Newsweek has a nice piece called Travel: Italy By Vintage Car. You might want to read it, or at least take a gander at the picture of the 1957 Abarth 750 Coup Zagato, the gorgeous double-bubble. How do you reduce frontal area? (Just bang out the low roof so a person could actually sit fairly upright in it by sticking his head in the indentations…)
What they’re talking about is a company called Italy by Vintage Car. They offered Italian vacations in vintage Fiats, Alfa Romeos, and Lancias.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Italian vintage cars. That’s because I’ve owned many of the Alfas in the vintage stable, from a Giulietta to a 1969 Spider to a 1974 Berlina and then to the one that’s not old enough to be called vintage (yet), a GTV-6.
I can imagine running around Tuscany like Marcello Mastroianni in my little Giulietta convertible that features an exhaust note like no other, snapping pictures all along the way.
Now that’s living, folks. Your shoddy American “car” manufacturers can fold ‘em right now.
(Notes: The picture is of an Alfa Giulietta Spider in front of the Duomo of Montagnana. Another alternative way of getting around Italy that I recommend is in a Fiat Cinquecento)