Imagine being 10 years old and your after-school activities include taking notes while riding shotgun at 180km/h through the streets of Modena in a brand-new, fresh off the assembly line Maserati. Sounds implausible, but that’s exactly how Dr Adolfo Orsi Jnr spent his formative years in Italy.

“I was lucky because my house was not far from the factory,” he recalls to CarAdvice on a recent visit to Sydney. “At the time, one of the test drivers was quite an old gentleman. His name was Guerino Bertocchi… He was really very fast. “We were going out to test the car, and at the time there was no traffic and therefore it was easy to go at speed. He had a very good ear and he would say ‘oh, there’s a vibration in the dashboard at 180km/h’. So I started to write ‘vibration 180km/h’.