You know how it is when a friend dies; you wish you had done more, visited him more, telephoned him more, at least thought of him more? That is how it was with me when Luigi Villoresi, distinguished gentleman and heroic racing driver, died eight years ago. I had known Gigi for the last 14 years of his life and the high point of our association was our trip to California together, an account of which is featured in an earlier edition of VRJ. But we lost touch when I went off to work at Pirelli’s North American headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1992. Then, while I was still in the U.S., Villoresi fell on hard times and entered a home for old racing drivers at Modena, where he died at the age of 88 on August 24, 1997, just before I returned to Italy.
For years I had driven past a rather unimposing Maserati dealership on my way to work in Milan without really noticing anything special about it. Then, one day in 1982, I gave a friend a lift to the office and as we passed the rather forlorn- looking Maserati showroom and repair shop he mumbled the name “Villoresi” with a half smile on his lips. I asked what he meant and he told me the great Gigi owned and ran the rather scruffy-looking dealership. I could not believe it: the famous pre and post-war racer worked just around the corner from my Milan office.
Some time later, I was asked to provide a famous motorsport personality to be guest of honor at a press event Pirelli’s U.S. subsidiary was organizing in California. It would be the man around the corner, I decided.
So I rang Gigi and made an appointment to see him in his office. Of course, he’d changed a lot since his racing days and, at 76, was finding the garage hard going. But he was an old-style gentleman, right down to his fingertips: smart, single-breasted grey-blue suit with all three buttons of the jacket done up; cutaway shirt collar with one of those big, loose, 1940s Italian knots in his tie; impeccable manners and all the social graces of 1930s gentry.
Villoresi shuddered as he swallowed his coffee, which had been electronically brewed in a big red vending machine in the repair shop of his garage, and heard me out; he said he would sleep on my proposal to take part in the California event and call me. Sure enough, about 10 AM the next morning, Gigi telephoned and accepted my invitation.
That was the first of my many encounters with this winner of more than 20 Grands Prix, the 1946 and 1947 Italian motor racing championship, the 1939 and 1940 Targa Florios, the 1951 Mille Miglia, a string of other road races and even the Acropolis Rally. Two months later, off we went to California.
A year or so later, we met again and chatted in the scrutineering enclosure of the Mille Miglia Storica at Brescia, while millions of dollars’ worth of vintage racecars spluttered and growled past us. As we talked, Gigi cast his eye around the Piazza della Vittoria and was not altogether enamored of what, or should I say whom, he saw; it was the beautiful Italian actress Ornella Muti, who was attracting a lot of press attention. Gigi eyed her up and down critically and whispered: “Pretty girl, awful legs,” grinning impishly.
We enjoyed several lunches together after that; nothing special, sometimes just a couple of sandwiches and mineral water in his office, sometimes pasta or a steak with salad and a glass of red in a trattoria not far from where we both worked. The conversation often turned to Alberto Ascari, Gigi’s protégé, teammate, business partner and friend, whom he loved like a son: but even 30 years after Ascari was killed trying Eugenio Castellotti’s Ferrari sports racing car at Monza, Villoresi still found it difficult to talk about the 1952–53 Formula One World Champion. Gigi certainly did not find it hard to talk about Enzo Ferrari, though; he roundly criticized The Drake for his general insensitivity and lack of concern towards the Villoresi family after the death of Luigi’s younger brother, Emilio, while testing an Alfa 158 for the Scuderia at Monza just before the outbreak of the second World War. And, like Antonio Brivio, who won the 1936 Mille Miglia among other things, Gigi was another who maintained Ferrari kept a pistol in his office desk and was not afraid of opening the drawer and showing it lying there menacingly—perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but Villoresi was not so sure—when financial negotiations were not going his way.
Gigi would call into my office when he felt like a chat, sometimes about his motor racing days and, in the late ’80s, often about his new-found love for Argentina, which he visited several times during that period. He was even considering taking up residence in the South American country, but never quite managed to make the decision to sever his roots with his hometown of Milan.
The last time I saw Villoresi was the day before the start of the 1991 Monte Carlo Rally, in which he was to codrive a car entered by the Italian police, of all people. “Ciao Gigi,” I said cheerfully as he sat in the passenger seat of this rally car on Monaco’s waterfront, studying his pace notes. “Ciao; see you later. I’m having terrible trouble deciphering this stuff,” he replied. With the rally due to start the following day, we fixed to have an early dinner together that night but later Gigi called my hotel and cancelled, cursing the pace notes and saying he’d better have an early night instead.
We exchanged the occasional phone call after that but never met again, something I have always regretted.
