Mario Acquati: from the races to the Book & Art Shop

For some, he’s still “the Master”: when I tell him that, Mario Aquati brushes it aside, but he smiles too. No, which “Master”, him? It is all down to the library that he opened many years ago at the Monza racetrack!
Yes, the racetrack. He saw that legend grow… actually, in a certain way – he and the racetrack – grew together, hand in hand.
– So it all started with the library, right?

 

 

Acquati shakes his head. It isn’t true that everything started with the library. Just like it isn’t true that he only dealt with books during his life. It won’t take long for me to understand that the man who I’m facing is first of all a person with an explosive vitality. An eclectic and multifaceted man, who, at the same time, is equipped with solid concreteness, who was not only able to seed projects in different areas, but also to cultivate and make them grow. He’s no bookworm at all!

 

 

– To recap: the Library came later. But after what? How did your business start?
– Well, it depends on how far back through the years you wish to go. If you want to go back to the very beginning, my passion for cars came first
– That’s right. You were a driver too…
– Yes, cars were my passion. At the time, my room was covered in promissory notes, because my father wouldn’t give me the money to race.
– What was your first time like?
– Ah, I’ll tell you about it now. I went to Poggio di Berceto, near Parma. As I was very nervous, I had also drank two cognac shots, those little ones that they used to sell on the motorway… And nothing, it ended with me tipping over. The car was an Abarth 850 and since my idol at the time was Marzotto, I remember that I didn’t wear the overalls, but I wore a jacket with a waistcoat underneath it. To race, I had taken the jacket off and kept the waistcoat on.

 

 

– How did your passion for cars start? I seem to understand that your father didn’t agree that much with it.
– No, that’s right. I started to become fond of them around eighteen years of age. I raced a lot… with the Abarths, in Formula Three, for the NSU… in the past, there was also the Mobil Economy Run, which was a competition with the lowest consumption which was born in 1936 in the USA and later it was also launched in Europe. The cars in the race drove on a 700, 800 or 900 km road track and they had to use the lowest amount of petrol possible. It worked like the launch of the cars along an established track which – in the Italian version of the race – was from Milan to Naples. The peculiarity here was that the drivers were all journalists. Then, with time, racing on the road was forbidden as it became very dangerous. In fact, in order to use little fuel, the cars didn’t stop at the traffic lights… sometimes they passed on a red light, or they even went on the pavement.
– Is that due to the fuel consumption?

 

 

– Well, yes. If you stopped you didn’t drive your kilometres… at the end, the race was abolished. Or better, it was moved to Monza, on the high speed ring but you needed a special license to participate: some kind of qualification that journalists didn’t have. In order to achieve it, you had to pass a test. So they started using actual drivers. NSU called me and I participated as a duo with Gianpiero Moretti. With that NSU we came first driving along the Milan-Naples ideal track. We used around 23 litres of fuel at 80km/h.

 

 

– So, passion for cars is something you were born with. But what about your business? You have already displaced me by telling me that everything did not start with the library.
Mario Acquati smiles. Within a short time, I’ve already realised that his life is like a castle: not made of cards, but with Chinese boxes, each one of which is hiding worlds.
– No. Everything started with steering wheels. Do you know Gianpiero Moretti?
– Of course: the founder of MOMO, Moretti-Monza.
Mario Acquati nods.
– The founder of MOMO, which didn’t actually stand for Moretti-Monza. Now I’ll tell you a story. Everything started off with the idea of the steering wheels – they were so particular, also due to their colours. At a certain point, Moretti told me: “Look, Mario, there is some business to be done here. What shall we do?” And I answered: “Let’s put together a partnership!” His father gave him the money, but mine didn’t. You know… a partnership with two people, one of who has the money while the other one doesn’t, will end the following day. So in the end, he took everything over.

 

 

– And what about the name?
– Yes, the name. In Verona, I had a partner who was called Ettore Moraia. Moretti needed him, because he had no technical expertise at all, so he started off this business calling it MOMO, which at the time stood for Moretti + Moraia. That was in 1966/1967. The switch of the name to Moretti-Monza happened later.
So the origin of Mario Acquati’s business is to be traced right there. In the birth of a shop which was created on the wake of needs, taste and energies which revolved around the circuit and its rapid growth. Creating a business starting off with a legend – the passion for the cars and racing industry – it’s an intuition which crosses over with a stroke of genius. Everything is about guessing the existence of a niche which was still virgin… and in the ability to occupy that niche with a pioneering spirit.

 

 

Actually, at the time, the landscape around the racetrack must have been quite similar to the Far West. There was nothing at all. A white page to be reinvented and interpreted. The same may be said concerning the business linked with the car industry. Nobody in Italy had ever invented something of the sort.
– And what did the shop sell, apart from steering wheels?
– It was a Book and Art Shop which sold everything concerning the motor world… You need to think that it was the first shop in Italy to sell such things. I had been in Le Mans and all of this was already available there, but not here. There was only the racetrack, which didn’t have anything today with today’s racetrack though.

 

By International Classic, written by Martina Fragale

 

Keep following the story The Master of Monza racetrack – Chapter 2

Read also:
The Master of Monza racetrack – Chapter 3