Dollywood, in Tennessee, is a theme park devoted to pneumatic country and Western legend Dolly Parton. Love Land, in South Korea, is inspired by the conjugal act and features a ride called ‘Breast Mountain’ which might also suit Dollywood. And now, into the bizarre, often tacky, lowest-common-denominator world of the theme park steps a new player: Ferrari.

Ferrari fans are, to say the least, perplexed. We desire Ferrari because it wins world championships and builds cars with inspired, intricate engineering and pornographic visual appeal. But for decades, other than doing what it did best, Ferrari did absolutely nothing to encourage that desire. Quite the opposite. Enzo Ferrari was famously dismissive of those who bought his road cars; they just paid for his racing. Even today, Ferrari doesn’t advertise or attempt in other ways to persuade us to want it. Mystique doesn’t work that way. There was good business sense in the Old Man’s rudeness; it’s called playing hard to get.

So it’s not just Ferrari’s decision to build a theme park that tifosi find perplexing, but the absolute about-face in its attitude to access. Of all the carmakers, only Ferrari could do this, the park’s managers point out. That’s true. But should Ferrari be doing this?

I flew 4000 miles to find out, and found myself standing on a building site in fierce heat, watching an army of labourers from the Indian sub-continent toiling to get Ferrari World finished. The official opening was in a week, but we’d talked our way in early…