Anyone who has ever driven a car knows what happens when approaching a crest in the road: the instinctive reaction is to brake and slow down before the obstacle passes beneath the wheels. But in a racing car, on a dirt track, instinct can become the first mistake. “If you brake over a crest, you break everything,” says Eugenio Amos. “If you keep your nerve and accelerate instead, you'll do far less damage than you would by braking over it.” The same principle applies when a hole suddenly appears on the racing line. “If a hole appears in front of you at the last moment, often the only thing you can do is keep going straight through it. It feels completely counterintuitive, but that's how it is.”
At forty-one, Eugenio Amos is an entrepreneur, racing driver, collector and founder of Automobili Amos. Based in Varese, he first made his name in the automotive world with the Delta Futurista, a contemporary reinterpretation of the Lancia Delta Integrale, followed by the Safarista, a more radical, competition-focused evolution of the same idea. In recent years, he has also expanded his activities through GTO Motors, a business dedicated to both classic and modern Ferrari, spanning restoration, workshop services and automotive culture. Yet when asked to introduce himself, Amos starts somewhere else entirely. “I'm the father of two wonderful children, and I devote a great deal of my time and energy to them. In my spare time, I'm an entrepreneur – but only when I'm not being a dad.” Amos belongs to a rare world in which the automobile can be many things at once: an object of beauty, a technical artefact, a family memory, a privilege, a private obsession, a sporting endeavour. To describe him simply as a passionate collector would be an oversimplification. Financial investment is certainly part of his work, but it explains very little on its own. Anyone can buy a car; giving it meaning is another matter entirely. Money can fund a project, but it cannot replace taste, culture, judgement or expertise — qualities Amos possesses in abundance.
That remark about the crest reveals much about the way he approaches driving, and perhaps even life itself. It has little to do with pure speed, performance or heroics. Rather, it reflects a form of knowledge that emerges at the precise moment when instinct suggests one action and experience demands another.
The Delta Futurista, the project that first brought him international attention, was already rooted in this territory. Yet Amos rejects the idea that he created an icon. “That would be disrespectful to those who came before me, and to the Delta itself. I worked on something that was already an icon. I simply tried to offer my own interpretation.” The same philosophy informs his decision to bring another shape deeply embedded in the collective imagination back into competition: the Ferrari 308.
“To me, an icon is something everyone knows, even people who aren't car enthusiasts. Mention Magnum P.I. and people think of the 308. Mention a Delta in Martini Racing colours and they recognise it instantly.” More often than not — though not always, as demonstrated by the Tuono, the striking hatchback designed by Automobili Amos in 2020 but never put into production — Amos chooses to work with objects that already exist in the public memory. Cars that evoke forms, colours, sounds and memories; cars that carry meaning even for people who could not tell a carburetor from a differential.
Having won the 2023 Safari Classic with a Porsche 911 by Tuthill team, Amos could easily have followed a proven formula. In that world, and in that type of competition, a Porsche is as close to a guarantee as one can find. Instead, he chose a Ferrari 308 Gruppo 4 and prepared it for the East Africa Safari Classic Rally: more than 3,000 kilometres of red dirt roads across Kenya, through special stages and open roads, facing heat, dust, rocks, wildlife, villages and local traffic. It was a decision driven by a taste for challenge and beauty, but also by the appeal of placing a Ferrari in perhaps the last environment where anyone would expect to find one. It meant taking a Ferrari 308 as far as possible from the conventional idea of where a Ferrari should belong, forcing it to confront an event in which those magnificent, timeless lines — drawn by Leonardo Fioravanti — offered no competitive advantage whatsoever. Or perhaps they did. Perhaps that is precisely what made the idea so compelling. “On paper, if you looked purely at the numbers, the Ferrari should have been quicker,” says Amos. “The problem is that paper and reality are two very different things. My idea was to have a car that was not only competitive but also sexy. I wanted something beautiful, something the local people would enjoy seeing and that would bring a smile to enthusiasts' faces.
“Porsches are wonderful, but they're also a safe bet. With the Ferrari, I sensed a much more romantic and fascinating story. Because what I think is missing today is romance.”
For Amos, however, romance mean many things, but not nostalgia. It is not a longing for a supposedly better past, nor the pose of a man resisting his own time. Rather, it is an attempt to preserve something that modernity increasingly risks erasing: the automobile's capacity to be material culture rather than mere transportation; adventure rather than performance alone.
Within this vision, technical expertise remains essential. If anything, it is what prevents romance from becoming sentimentality.
“The 308 carries all its weight at the rear: gearbox, engine and differential. But at the front there's a 107-litre fuel tank, which means more than a hundred kilos over the nose, and that gives the car a particular balance.” Alongside Amos in competition is Paolo Ceci, whom he jokingly describes as “my rally wife”. The phrase captures the level of trust involved. “A good navigator makes an enormous difference, particularly when it comes to judging risk and managing pace.”
Yet once again, the heart of the story is not simply competition. After years on circuit tracks, Amos gravitated towards cross-country rallying in pursuit of another dream: Dakar. His father competed in the rally in a truck, and as a child Amos followed parts of the event across North Africa in a Land Rover 110. “For me, the travel element — visiting places, discovering cultures, having experiences — is fundamental. It's very different from driving round the same circuit for three days.”
Kenya, he says, is made up not only of roads and stages, but also of children, elders, villages, boda bodas, colours and smells. “It's an emotion that goes beyond competition. For me, these things are vital.”
At a time when the automobile seems destined to become ever more like a smartphone on wheels, Amos focuses on what risks being lost: the beauty that makes children smile when an unfamiliar car passes by; the engineering that can still inspire wonder; the physical relationship between driver, machine and road. It is neither nostalgia nor a rejection of the present. It is an attempt to keep alive a culture of the automobile as a physical, aesthetic and even moral experience.
And, above all, as an adventure.
