There are special moments in the year when the leaves turn yellow but it’s still warm enough to enjoy the last sunny days. Moments when a ray of light reflects off a carbon fibre body, warms bare metal and turns a garden into something between a museum and a racetrack paddock. Standing on the lawns of Villa La Massa last weekend, with the Arno gliding past below and a Ferrari F80 parked twenty metres away, we could hardly imagine a better way to spend a Saturday in October.
Villa La Massa Excellence, now in its fourth year, is an independent event organised by the Villa La Massa hotel in partnership with Canossa Events. The hotel belongs to the same group as Villa d’Este. The event applies the concours approach to modern supercars from 1990 onwards, with the cars judged on design, innovation and presence by a jury that this year included our own JP Rathgen.
The setting did the rest: the hotel’s grounds on the banks of the Arno, just outside Florence, provided the perfect backdrop for enjoying Tuscany at its finest, cars included, of course.
The line-up was genuinely remarkable. Ferrari dominated in terms of spectacle: a Daytona SP3 drew a near-permanent crowd throughout the weekend, and the F80, the most powerful road-going Ferrari ever built, made everything in its vicinity look slightly ordinary.
A group of six 599 GTBs and one 599 GTO celebrating the model’s twentieth anniversary anchored the Evolution category, where the prize went to the very car unveiled at the 2006 Geneva Motor Show and later driven by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Ferrari Classiche certified.
A Maserati MC12 Corsa sat low on the ground with its slick tyres picking up the freshly cut grass, while a Porsche 918 Spyder and a 1989 Porsche 959 Evo Dakar, which had actually competed at this year’s Paris–Dakar, represented Stuttgart at its most extreme.
The restomod section drew its own sustained crowd, with a Touring Superleggera Sciàdipersia Cabriolet taking first place in its category. The Kimera K39 and the Totem GT Super completed a restomod roster that made a convincing argument for the category’s growing seriousness.
The People’s Choice award went to the Daytona SP3, a unique Tailor Made commission whose paint shifts in tone and depth under different light, and whose interior features fabric produced by the owner’s own company.
Best of Show, the jury’s highest honour, went to a Dallara Stradale, the carbon-fibre road car from the company behind some of the most successful racing cars ever made. Fittingly, it also won the Innovation category.
On Sunday, the weekend closed with a convoy to the Mugello circuit, where the cars completed a parade lap on one of Italy’s finest tracks. A fittingly cinematic ending to three days that had rarely put a foot wrong.
Alongside the event coverage, we spent the weekend asking a question that felt entirely appropriate given the company: which of these cars will be considered a true classic in twenty years’ time? The Daytona SP3? The F80? Or something that nobody noticed on the lawn but that will one day be the most sought-after car there?
Our film goes live on the Classic Driver YouTube channel this Friday, 23 October. Subscribe so you don’t miss it, and add Villa La Massa Excellence to your calendar for next year. We think it could be one of the very best events you can attend if you enjoy 1,000hp rockets that don’t fly, at least not yet.
Photos by Szymon Adamczyk
