The car is the four-seater, mid-engined sports car that Ferrari produced in the early 1980s, the Ferrari Mondial Quattrovalvole (denoting four valves per cylinder). The location is obvious: far away, on the grounds of a palace.
We don’t usually think of palaces here in the United States. We have mansions now. We also like to build castles for some reason. Palaces, however, with their wide terrain and French vibes before all the guillotine, kind of lose our collective imagination. We build houses the size of palaces, on land the size of palaces, but somehow they always look like properties.
The grandeur of the palace also invites modern criticism. When you’re really out there, touring Versailles or Sanssouci or anywhere else, you almost win with the opulence of a room covered in priceless works of art, which are mounted under a priceless mural covering the entire length of the ceiling, which is golden at the edges, a thought always creeps into your mind. These people didn’t even have plumbing, much less WiFi.
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I think Mondial is similar. The very high heights of the Ferrari emblem, the manual gearbox with gate, the cosseting leather seats, the four-valve V8 and quadruple cams, all this brings to mind, hey, that thing is no faster than my friend’s 240SX. And Ferrari is less likely to break.
The expectations associated with the “Ferrari central engine” overwhelm the Mondial, and that is a drag. It’s a nice car in itself, even if it might not be the best Ferrari. A palace is an interesting type of human habitation, even if it is not the most comfortable place to dump garbage.
I can say that this is why Ferrari launched a Mondial in a palace for photography in 1982. It still seems somehow appropriate.