Summer is ending, and the tourists are gradually leaving Stresa, on the shores of Lago Maggiore in northern Italy. But on what could be any other rainy September Tuesday, the historic town’s tight streets start filling up with Porsches, Ferraris, old rally Lancias, and much more. It’s the day before Tutto Bene, Italy’s newest and most exciting hill climb event.
Tutto Bene – “All good” in Italian – is the child of two automotive realities on opposite sides of the world: Race Service, the Los Angeles-based automotive creative agency, and BorromeodeSilva, a small automotive design house based in Milan, which you might know as the designers behind the Diablo Eccentrica restomod and the Nardone Automotive 928.
One day before the event, against the elegant neoclassical backdrop of Villa Pallavicino’s lakeside gardens, all of the competing cars gathered on display. From racing legends like the BMW M1 Procar to modern design studies like the all-new Bertone Runabout, Tutto Bene leaves no enthusiast unsatisfied.
The next morning, the cars left Villa Pallavicino for the bottom of Strada Privata Borromea, a private toll road leading to the summit of Mottarone mountain and the venue for Tutto Bene. After a coffee while watching a Bizzarrini burn its tires off the start line, and a brief introduction to Mr. Carlo Borromeo, the man in charge at BorromeodeSilva, I began making my way up the course.
Tutto Bene is not your average hill climb event. You won’t find FIA regulations, split-second battles against the clock, or prizes for the fastest climber. Instead, the event celebrates the concept of hill climbing, distilled to its most essential and emotional form: the pure joy of driving some of the most fascinating cars on Earth up a narrow, tree-lined climb through an Alpine forest.
But don’t be fooled into thinking Tutto Bene is just another hypercar gathering for the wealthy. Sure, you’ll see Ferrari F40s and GT3 racers, but you’ll also find a Fiat Panda 4×4 stacked with rally lights, a massive Ford Falcon with a roof rack, looking as out of place on a tight mountain road as the proverbial bull in a china shop, or even a Group A Alfa Romeo 75 formerly belonging to the Italian police’s own racing team, still blaring its siren as it tears through the course. The only common denominator for the cars seems to be: “as long as it’s interesting.” All facets of automotive culture are explored at Tutto Bene, and all cars are driven hard.
Climbing up the Tutto Bene course, you can tell that every part of the experience has been carefully curated. From the color-matched banners, flags, and ribbons on each hairpin to the retro-styled logos, custom signs, and fencing – Tutto Bene’s image and aesthetics are as thoughtfully considered as its car lineup. It’s exactly what you’d expect from an event created by an Italian design house. A handful of cars even sported special liveries for the occasion.
At 2:00pm, when racing stopped for lunch, I took a good look at some of the cars parked on the course, including a perfectly clean silver Bugatti EB110 and a Ferrari 275 GTB looking oh-so-elegant in dark red. I also had time to look around the showcase area set up around the old Bar Stazione, where cars like the Bentley Speed 8, BMW M3 Concept, and Genesis GMR-001 Le Mans hypercar took center stage.
One of the many things I enjoyed about Tutto Bene was its relatively intimate scale compared to larger events. Because of this, everyone could get up close to the cars and cross paths with the drivers, designers, and other personalities from the automotive scene. There were few restrictions on where spectators could or couldn’t go, especially when the course was opened during the lunch break. The result was a relaxed, personal atmosphere where you never felt too detached from the action or the people behind it.
It’s hard to pick one car that stood out, as pretty much everything was out of the ordinary. However, the Genesis Magma GT road car left me staring way more than I expected it would.
Genesis has been raising the bar when it comes to both design and engineering, from supercar-challenging station wagons to Le Mans racers, and this prototype mid-engine GT is probably its best work thus far. Maybe it’s the extremely clean, sculpted volumes and unbroken lines, a design language sort of reminiscent of Italian berlinettas, or maybe it’s the high-revving, deep-sounding V8, but watching this tear up the hill ticked all the boxes for me. More cars like this, please.
Over its three years, Tutto Bene has grown from a small gathering of a few hundred mostly local enthusiasts into a packed event drawing big-name brands and thousands of attendees from around the world, and it’s easy to see why. In a world full of dusty concours and polished convention-center car shows, Tutto Bene fills a gap with something more emotional, more raw, and a lot more fun. I’ll definitely be back for the winding turns of Mottarone.
