I have known Carlo Braccini more than twenty years ago, in Rome, when he was at the helm of Nuvolari, the first Italian thematic television to deal with cars and engines 24 hours a day. Later, together with the inseparable partner Giorgio Bungarogave birth to AutomotoTV on Skyborn from the union of the canals Motorcycle TV And AutoTV and still today, with the name of MS Motor TVthe platform’s exclusive engine channel Sky.
Who is Carlo Braccini?
With her AGM Communicationsince the early nineties, Carlo Braccini had created hundreds of television formats dedicated to four and two-wheelers on the main Italian networks, also becoming the largest national producer of audiovisual content, the so-called “videopresses”, which car and motorcycle manufacturers distributed to the sector press.
Classic car project, history of car journalism over the last 20 years
We now meet again in Milan, at the headquarters of an important investment fund; today as then to talk about cars.
“In short, after having sold AutomotoTV to the Mediasport Group years ago, did you decide to go back to dealing with wheels and engines?”
“Let’s say I received the classic offer that you should never refuse. And that gives me the opportunity to get back to work in a world that I deeply love, that of the classic car. With a completely new project, which sees international finance in our country for the first time alongside passionate collectors and master restorers who preserve the automotive heritage of the great Italian brands. The initiative was born in London but will take place in Italy, in Reggio Emilia, where our craftsmen will work and the cars, all of Italian production, managed by the new dedicated fund will be kept. We will not limit ourselves to buying and selling, but also to recover the extraordinary examples that have made the history of the automobile to a new life. And all this could only happen in Italy ”.
“Who will you turn to, what will your target be?”
“We look at the international market above all, this is now inevitable if we choose to work with the most prestigious models and brands”.
“Isn’t there a risk that our most beautiful cars will end up abroad forever, perhaps in distant countries?”
“Look, it is a process that began some time ago and is now irreversible. But we will also have a reverse path, there will be examples of Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Ferrari or Lamborghini that will return here to be restored and preserved over the years, entrusted to the care of our engine masters. Personally, I have lived abroad for several years and, while maintaining a close link with my country, I am now used to considering a broader horizon “.
“Will you have relations with the Italian clubs, and with Asi and Aci Storico?“
“Certain brand registers will certainly be involved while I do not currently foresee any particular relations with Asi and Aci.“
“When will the new initiative be made official?”
“We should have been ready for this Geneva Motor Show, but then the cancellation of the event and above all the spread of Covid slowed down our plans a lot. There will be an event in the fall, which will explain everything and also reveal the name we have chosen ”.
“There will also be television, somewhere in the new project. Don’t tell me you don’t miss the small screen?“
“Well, in recent years my group has worked a lot in Albania and Tunisia for the main local TVs, I am not completely in abstinence from the small screen. The new fund project includes a website and a periodical, which we are already working on. We will see…“
Franco, direct, outspoken but, when necessary, also elusive and impenetrable: Carlo Braccini has not changed his style and his professional return to “old love” on four wheels is also an opportunity to take a 360-degree look back on a world that you know very closely.
“You have also had a long career as an engine journalist, director of AutomotoTV and Nuvolari among other things. What is left of those years?“
“It is a ruthless, very competitive world, but also a formidable training ground for life and profession. I met extraordinary colleagues and others who were mediocre as journalists and as men ”.“
“Any positive examples?”
One above all, Claudio Nobis. When I met him for the first time, I think at a Detroit Motor Show, he was followed step by step like a prophet by his disciples, a bunch of journalists and collaborators of the motor page of Repubblica, his great invention. And wherever he went among the stands, he received homage and reverence from the car’s pillars. Years later, once he retired and opened his blog, I saw some of the same pierre who so much praised him, find it hard to even greet him. Instead, he was also on the web one of the most lucid and brilliant pens of four-wheeled journalism. And I want to remember the humanity and competence of Marcello Pirovano: it is he who taught me to write about cars and products on the pages of his newspapers. Also internally, at AGM Comunicazione, we have made young talents grow, people like Stefano Cordara, Lorenzo Cascioli, Marco Selvetti, Michele Fontana, Daniela Franchitti, just to name a few. It was a great school, there was excitement, desire to do: the real Italian motor TV was born right there.
“Was it easier to be a journalist or an editor?“
“Definitely the journalist: you travel the world, have fun and your responsibilities are reduced to a minimum. I’m trivializing, but the publisher is quite another thing. You have to say no to a lot of people and you have to make ends meet, which often means making a lot of enemies as well“.
“They say that twenty years ago and more auto journalists were pampered like stars“.
“We traveled in business and with the accumulated points someone took the whole family on vacation. The presentations of the new models were often memorable events and the correspondent always received a gift from the house: mobile phones, glasses, ties, bags. I still have a magnificent American aviator jacket; I believe it was a 1997 Subaru launch or so. It is still my favorite“.
Did you also know the pierre of the car manufacturers well?
“The communication managers counted a lot, they managed important budgets that were coveted by the trade press, today I think much less. I remember with sympathy the creativity of someone like Vincenzo Pauselli in Renault, the preparation of Eugenio Franzetti in Peugeot or the style of Lidia Dainelli in Land Rover, the passion of Alberto Zambelli in Subaru, the inspiration of Gianni Buttitta in Ford and before that in Mercedes and, also in Mercedes, the intelligence and determination of Paolo Lanzoni: I met him as a very young assistant assigned by his bosses to our television crews and I saw him make an important career in communication and marketing. Among those that I have never been able to suffer, however, the pierre of a well-known German brand near Verona; antipathy reciprocated, I’m sure “.
Regrets?
“Of course? I remember, for example, that a young engineer who had just graduated came to visit me in Rho, where there was the headquarters of mythical Scuderia Milani in Rome. His name was Giovanni Mancini and he had set out to found a new magazine dedicated to tuned cars: I tried in every way to dissuade him because it seemed like a crazy operation. With hindsight, I would have gladly published Elaborare as well ”.
“How do you think the way of communicating the car of the big houses today?“
“I see a succession of advertisements for totally electric cars, often with a high cost and in any case for the most part still unreachable by the general public who, trivially, would not know where to recharge them. I recently attended a TV program where a guest in connection from Sweden marveled at the doubts expressed in Italy about the forced electrification of the car; here are the exact words: – But here where I live everyone has the Tesla attached to the column, right in the backyard … – Sometimes one gets the impression that the marketing gurus all live in Sweden or Norway, and forget that in Rome o Milan, there are neighborhoods where cars are left in the third or fourth row in the evening because there is no room on the street, other than Tesla in the garden “2.
“So a dark future for the car?“
“Not necessarily, net of a good dose of industrial self-harm that afflicts us Europeans and the too demagogic approach of the European Commission which wants to ban heat engines in less than twenty years. In the end it will not happen and the full electric car will coexist with other technological solutions, just as the car will not become for everyone just a household appliance with wheels: there will always be fans of technology, driving and performance, and of course the classic car, which is an authentic heritage of humanity “.
“And we’re back to the pa pointrtenza, the vintage car “.
“Yeah, and there’s a lot of work to do ”.
“Also on TV “?
“The spaces are full, with Motor Trend that oversees the digital terrestrial and MS Motor TV on Sky that discreetly follows the clubs and national activity. What is certain is that the world of large auctions is still to be explored and our master restorers do not have adequate visibility. “
“And so…”
“We will certainly produce some television formats on our cars and on the men who are the protagonists of their restoration, but an online channel and on demand in multiple languages will be more than adequate. But, in any case, let me do the math again. Maybe…“!
© TEXT interview: Silvia Benedetti Turin
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