Superveloce

How Italian Cars Conquered the World

Peter Grimsdale

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Product Design
• eBook ISBN:
  9781398513044
• Index: History

**Winner of the Motorsports Book of the Year at the Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards 2026***

**Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2025**

Silverstone, 1950 – the first post-war Grand Prix and the birth of Formula One. The king and queen, alongside 150,000 spectators, watch in dismay as Italy’s Alfa Romeos scream past to claim the first three places. British cars are hopelessly outclassed by Alfa Romeos and Maseratis. How can it be, they all wonder, that Italy, its industry reduced to rubble by Allied bombs so recently, has set new standards of speed and style that leave the rest of the world for dust?

Italy’s ability to outflank its more powerful and better-equipped neighbours is nothing new. At the turn of the century Italy made so few cars that its output wasn’t recorded, by 1907 Italian cars and drivers swept the board in the first Grand Prix season. In Superveloce, Peter Grimsdale explores the mystery of how a country with no industrial revolution, hampered by poverty, came to represent an innovation and flair that other countries struggled to match.

Grimsdale traces a century of Italian design genius, the rise of great marques such as Ferrari, Fiat and Alfa Romeo. We see the lives of fiercely charismatic and competitive drives like Ascari, Varzi and Nuvolari. Does the secret lie deep in Italy’s cultural heritage – in historic links between art and machine going back to da Vinci? Or is it simply ‘sprezzatura’ – the art of making something difficult look effortlessly easy?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Prologue: Sprezzatura
• Chapter 1: A Car Is Not a Poem
• Chapter 2: Art of the Car
• Chapter 3: Know Thine Enemy
• Chapter 4: The Littlest
• Chapter 5: Florio and the Targa
• Chapter 6: Pechino–Parigi
• Chapter 7: Three-card Trick
• Chapter 8: Cavalier Attitude
• Chapter 9: The Futurists
• Chapter 10: ‘I Would Have Remained a Nobody’
• Chapter 11: The Years of Blood
• Chapter 12: Tears in the Park
• Chapter 13: Garibaldino
• Chapter 14: Fallen Hero
• Chapter 15: The Scuderia Assembles
• Chapter 16: Back to Brescia
• Chapter 17: Extraleggera
• Chapter 18: The Rivals
• Chapter 19: Scandal in the Desert
• Chapter 20: L’Auto del Popolo
• Chapter 21: Putting the Clocks Forward
• Chapter 22: Gran Turismo
• Chapter 23: ‘O sole mio’
• Chapter 24: Master Racers
• Chapter 25: Racing Demons
• Chapter 26: Detente
• Chapter 27: The Shadow of War
• Chapter 28: Resistance
• Chapter 29: Retribution
• Chapter 30: Wild Spirit
• Chapter 31: The Homecoming
• Chapter 32: Crossing the River Po
• Chapter 33: A Kind of Affliction
• Chapter 34: Two Households in Fair Modena
• Chapter 35: Return of the Champions
• Chapter 36: The Little Boat
• Chapter 37: Spare Room in the Palazzo
• Chapter 38: Merchants in the Temple
• Chapter 39: Viva Italiana
• Chapter 40: El Chueco
• Chapter 41: Taking on the Victors
• Chapter 42: The Tender Touch
• Chapter 43: Shadow of the Father
• Chapter 44: New Jacket, Frayed Trousers
• Chapter 45: World-class Couturier
• Chapter 46: Chasing Ferrari
• Chapter 47: The Most Dangerous Road Race on Earth
• Chapter 48: Contract Terminated
• Chapter 49: Rockets on Wheels
• Chapter 50: Fall of the House of Lancia
• Chapter 51: British Racing Red
• Chapter 52: Gentleman Driver
• Chapter 53: Ferrari’s Primavera
• Chapter 54: The Bombshell
• Chapter 55: Italy’s Sweetheart
• Chapter 56: The Ice-cream Makers
• Chapter 57: Il Boom
• Chapter 58: L’Avvocato
• Chapter 59: California Dreaming
• Chapter 60: Italian Influence
• Chapter 61: Pride and Prejudices
• Chapter 62: Palace Revolt
• Chapter 63: Raging Bull
• Chapter 64: A Question of Attribution
• Chapter 65: Marriage of Convenience
• Epilogue: ‘We Are a National Army‘
• Photographs
• Acknowledgements
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright