British cars in Italy

Sir,

I fear an unfortunate mistake has crept into the letter on Italian car prices you were good enough to publish in the May issue; namely, the omission of a vital decimal point !

Italian purchase tax, so far from being 33%, is in fact 3.3%. This only goes to show that there is still a country where automotive production is actually fostered by the authorities, whose revenue (used almost exclusively in vast road-building programmes) is derived from the differential road tax system. After all, the prospective buyer of a 250GT Ferrari is hardly likely to be deterred by an annual road tax of £105, which is a mere drop in the ocean in relation to the purchase price of the car.

Roll on “il Mercato Comune”!

CDL Piggott. Rome.