The "macchinetta" of our discontent

The ‘days may well be numbered’ for the ‘black minicar gang’ terrorising Rome. For the past few days, the capital has been plunged into one of its many throwbacks to the 1970s, complete with police thrillers and ‘good lads with angelic faces’ – gangs not from Magliana but from Ligier, spreading terror amongst passers-by.

Six people, possibly seven, were attacked by a gang (probably two youths) who, travelling in one of those microcars registered as mopeds, kicked, shoved and, in one instance, even ‘punched’ the victims, who were on electric scooters, bicycles or on foot. The most serious case involved the actor Davide Iacopini (Diaz, Suburra), who was kicked whilst riding his scooter home and admitted to the intensive care unit at San Camillo Hospital. The night before, a 44-year-old woman had been struck on the back of the head whilst walking home; a 26-year-old student was kicked whilst on his scooter; a 27-year-old woman was pushed off her bike; and a 67-year-old man was struck with a pipe.

The investigations are now continuing; ‘the net is closing in’, as they would say in a TV series: the RIS is sifting through the footage from forty CCTV cameras, and there is also a report filed by a lawyer-father claiming that one of his sons’ microcars had been stolen (although the report was only filed after the assaults took place). Mediterranean paternalism?

However, the entire episode involving the black microcar appears to have taken on meme-like qualities, blending some of the capital’s most unsettling criminal spectres. It evokes echoes of the Circeo Gang, given the persistent references to the ‘upper-class Rome’ lads circulating on social media, and then the police sketch – a ‘slender, fair-haired’ passenger – prompting the question of whether such a description is even plausible in Tor Bella Monaca.

And then, of course, there are the ‘ragazzi di vita’: we’re in the vicinity of Viale dei Quattro Venti, a key thoroughfare between Monteverde Nuovo (a working-class neighbourhood, insofar as that term still holds any meaning) and Monteverde Vecchio, an area inhabited by the wealthy, actors, Verdone, and even Pasolini in his day (though the ‘ragazzi di vita’ used to hang about in Via di Donna Olimpia, not far away). The area also recalls, with the randomness of the ambushes, La città dei vivi, Nicola Lagioia’s successful novel about the Varani murder, now a film by Edoardo Gabbriellini that has just been screened in Venice, as Codacons also pointed out in a statement (Codacons is now a film critic too. The Codacons Cup).

The case of the black microcar (following on from the white Uno) has all the hallmarks of yet another instalment in the usual genre of post-adolescents with too much time on their hands and too great a propensity for crime (with the aggravating factor that it could be a social media game! A challenge!). Yet the black microcar in the hands of social-media-obsessed youngsters represents the 2.0 update of an ancient Roman archetype: the ‘macchinetta’.

A fixture on the capital’s streets, designed for teenagers, although occasionally one spots the fearsome pensioner behind the wheel – wearing a hat, having lost their licence or run out of penalty points. Or a convicted criminal, or your average boomer: it is, in fact, a miniature Smart car, useful for accessing the most exclusive restricted traffic zones (ZTLs). It began as a high-cost solution for families anxious about their teenagers – “at least this way you won’t crash on a moped” – before becoming a status symbol; as early as a 2006 issue of Panorama, these little cars were decried as “without which the kids of Rome’s high society won’t leave the house. And when they do go out, they certainly make their presence felt. They graze the sides of other cars, weave in and out of traffic, and, above all, overtake at breakneck speed’.”

These vehicles, ‘the little cars’, are supposed to travel at almost pedestrian speeds, unless they’ve been souped up (like the original mopeds): and in Rome they often are, reaching up to eighty per hour. As described in Federico Moccia’s novels: “We’re following them at two thousand on Viale Parioli, then Alis leaves the little car with the valet,” reads the seminal Amore 14.

Microcars are generally associated with northern Rome, and are therefore invariably ‘right-wing’. “Microcars and loud music. Piazza Euclide is an open-air nightclub; you can’t get a wink of sleep,” ran the headline in Il Messaggero two years ago. In 2020, however, parents at a secondary school on Via della Farnesina protested against excessive police checks on microcars, which were causing their children to be late for their first lesson. Microcars are common across Europe, but those that rattle past blaring generic Italian trap music and sporting stickers like ‘Kittesencula’ are a distinctly Roman phenomenon, where the distances between home and school can be enormous, and public transport is not particularly reliable.

Certainly, the average reader will not be cycling along Gualtieri’s much-maligned cycle paths—the ones that remove parking spaces and narrow carriageways: the cycle path has become the great enemy on the right, more so than immigrants or the burqa in the classroom. Meanwhile, as the search for the slender blond youth continues (who might well turn out to be from a staunchly pro-Palestinian family with a subscription to Internazionale, completely subverting the cliché) Observers are therefore asking why the online vigilantes—those self-appointed agents provocateurs who venture into subways to confront pickpockets or into the streets to confront disturbed Black individuals—are not visible on this occasion. Is the black microcar acceptable to them? Have they simply run out of data?

The black microcar also acts as a vigilante against electric scooters – another vehicle universally despised, but especially by the right – a symbol of urban hippie culture, already targeted by Salvini under the new Highway Code: compulsory helmets, number plates and insurance, which, together with the anti-rave law, are perhaps the least respected measures of this long parliamentary term. In the meantime, road users are advised to exercise caution, as the scene evokes Christine, Carpenter’s old film based on Stephen King’s novel, with a hint of an American teen movie (Monteverde as Twin Peaks).

“Our little ones grow up in the blink of an eye, and before you know it they’re ready to get behind the wheel of their first Ligier – come and see our offers,” promises a car dealer’s website. Ligier (which Romans pronounce and spell in all sorts of ways) and Aixam form the long-standing duopoly in the microcar market, offering both diesel and electric versions, ubiquitous in the capital’s fragmented vehicular landscape, which is growing richer every day – not only with taxis, now a minority amongst the black private hire minibuses, and delivery riders on electric bikes, but also with golf buggies carrying Americans with their feet dangling, who feel as though they’re on a safari and look at you, a local, as if you were a rare animal.

It is indeed a jungle where the most fearsome predator is the quietest one: the black microcar, as at least two victims have stated in their statements, ‘made no sound at all’. The scene already has cinematic overtones. Meanwhile, the RIS is working to piece together the number plate, and the afternoon talk shows have already devoted multiple episodes to the case. Should they locate the slender blond man, one thing is certain: the television schedules are secured for months to come.