: Adobe Stock)
Industrial districts were, for a time, seen as a strategy for economic growth. The Third Italy of the sports car is an illustration of this as elitist as it is inimitable.
While Italian automobile production has increased from 1,738,315 units in 2000 to 796,394 in 2022, the elitist sports car sector is doing better than holding up. Thus, Ferrari has manufactured more than 10,000 cars per year since 2021 (5,399 in 2005) and Lamborghini passed this milestone in 2023 (3,815 in 2016).
Around Modena (185,000 inhabitants), an industrial district is particularly efficient. Its energy is primarily local but its ramifications are global. This model appears unique and unexportable as it is based on specificities.
The third Italy: first little known, then inspiring, finally declining
Traditionally, the economic geography of Italy pitted two regional groups against each other. To the north, the “first” Italy was rich with the industrial triangle Turin – Milan – Genoa with its heavy and processing industries, its technologies, its financial and cultural functions. In the south of the country, the Mezzogiorno constituted a poor “second” Italy, subsidized by the north, traditionally agricultural and dominated by parasitic towns where absentee landowners resided.
But when the Fordist industry entered into crisis in 1975, the work of Professor Beccatini (1927-2017) “broke” this representation with the emergence of the “third” Italy. This economist from the University of Bologna then identifies between 50 and 100 small, prosperous industrial territories with specific characteristics: specialized in a given production, they are run by a population of family SMIs. They are also exporting and innovative companies. They do not need the State and share the same culture, where pragmatism occupies a significant place: they are willingly accommodating with sommerso, that is to say undeclared work.
A wave of relocations
In Sassuolo (Emilia-Romagna), for example, contemporary tiling was invented thanks to new single-fire electric ovens. At the start of the 2000s, Sassuolo had 400 SMIs with 30,000 jobs which accounted for 60% of global tile exports. An aphorism serves as an explanation for this success: “four people play cards; “The three of us are starting a tile business.” Nothing like relationships of trust between local people who have sometimes known each other for generations!
But from the 2000s, the Third Italy began to relocate to countries with low labor costs, such as Romania for clothing; and industrial products from the Far East flooded into Italy. Some districts have disappeared, such as that of the coffee makers of Lake Orta (Piedmont), where only the Fondazione Museo Arti e Industria remains, while Bialetti produces its coffee makers in Romania and Turkey.
Between prestige and sport, the Italian car
However, the survival if not the prosperity of the Third Italy is real as long as it concerns products with high added value whose selling price is unimportant. Better still, globalization has opened up new horizons with a clientele sometimes rich in millions and eager to show off. This is the case of the Italian car when sport competes with prestige.
The premises of the Modena Chamber of Commerce and Industry display a quote from the monk Baldus di Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544): Non modenensus erit cui non fantastica testa. Which can be translated as “there is no inhabitant of Modena without a fantastic head”. Could this city be the antechamber of genius? Its car creators are in search of technical perfection, the object is dedicated to the pleasure of the senses, its price is not important and its clientele is worldwide.
This was already the case with Stradivarius (1644-1737) and his violins in Cremona. And from the end of the Middle Ages, the world of banking and trading had developed modern financial tools such as, for example, clearing in Piacenza. It is therefore not surprising that the website of the manufacturer Pagani quotes Leonardo da Vinci: “Art and science can walk together, hand in hand”.
Ferrari in the countryside
Born in 1898, Enzo Ferrari is one of the “fantastic minds” of Modena. Leaving for Milan, he was first a handler-delivery boy then a racing driver and sporting director of the Alfa Romeo team. In 1929, he created the first Scuderia Ferrari in Modena. She is responsible for the maintenance and preparation of racing cars. His company is a subsidiary of Alfa Romeo whose supervision became unbearable to Enzo Ferrari during Mussolini’s fascism. The commendatore sold his company and, during the Second World War, he built an aeronautical components factory in Maranello, in a sort of countryside, far from the bombings of the Allied aviation.
The first real Ferrari appeared in 1947. At that time, many aeronautics and military materials engineers were looking to retrain. A back and forth of skills is organized between Turin, the city of Fiat, Milan, that of Alfa Romeo, and the small region of Modena. Ferrari is not alone. In 1937, Adolfo Orsi, a metallurgical industrialist from Modena, bought Maserati from its founders then based in Bologna and repatriated the trident firm to his city. Finally, expelled from Argentina for opposing Juan Peron in the 1950s, Alejandro de Tomaso returns to the land of his ancestors in Modena. He founded his own brand there, manufactured a Formula 1 car in 1970, then bought Maserati as well as, in the world of two-wheelers, Moto Guzzi. Since 1963, after having built agricultural machines, Lamborghini has manufactured its cars in Sant’Agatha, an agricultural and industrial town in the Po plain located half an hour from Modena.
Capital restructuring
The financial health of the exceptional Italian automobile industry is fragile. His companies went from crisis to restructuring. And yet they are still alive. Today, many have entered the Stellantis fold via Fiat, except Lamborghini which was taken over by Volkswagen via Audi. In two-wheelers, Piaggio controls most motorcycle manufacturers.
Better: new entrants are arriving, like Horacio Pagani: this Argentinian engineer presented his first exceptional car at the Geneva Motor Show in 1999. He then worked at Lamborghini. Isotta Fraschini, a Milanese brand that disappeared at the end of the 1940s, is racing again at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Responsiveness at the heart of the district
It’s because we stick together: cooperation, if not mutual aid, makes it possible to resolve many difficulties, or even to save a company in danger. It was a Ferrari engineer who developed the single-fire kilns for the neighboring ceramists of Sassuolo. Ferrari’s technical school, the Istituto Superiore Alfredo Ferrari (formerly Ipsia Ferrari), trains personnel, some of whom the competition will hire. When engineers, mechanics and patrons come together, it is not surprising to see initiatives flourish. In Bergamo, the Brembo company (named after a river in the region) manufactured the first Italian disc brakes. Symbolically, in the 2000s, the new science and technology park in Bergamo was bordered by a red aluminum noise barrier, the Kilometro Rosso.
The responsiveness of Italian entrepreneurs appears to be a key to their success. Their collective game, which does not exclude rivalries and internal competition, allows them to act as soon as an opportunity presents itself. So, when the F1 Academy appeared in 2023, the Padans were there. Former champion Susie Wolff then created a specific championship to promote women with a view to their possible accession to Formula 1. But with which cars? Tatuus manufactures them near Monza, Autotecnica supplies the engines from Cremona and the Milanese Pirelli the tires. It is therefore a question of being at the customer’s service, which Pagani illustrates for its part by manufacturing cars almost to order with sales prices around
3.5 million euros
.
The unsinkable Third Italy?
The sports car is an absurdity on many counts. What is the point of buying a car traveling at more than 130 km/h, let alone more than 300 km/h? Isn’t it indecent to emit 325 grams of CO2 per kilometer like the Lamborghini Urus?
As for the “Ferrari amendment” of the European Parliament, it granted a reprieve for the decarbonization of vehicles from manufacturers with less than 10,000 vehicles per year so that they can switch to electric at a senatorial rate. They will therefore be able to pollute as they wish until 2036. But all these criticisms slide like water on a duck’s feathers, such is the fascination for luxury and exceptional objects. The Italian economic model of the prestige car has little to fear!
Par Raymond Woessner
Honorary professor of geography, Sorbonne University
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This article comes from The Conversation website
