This Lake Como car festival was fast and fuorious!

The connection between Germans and Italians is amicable, but also a bit complicated, to say the least: Since the days of Goethe, who boosted the country where the lemon trees bloom as the first of countless travel influencers, us Germans have flocked to the Italian shores as soon as the alpine passes in between were free of snow, enjoying la dolce vita as much as our teutonic temperaments allowed — and, again and again, falling in love with the culture, the beaches and towns, the food and the people. Meanwhile, the Italians admired us for our work ethics, our productivity, our quality standards, the Spaltmaß of our cars and the punctuality of our trains (well, let's not start with that). To make it short: We were respected, while we always wanted to be loved.

Similar can be said about the automobiles: While Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Maseratis touch our senses and emotions with unmatched sprezzatura and allure, the cars from Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche are often best-described through datasheets and engineering blueprints; they are reliable — and reliably rational. German carmakers have historically been famous for their precision, quality and striving for perfection, sometimes bordering on the compulsive — earning the admiration of discerning Italian drivers from Milan to Palermo, from Turin to Venice. But standing in front of Villa Grumello on the shores of Lake Como last weekend, elegant Rivas and seaplanes roaring past across the waves, the elegant Milanese crowds in sunglasses and linen suits adoring the most teutonic machines with true admiration, we finally felt loved!

The motto of this year's FuoriConcorso was "Kraftmeister" — a clever vogue word evoking a mix of industrial Kraftwerk beats, herbal-infused Jägermeister racetrack mastery and that Vorsprung durch Technik attitude German's car culture is associated with. Guglielmo Miani, the founder of FuoriConcorso and president of the luxury gentleman's brand Larusmiani, himself has a taste for rare German cars in rather flamboyant, more Milanese than Munich color combinations. And after celebrating the history of British and Italian performance cars at previous FuoriConcorso events, Miani and his team curated the most impressive and enjoyable blockbuster show of German cars ever seen, alluring visitors with a hall-of-fame line-up in the luscious gardens of Villa Grumello and Villa Sucota on the shores of Lake Como.

Stepping through the gates, visitors were proverbially sucked into the FuoriConcorso KraftMeister theme by a grid of the most influential Mercedes-Benz silver arrows from today until the very beginning, lined up for an impressive rewind of automotive history. Starting with the brutal AMG-One and SLR 722GT, one walked along the SL 500 Rallye, 300 SLR and Carrera Panamericana SL, Caracciola's W125 and SSK right up to the Benz Patent Motorwagen which kicked off the age of the automobile in 1886. On a terrace overlooking the gardens, Mercedes continued the show with two versions of the remarkable 190 Evolution DTM car alongside its modern-day offspring, the HWA Evo restomod.

Under the pine trees in the park of Villa Grumello, arguably one of the most glamorous photo spots in Italy, Porsche took over with some equally important and impressive cars, the Shell Porsche 962 from the 1988 Le Mans 24 Hours race, Martini Racing's iconic Hippie-Porsche 917 which had been hand-sprayed with psychedelic green and purple flames by Porsche's design director Antoine Lapine — and an all-white Porsche 908 LH which must rank among the most beautiful race cars in history. Further up the jungle surrounding Villa Grumello, the Porsche parade continued with some of the most desirable Zuffenhausen racers, including the duck-tailed Porsche 911 2.7 RS in a beautiful blood orange, a paint-to-sample triple yellow 930 Turbo, an Esso-branded 911 SC Group 4 endurance racer and an ex-Olaf Manthey, Carrera Cup winning, flame-spitting 3.8 RSR.

As FuoriConcorso Kraftmeister celebrated the peaks of German motorsports, our friends from Rennmeister joined the party with two of the most iconic, bright orange Jägermeister racing cars — putting the Meister in Kraftmeister and toasting the Italo-German connection with Jägronis on ice for aperitivo. They say orange cars drive faster, and the BMW Alpina 3.0 CSL reminded us of Niki Lauda's famous win at the Nürburgring, while the Porsche 956 C was famously raced by Stefan Bellof and Hans-Joachim Stuck — both testaments to the great heritage of Jägermeister Racing.

Meanwhile, Audi had taken over the entire Villa Sucota with a once-in-a-lifetime display of the brand's impressive and wildly diverse racing heritage: Visitors were greeted by rally icons like the Sport Quattro and the ever-impressive IMSA-GTO before showcasing mighty machines like the 2015 Audi R15 Le Mans racer, the Audi RS Q E-Tron from the 2024 Dakar Rally, the 2026 Formula 1 racer and the Audi R18 that was raced to victory in 2013 in Le Mans by racing legend Tom Kristensen who kindly gave us a tour of the cars on display.

But German car culture and heritage isn't limited to the racetrack: Mechatronik had brought the only factory-built road version of the Kremer K3, originally ordered by F1 team owner Walter Wolf while the iconic Lotec niche brand made a return with their one-off 1995 hypercar, the Lotec C1000 which famously claimed 431 km/h top speed with its 1,000 horsepower twin-turbo Mercedes V8. Right next to it stood the impressive, all-black Maybach Exelero — a unique 2005 high-speed prototype that became world-famous through a cameo in a Jay-Z music video. Meanwhile, BMW presented the futuristic Vision EfficientDynamics, a concept car which became the BMW i8.

One of the less well known but all the more alluring chapters of German car history is the country's tuning culture that brought the world some of the most brazen performance and show-off cars in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The FuoriConcorso curators had sourced three proper Kraftmeisters from the iconic customization studio Koenig-Specials in form of a wide-arched Testarossa, a bright yellow F48 which turned the modest Ferrari 348 TB into an F40-style turbo monster and an equally impressive Koenig Mercedes SEC. Elsewhere, a Gemballa Mirage GT in bumper car spec metal-flake rainbow paint right next to Marc Philip Gemballa's Marsien reminded us that tuning and customization culture still lives on!

On Friday night, Constantin Buschmann had chosen FuoriConcorso Kraftmeister to unveil the brand's most daring creations in form of the Brabus Bodo — a coach-built, all-carbon, 1,000 horsepower V12 homage to his father Bodo Buschmann, one of the most influential personalities of German car history. Merging Art Deco proportions with state-of-the-art technology, the bespoke grand tourer was a reminder that independent car culture is still very much alive in Germany and beyond.

Opening the FuoriConcorso Kraftmeister format to restomod brands from all across Europe, visitors had the chance to explore some of the most exciting boutique cars of our times, from the Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 to the Eccentrica V12, while the conversation program hosted on Sunday by Classic Driver's very own J.P. Rathgen assembled some of the car world's most interesting personalities for a panel talk at Villa Sucota. This year, FuoriConcorso even extended down to the lakeshore park of Villa Olmo where an open-air exhibition of Helmut Newton's car photography is on display until 30 June 2026.

With FuoriConcorso Kraftmeister, founder Guglielmo Miani, curator Andrea Luzardi and their team have once again proven that concour events can feel casually elegant, car culture is all about the community — and, most importantly, German cars deserve to be loved. Even more so, if they are presented with that unmatched Italian elegance and grandezza that only exists during Lake Como Car Week.