A motoring journalist recently observed that the entire sports car industry of the last century was built upon the macho image of a man driving a powerful automobile and attracting the opposite sex. His fun-loving, beautiful and noble half-American mother, Virginia Bourbon del Monte, perished when her chauffeur-driven Fiat collided head-on with a U.
Army truck shortly after the end of the Second World War, in which Gianni had served as a cavalry officer on the Axis side. Just three weeks later, Il Senatore died and his appointed successor, year-old Gianni, became the head of the most powerful family in Italy.
He invited her to join him at a party in Monte Carlo the next evening. She accepted. The relationship lasted on and off for five years, and Pamela, who was married three times and rose to become U. Ambassador to France, later described it as the happiest time of her life. Chased from the house and still intoxicated, he drove the girl back to collect her handbag, was confronted by her boyfriend, and left again at breakneck pace in his navy-blue wood-panelled Fiat station wagon to drive her home.
It was past 4am when he missed a corner on the corniche and slammed into a Lancia van taking three butchers to work. Quick thinking by friends who arrived on the scene, and Agnelli family influence, avoided amputation by local doctors and prosecution by the gendarmes, but Agnelli would never fully regain the use of the leg.
Nor would the Churchill romance recover. Shortly afterwards, Agnelli was introduced to the aristocratic Florentine beauty Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto by his sisters. Over time, the names are forgotten, but a few habits survive. In the last half century, there was perhaps no man more imitated than the late Gianni Agnelli, the Italian industrialist, chairman of Fiat and playboy of playboys in the jet-set age.
When you see a kid wearing his watch or tie just so, you might be seeing a copy of a copy of Gianni. His style was about more than clothes—it was an attitude, a philosophical response to absurdity. Watching him could tell you how to live, how to behave. In Italy, they call it sprezzatura , making the difficult look easy.
Americans are gonzo, a spirit personified by Hunter S. Thompson, who defined it as a man who learns to fly by falling out of a plane. Agnelli might look gonzo—especially on nights when he showed up in boots and an ill-fitting tie—but was, in fact, sprezzatura ; he knew how to fly all along.
Taki is one of the few surviving members of Agnelli's social circle. He was known by everyone from his sisters to Henry Kissinger to be a dangerous driver--a quality that would leave a permanent mark on him in a car crash. He survived the car accident with seven fractures in his leg and developed gangrene in the hospital. He would be reluctantly crippled for the rest of his life, but he continued to ski and sail.
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See all news categories. See top What's on categories. Where to live in Rome. On his th birthday, Agnelli remains a defining figure in Italian history.
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