The policeman pulled me over on the outskirts of Poggibonsi. It was at the end of a beautiful stretch of twisting Tuscan road, snaking beneath tall cypress trees and poplars, and I assumed I was guilty of some unknown offence: something that broadly translated into “having too much fun while at the wheel of a car”.

I had a glove box full of tourist excuses ready for him, but all he wanted to do was talk about the car I was driving. He tapped the bodywork of my 1300cc Alfa Romeo Giulietta, made in 1958 and painted duck-egg blue, and smiled.

“This is the same as the police car in Italy when I was a boy,” he told me. “Too slow to catch criminals nowadays, but back then bad men drove Vespas.”

He made me open the bonnet so he could inspect the engine, muttered something appreciative about it being “belissimo” and motioned me on with a wave that came close to a salute. I glanced back at him in my rear-view mirror as I accelerated away. He was standing by the side of the road, watching the Alfa disappear.

Montalcino: the best drive in Italy

Wine, trattorias, cypress trees and winding roads: follow World Rally Champion Miki Biasion's favourite Tuscan route

Tuscany by Vespa

Will Hide stops traffic but manages to avoid a prang, unlike the other tourists on a scooter tour of Chianti

• Touring Italy on a Vespa

Chianti Classico - driving Tuscany

Fashion is fickle, but Tuscany is timeless — Anthony Peregrine tours the eternal star of Europe

Related Internet Links

• More from our driving holidays section

Related Links

• Montalcino: the best drive in Italy

I know exactly how he was feeling. Ever since Mrs Robinson sat next to Dustin Hoffman in his Alfa Romeo Duetto and told him she didn’t drive a stick shift, I’ve been in love with the Italian convertibles of the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, they were everywhere. Not, of course, in cash-strapped, Harold Wilson-era Britain, but in every good film I saw at the time.

Remember the red 2600 Spider from Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris, starring Brigitte Bardot? No? Then surely you must be familiar with the white Veloce Spider used by Edward Fox in The Day of the Jackal?

He hid his rifle in the exhaust and gave it a quick alfresco respray in the woods as part of his assassination attempt on de Gaulle. I defy any boy under the age of 14 to watch that sequence and not find these lithe, pocket-sized machines irresistible.

This summer, after 40-odd years, I finally got the chance to drive some of them. Two Germans, Walter Laimer and Gert Pichler, have started a company called Nostalgic, offering classic Italian sports cars for hire in six locations, including Tuscany, the Italian Lakes, Sicily and the Côte d’Azur.

The pair have scoured Europe for Alfa Giulias, Giuliettas and Duettos, lovingly restored them and made them available for clients to drive on specially chosen routes, where the countryside has changed little since the days when they were built.

As soon as I heard about them, I picked up the phone. At last I was going to turn childhood daydreams into reality. Thing is, once I got to Tuscany, it turned out everyone else also wanted to be in my fantasy.

It wasn’t only the local carabinieri. When I parked the Giulietta outside the only bar in Ville di Corsano — a pretty village on the road to Siena, surrounded by vineyards — a gaggle of locals came out to stroke and admire it.

At the Trattoria Moscadella, in Castelmuzio, a little later in the evening, I looked up from a plate of figs and pecorino cheese to see a black-and-white photo of a Giulietta hanging on the wall opposite me. When the owner realised I was the driver of the real one outside, he waived the bill. At times it felt as if I were carrying a letter of introduction from Silvio Berlusconi.

Times recommends

• New York hotels on sale in January
• Skomer Island, Wales: Britain's best job?
• Red Sea: the complete guide