Meet Gina, Sophia, Claudia and Anita

Four cars. Rope, wood, and a motor you cannot hear.

The names

They are named after four women who defined an idea of Italian style on screen, in the years when that idea was being formed. We will not spell it out further: those who recognise the names, recognise them.

Mechanically the four cars are identical. They differ in colour. Gina is white, Sophia orange, Claudia green and Anita yellow. You can ask for yours when you book, and we will have it ready.

They are not restored classics, and that is deliberate

We say it straight away, because somebody else in our position would not. All four are new cars. They have not been restored, they are not fifty years old, and they do not have a period engine to nurse through August.

They have the shape and the openness of the original Méhari — no sides, canvas top, four real seats — and underneath, an electric motor that always starts, never overheats in July traffic, and will not strand you halfway up the Aventine. A car from the nineteen-sixties, in Rome in August, does those things. We are selling you a day out, not a gamble.

What they are made of

This is the part you cannot see in a photograph taken from across the street, and it is the reason people photograph them from close up.

Then there are the small things. The rope pull with chromed ends where a plastic handle would be. The cream canvas top that folds away in two minutes. The rear tailgate that drops flat, and where — if you took the hamper — you eat.

Why Rome specifically needs these

It is not a matter of taste. It is the only way in.

All four are heavy electric quadricycles, type approval L7e, and under Rome's own regulations quadricycles are admitted into the Historic Centre restricted traffic zone without the paid permit introduced on 1 July 2026 — a permit that costs an electric car up to a thousand euro a year. Our plates are registered for the A1 Tridente zone as well.

And because they are electric, they park free on the blue lines. On a drive made of stops — and in Rome every drive is made of stops — that is the difference between stopping where you want and circling for a space.

One thing they cannot do, and we would rather say it first: they are not permitted on motorways or dual carriageways. None of our routes use them.

Photographing them

Let us be honest, it is one of the reasons you hire a car like this. Open sides mean you can shoot from your seat, with no pillar and no glass between the lens and the city.

If you want to know where to take them, we have written a guide to the five places in Rome where the photograph actually works, with the right hour of light for each.