The car is the four-seater mid-engined sports car that Ferrari produced in the early 1980s, the Ferrari Mondial Quattrovalvole (which stands for four valves per cylinder). The location is clear: far away, in the grounds of a palace.
Here in the United States, we don’t often think of palaces. We now have mansions. We also enjoy building castles for some reason. Palaces with their expansive grounds and France-before-all-the-guillotine stuff, however, lack our collective imagination a bit. We build houses the size of palaces, on grounds the size of palaces, but somehow they always come out as estates.
The grandeur of the palace also invites modern criticism. When you actually get there, travel through Versailles or Sanssouci or wherever, almost overwhelmed by the opulence of a room covered with priceless works of art, mounted under a priceless mural that covers the entire length of the ceiling. gilded at the edges, a thought always creeps into you. These people didn’t even have sanitary facilities, let alone Wi-Fi.
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I think the Mondial is comparable. The very lofty heights of the Ferrari emblem, of the gated manual shifter, of the pampering leather seats, of the quad-valve, quad-cam V8, it’s all reminiscent of, hey, this thing is actually no faster than my buddy’s 240SXAnd the Ferrari breaks down only marginally less quickly.
The expectations of “mid-engined Ferrari” overwhelm the Mondial, which is a shame. It’s a neat car in itself, even if it might not be the best Ferrari. A palace is an interesting type of human dwelling, even if it is not the most comfortable place to deposit.
May I say this is why Ferrari rolled a Mondial into a palace for photography in 1982. It still feels appropriate somehow.