---
title: "Vintage Lancia, Giancarlo Giannini, and Why We Love Italy"
description: "Food, booze, cars: The Good Italian II, a wonderfully nonsensical infomercial, truly has it all."
date: "2016-01-25"
modified: "2019-07-09"
authors:
  - name: "David Traver Adolphus"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/david-traver-adolphus"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/vintage/1849/vintage-lancia-giancarlo-giannini-and-why-we-love-italy"
categories:
  - "News"
tags:
  - "Lancia"
---

# Vintage Lancia, Giancarlo Giannini, and Why We Love Italy

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/012516_thegooditalian_hero.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

You’re selling something vaguely elegant. Nice sandals, a facial scrub, [sunglasses](<https://www.diffeyewear.com/collections/all-glasses/products/milo-smoke-grey-gradient-polarized>). In the last few years, there’s only been one answer for how to do it: Go to Italy.

We’re not quite sure where that all started, but there have been a series of increasingly elaborate videos, most recently [Jude Law driving Giancarlo Giannini’s Delahaye 135 S](<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzME9i03PpI>) from Italy to Monaco in a really great Johnnie Walker ad. Parmese fashion house [Caruso](<https://www.carusomenswear.com/en/>) couldn’t get Law or the Delahaye for its *The Good Gentleman* ads. But the suiting company did get Giannini and, in this episode, a Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider.

For an Italian clothier, Lancia is a far better choice than the French Delahaye. Some feel the Aurelia Spider is Pinin Farina’s (*Note: Later joined up as Pininfarina—Ed.*) single greatest design. With its 2.45-liter V6 and production run of 240 just cars, it’s an icon in its own right.

The advertisement a wonderfully nonsensical affair. Giannini (recently, René Mathis in *James Bond* films) plays His Majesty Prince Diofebo Meli Lupi,\* the current Prince of Soragna, Parma. He and his heavily made-up batman Fefé arrive in their Lancia at [Four Seasons Milano](<https://www.fourseasons.com/milan/>), gently terrify the staff and haunt the catacombs in search of the freshest wild herbs.\*\* After being serenaded by a magical suit on one of Caruso’s trademark horrifying mustachioed *Clockwork Orange* dummies,\*\*\* he turns out not to be robbing the cradle. Relieved, we all go out and buy snappy Italian clothes, then are dismayed to find that a B24 Spider costs $500,000. At least we’ll be able to finance the [Fiat Spyder](<https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/943/the-fiat-124-spider-is-an-italian-turbocharged-miata>).

\* Real person

\*\* This actually happens

\*\*\* This also actually happens

https://youtube.com/embed/XujO3CZn1L0

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