This is the Jeep SRT8 the brother of newly-anointed Fiat Chairman John Elkann drove to today's press conference where his 34-year-old brother's new job was announced. The bumper sticker reads "Italian Motherfucker." Is every Italian-American trying out for Jersey Shore?
Lapo Elkann, John's brother, is quite the character. Named The Best Dressed Man In the World by Esquire in 2004, the heir to the Agnelli family fortune suffered a huge scandal the following year when he suffered a cocaine and heroin overdose while in the company of a group of transexual and transgender males.
After that incident, Lapo stepped down from his position as Fiat's marketing manager, later returning as the manager of brand promotion for the giant Italian company. Lapo once worked as Henry Kissinger's personal assistant and is largely responsible for pushing the retro Fiat 500 into production.
The bumper sticker is causing a small controversy in Italy, where it's seen as a reference to Italian-American guido culture, something that's reviled by non-hyphenated Italians.
The reference is especially galling there, coming not only at an epochal event for one of the country's largest industrial empires, but also from the scion of one its most famed and admired families. Gianni Agnelli, Lapo's gramps, remains an icon both as an industrialist and as the defining character of Italian manhood. The gothic print, the perverse national pride, the flashy SUV and the big rims — the stereotype of the tacky Jerseyan perpetuated by MTV's The Jersey Shore — are not what Italy expects from one of its most prominent sons.
But can they help it? After all, they are Italian-American. Boys will be heavily-tanned boys, right? [via Autoblog.it]