Since 1929, Villa d'Este, a former palazzo turned grand hotel on the shores of Lake Como, has played host to the world's most outlandish car show. Over one weekend in May, the most beautiful cars ever built are tightly and precariously parked on every corner of the hotel's lawns and pathways: a greatest-hits compilation of the combustion engine's salad days. A 1936 Mercedes 540K on the drive; a navy 1956 Ferrari 250 GT Zagato under a sycamore tree; a jade 1960 Aston Martin DB4 GT outside the boiler room.
Riva speedboats bounce along in the lake in front; helicopters occasionally rattle overhead. Attendees, their camera phones brandished aloft, don their posiest outfits, with wonderfully mixed results. The waiting staff, each in an immaculate white jacket and black tie, can't open the rosé bottles fast enough. Even the name-Concorso d'Eleganza-sounds like an aria. The whole scene is so Italian, it must be made up; so picturesque, it can leave your eyes craving something ugly, or at least slightly askew. The closest I got was a half-eaten biscotto.
Somewhere within this frankly ludicrous scene-the mosaic garden, to be an exact-a brand-new model is given the drum roll of a world premiere. Which, considering the status of the cars all around it, doesn't really seem fair. In 2022, this honour falls to the BMW i7: the Munich marque's flagship car presented for the first time in the all-electric form. The clash of epochs couldn't be starker. While the older cars in eyeshot are decidedly analogue, this i7 is a whirr of ones and zeroes; a monument to the arriving intelligent, digital and electric eras in three tonnes of aluminium and glass.
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