The car is a four-seater, medium-engine 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 often think of palaces here in the United States. Now we have mansions. We also like to build castles for some reason. The palaces, however, with their expansive grounds and French-before-all-guillotine vibes, miss our collective imagination. We build houses as big as palaces, on land as big as palaces, but somehow they always come out like estates.
The grandeur of the palace also invites modern critics. When you’re actually outside, visit Versailles or Sanssouci or anywhere else, almost overwhelmed by the opulence of a room covered in priceless artwork, which are mounted under an invaluable mural covering the entire length of the ceiling, which is gilded at the edges, a thought always creeps into your mind. These people did not even have sanitary facilities, let alone WiFi.
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I think the World Cup is similar. The very high heights of the Ferrari badge, the manual derailleur with the hatch, the leather seats, the quad-valve, the quad-cam V8, all these remind me, hey, this is in fact, no faster than my 240SX friend. And Ferrari is a little less likely to fail.
The expectations associated with the “Ferrari with medium engine” overwhelm the World Championship and that’s kind of stupid. It’s a neat car on its own, even if it may not be the best Ferrari. A palace is an interesting type of human dwelling, even if it is not the most comfortable place to make garbage.
I can say that this is why Ferrari launched a World Championship in a photography palace in 1982. It still feels somehow appropriate.