01 Aug Why we are here

Why we are here.

August 1, 2018 – Giorgio | Mantova (Italy)

Why we are here?

This kind of question is commonly called “rhetorical question”. One of those raised when the answer is obvious. We’re here because we like engines, cars, machines. So we call them: machines.

A machine is a set of wheels, brackets, gears and pieces that move, everyone having a specific purpose, doing a precise job, with its own meaning. But our machines are more: strictly speaking they don’t help us doing something, they do not have a direct utility. But they look at us, talk to us, wait for us, often make us angry.

We leave together this passion; however, in each of us, this passion has a special declination that comes from a different source.

Someone is in love with an exotic sport car, a Ferrari, a Lambo. Could you remain indifferent to a masterpiece? Or when listening to a symphonic concert? Although we will not be caught by Stendhal’s syndrome, the dry, powerful, deep and fluid notes of an Italian 8 or 12-cylinder flow into the body and bones and shakes us, frighten us and bewitches us. A howl in the dark.

Someone is in love with an old and common utilitarian, built in millions of pieces, repeated every day in a grey assembly line that actually turned out producing a small colored candy box: 500, 2CV, Beetle. These are labels that we do not even have to explain, we do not need to identify the brand, as we know it. We have seen and read these names as many times as the cars shipped from the factories;  overtaken on the road and replaced in the lines by the new models. But never replaced in our hearts.

Someone wants a spider, or a convertible, to live again or for the first time a youth fire. Others want a sedan, like the car that daddy had. In short, we are many.

But why are we all so passionate about our dream? I wonder if you ever took the time to investigate, to identify, to crystallize the moment you fell in love with your car, why you chose that one. I realized it one day during my long school summer break, trying to loose time in a kind of book-shop, enjoying the fresh air inside the room and looking around  with little attention to the old magazines stacked on the bookshelves. Among these, a famous Italian  car-magazine, that in the mid-80s, with admirable foresight, was considering the classic cars as an object of investment and worship.

As I flipped casually through one of the issue, I opened the pages and found my car. Even today I have a chill down my back; while I saw the pictures of that car, I instantly understood the reason for my choice.

When I was a child, years ago, in my primary school period, I was used to walk there in the morning, with my shoulder bag with the handle, filled with the school books and the colored pencils. I had a long time along what seemed like an endless road from home to school; I also had the attention and the free and fresh mind of a child who looked around with insatiable curiosity.

But on that road one day something incredible had been parked: a dark rocket, an interstellar spaceship. It took me ten minutes of my little steps to walk it all around in its majestic side and its impressive lights. Perhaps my hands left my sticky print on the windows, trying to look inside, the speedometer and the speed, because what I touched was a spacecraft for galactic journeys. But the school-bell would have rung soon and I speeded up the pace before the teacher started the lesson.

The day after the interstellar spaceship was gone.

But this vision got stuck somewhere in my mind and remained there waiting until, opening that famous magazine in the book-shop, I came to my personal epiphany.

The faded image remained as in a dream until the glossy page slapped it in my face.

The dream had suddenly materialized, the dream was now something that I could have lived.

Ruoteleggendarie is now with you because we want to continue to dream and feel alive, together, in our passion.