Even if the future of high-volume composites use in automotive applications depends on battery electric vehicles (BEV), it’s important to recall that automotive composites got their start — decades ago — in the high-performance market, starting in Formula 1 racing and eventually migrating into the high-end sports car market. The Corvette often comes to mind first as the progenitor of automotive composites use, but serious, sustained and highly engineered use of carbon fiber automotive structures was and continues to be most heartily embraced by a family of automotive OEMs who have become famous for producing high-performance, high-value vehicles —like Lamborghini, Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche, McLaren, Aston Martin, Ducati and more.
The heart of this high-performance sports car market has, for many years, been the “Motor Valley,” a region in northern Italy that is home to many of the highest profile carmakers, namely Lamborghini, Ferrari, Maserati, Dallara, Pagani and a handful of others. The Motor Valley spans a series of cities and towns that stretch roughly 200 kilometers from Rimini on the country’s east coast, continuing on a straight line north and west through Cesena, Fenza, Forlì, Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia and Parma, before ending in Piacenza.