What Is Your Life?
Throughout automotive history, certain cars have granted a 360-degree view of reality, as long as the car is considered from all perspectives. The Berlinetta Boxer (which took a variety of forms under a variety of names) conveys blessing and curse, beginnings and endings, and redemption and condemnation. It all depends on how – and when – you look at it.
Debuting about five years after the corporate takeover by FIAT, the Berlinetta Boxer was born into a confusing world. In 1974, its $48,000 price tag could also buy 10 1974 Pontiac Trans Ams – or a decent house. It was an object of scorn to disgruntled FIAT auto workers during labor strikes and union demands in Italy. Add in crushing environmental and safety restrictions, and the 12-cylinder Berlinetta Boxer and Lamborghini Countach were seen as last gasps of thrilling, reckless performance. The public was sure they were seeing the end of an era.
Consider the varying perspectives of a FIAT hourly laborer toiling on the assembly line, and that of the corporate execs a few floors up trying to generate big profits after a costly takeover, as well as the person blowing big money on twelve cylinders while the rest of the world was downsizing. How is everyone supposed to get along?
One answer can be found in the New Testament book of James. This hard-hitting epistle reaches its boiling point when it blasts the arrogance of oppressive, money-hungry business people. Yet within this passage lies an explanation of the divine order of things, and the struggle of all humans who bristle against their inability to control fate:
“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.” (James 4:13-16)
Maybe this passage cut deeply to product planners, who first envisioned the Berlinetta Boxer 12-cylinder supercar during the high-horsepower ‘60s. They didn’t think Ferrari would be doing Mondial 8 business just 10 years later.
But this warning applies to everyone, rich or poor, past or present, and is book-ended with this verse: “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” (v. 17)
Only an eternal view of things provides the humility to correctly evaluate a person’s role among other people, and even the purpose of existence. Only this perspective allows a person to value compassion over comfort, people over profit, philanthropy over performance, and (this one stings) Creation over cars. Everyone who touched or was touched by the Berlinetta Boxer could have used this advice. For some, it could have meant finding common ground in negotiations, or the appropriate use of money and other resources.
Without this advice and eternal perspective, anything that threatens self-satisfaction seems like the end. Yet setting aside that selfishness may be the beginning of something else: a new life, led by the pursuit of God and his desires.
The Berlinetta Boxer was Ferrari’s first mid-engine, 12-cylinder supercar, and it appeared five agonizing years after Lamborghini launched its mid-engine V12 Miura. Yet by the late ‘70s, the only car in the Ferrari lineup with an engine in front was the cushy 400 GT. The rest – the Berlinetta Boxer, 308 GTB and GTS, and Mondial 8 – are all mid-engined. Today, it is clear that the Berlinetta Boxer wasn’t the end. It started a trend of legendary mid-engined 12-cylinder Ferrari road cars – a trend made possible by the pursuit of selfish desires.
