As an address, Via Abetone Inferiore 4 in the northern Italian town of Maranello won't stir the soul like Paris' Champs-Elysee or London's King's Road -- unless you're an aficionado of the automobile.

James May is very good at hosting television programs, and so his next adventure will be as the tour guide on a trip around Italy. Naturally, he wasn’t going to miss a visit to the Ferrari factory.

My first trip to Maranello was on one of the hottest days in modern Italian history. I was playing around with the yet-to-be-unveiled 488, driving it on Ferrari's walled-off test track under a thick ...