JOHN STEINBECK recounted in a 1953 article for Harper’s Bazaar what it was like to travel with a hired Italian driver in a Fiat 500 on the Amalfi Coast road:

“Flaming like a meteor we hit the coast, a road high, high above the blue sea that hooked and corkscrewed on the edge of nothing, a road carefully designed to be a little narrower than two cars side by side. And on this road, the buses, the trucks, the motor scooters and the assorted livestock.

“We didn’t see much of the road. In the back seat my wife and I lay clutched in each other’s arms, weeping hysterically.”