There are still those who believe that beauty must be paid for, booked, limited, like a star’s concert or an aperitif in a trendy place. In St. Moritz, however, between August 27 and 29, beauty manifests itself for free, as an act of aristocratic generosity. It is called Passione Engadina, the fifteenth edition, and for three days it transforms the queen of the Alps into an open-air museum that needs no entrance tickets nor security guards: just look up and the heart does the rest.
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While the rally participants enjoy their elite ride through Swiss hairpins and silences, the public – that public understood as “anyone passing by” – is admitted to certain moments of absolute grace. On Saturday, August 29, from 12:30 to 16:30, in front of the Grand Hotel Kempinski, the streets become an outdoor living room. The cars, the real ones, those that seem sculpted by wind and desire, put themselves on display like ladies of another era to be admired.
The protagonists
It may seem little but it is not: today the car has been reduced to an appliance on wheels with a screen as big as a television, but here creatures from another era parade again: the 1953 Fiat 8V Zagato, sinuous like a Moravia sentence; the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta, which still seems to smell of victory and French cigarettes; the 1962 Maserati 3500 GT Vignale Spider, red as a sin. And then Bizzarrini, Iso Rivolta, Kimera Evo37, Dino 246 GT: names that sound like verses of a poem written when man still dared to challenge physics with elegance instead of algorithms. There will also be the brand new Lamborghini Temerario, previewed in such landscapes.
The strategy
The real magic of Passione Engadina lies in this: the cars do not stand still in an aseptic pavilion; they flow, roar, turn the corner and catch you off guard, like a childhood memory that overwhelms you while you wait for your coffee. You can meet them “on the street and around every corner,” says Paolo Spalluto, the event’s patron with Swiss understatement. Translated into Italian: you can live one of those rare moments when the present bows before the past and leaves you there, dazed, with the idiotic smile of someone who has seen something greater than themselves.
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On Saturday afternoon, in pole position in front of the Kempinski, there will also be the winner of the “Elegance in Motion” contest. Those who love cars not as status symbols but as moving works of art know that Passione Engadina is an astral conjunction. Three days in which iron, rubber, and the curve of a bodywork remind humanity that perfection exists, that it has been achieved, and that every now and then it comes back to visit us.
The F40 leading 80 Ferraris
The image announcing the event is already a program in itself: a Ferrari F40, seen from a three-quarter rear view, speeds on a background of violent and fluid colors, as if the artist wanted to capture not only the car but the trail of emotion it leaves behind. It looks like a painting from an era when speed and art had not yet separated. The formula is one that makes enthusiasts dream and rationalists nervous: 80 Ferraris, each unique, produced from 1947 to 2027, without duplicates. Eighty prancing horses that will move, curve after curve, among the Swiss mountains. A gathering that almost becomes a secular procession, a pilgrimage of sheet metal and cylinders in honor of the Cavallino.
The rest of the year we can continue to argue about electric SUVs, speed limits, and a sustainable future. For one weekend, in St. Moritz, the twentieth century roars again, elegant and irreverent as always. With all the enthusiasts who can watch. For free.
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