Passione Engadina and IsoRivolta GTZ: a Mix of Emotions and Pleasure

The feeling it gives you is something special. It comes, on the one hand, from the emotion of seeing more than a hundred magnificent collector cars lined up with care, each wearing a competition number, on a grass surface softer and more immaculate than a golf course green. On the other hand, it comes from the barely concealed anxiety of knowing you must drive a magnificent and extraordinarily expensive car through narrow, demanding mountain roads – and bring it home intact. We are at the scrutineering day of the Rally Passione Engadina, in St. Moritz, and the car "to bring home" is an IsoRivolta GTZ – where Z stands for Zagato – with an immoderate number of horsepower.

The quiet tension of the wait turns into something else the moment you roll onto the starting ramp and the timers begin to run. At that point everyone is equal – those driving the most historic and often celebrated machines, and those behind the wheel of modern, high-performance cars that are, incidentally, far wider and more cumbersome. The road book is the same for all, and it demands navigating a programme of challenges that go well beyond stopwatch precision. The situations are always different: the bends of the Maloja and Bernina passes reward sheer enjoyment and push worry aside, but they alternate with genuine tests on roads so narrow and difficult that the only option is to switch off the anxiety and concentrate entirely on driving. Among these, even the "fearsome" Spluga pass – climbing from Chiavenna to over 2,000 metres through a thousand traps – becomes manageable. The IsoRivolta proves almost docile in these circumstances, offering extraordinary manoeuvrability and an admirable flexibility from its powerful engine of over 5,000cc. At the checkpoints, in the villages and small towns crossed over two days of intense focus, it is the car that earns the deserved reward: admired for its magnificent lines, the product of Zagato’s accomplished tradition.