Every car in this Sicilian rally has its top down. The sun is present, the roads are scenic, the event is a procession rather than a race — the conditions for open-air motoring are as favorable as they ever get. Number 2, a Mercedes-Benz R129 SL in dark navy, is running with its soft top raised. This is either a statement or an air conditioning decision, and on balance it is probably both.

The Alfa Romeo Spider ran for twenty-eight years across four distinct series, which is long enough to accumulate both a devoted following and a complicated critical record. The Series 4, produced from 1990 to 1993, was the final version and has historically been the least celebrated — a product of Alfa Romeo’s difficult late-Fiat-ownership period, fitted with revised front and rear styling that divided opinion at launch and has not entirely reconciled it since. The silver example photographed on a Sicilian coastal road, the Ionian Sea visible in the background, is a Series 4, identifiable immediately by those distinctive multi-hole alloy wheels that became the car’s most-discussed visual element.