MILAN — Quickly now: What single word comes to mind when the subject of Italian automobile museums comes up at a cocktail party?
Ferrari. Of course. Or perhaps Maserati. Or Lamborghini. For the next thousand words, forget about your knee-jerk responses. For now, let’s think out of the auto museum box.
During a recent visit to the Italian north, I shuttled between Milan and Turin in search of some automotive greatness beyond what is usually found on tourists’ agendas. Find it I did, at the “other” museums, one celebrating the history of Alfa Romeo and the second at the home of Fiat in the true heartland of the Italian auto industry for more than a century.
Red cars are what you want. Alfa has rosso available in more than just a few stunning colors. Technology? Start with Leonardo da Vinci’s self-propelled car from 1478. No time for Porsches? Good. You won’t find any here.
Here’s a closer look at a pair of destinations that both enthusiasts and un-car people can appreciate, as well as a short stop at Italy’s iconic tire producer, Pirelli.
MUSEO STORICO, Arese The Museo Storico is located in Arese (a suburb of Milan), and offers a romantic, deep dive into 111 year of Italian history through the lens of one of the most iconic and beloved brands. While the themes of the museum’s layout — Timeline, Beauty and Speed — offer a precise, thoughtful assessment of Alfa’s importance to Italy and its industry, the presence of so much gorgeous sheet metal in a single building is enough to excite passions.
The company was early “to realize that a museum could be an asset for marketing,” said Lorenzo Ardizio, the museum’s director. Initially it was opened in 1976 only to guests and journalists, but under Sergio Marchionne’s guidance, Storico was refurbished and reopened in 2015 for the introduction of the Giulia sedan. Marchionne had insisted on the merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. (Fiat had acquired Alfa in 1986. FCA is now part the Stellantis Group. Yes, it gets complicated.
Regarding the Storico, Mr. Ardizio said, “The idea was to create something to attract a much wider public, for people who might not be particularly interested in automobiles.” This is a recurring theme for most automotive museums.
All the usual high-tech goodies of 21st-century display formats are here: multimedia panels, exotic lighting, a giant video wall that traces some of Alfa’s elegiac performances in motorsports. The small 1.5-liter Alfettas won 1950’s first Formula 1 World Championship. They finished first, second, then third in that Grand Prix season. Alfa’s second-place driver was Juan Manuel Fangio, considered among the most brilliant race drivers ever. These results were a reason to cheer for this nation of racecar-mad nations, whose auto industry was decimated by the retreating Germans in the mid-1940s and the advancing Allies.
The compact Giulietta coupe with a design inspired by Raymond Loewy was what brought Alfa back to showrooms in 1954. Among the 70 or cars on permanent display in the proper museum (there’s also a closed-to-the-public “workshop’’ with many historic Alfas), the tidy Giulietta is an awfully precious show-off. Mr. Ardizio explained that the success of the company led to it building 1,000 cars per day after World War II. This was after it had been producing 300 cars each year.
You recognize that red convertible in the distance? Many moviegoers will: It’s the 1600 Spider Duetto that Dustin Hoffman drove over the Bay Bridge in “The Graduate.” According to our guide at the Storico, the encyclopedic Eleonora Ventura, the classic 1966 model, designed by Pininfarina’s studio, was “booked” — actually, so were a green one and a white one — on the deck of a luxury liner sailing from Genoa to New York.
“The ship stopped in Cannes at the film festival and took on some actors and V.I.P.s who had the opportunity to drive them on the deck on the trip to New York,” she said. This Alfa — a model that was produced for 28 years — subsequently had “bit parts” in a number of films.
It’s worth pointing out that almost all the information displayed beside the cars and in the videos is in English. Mr. Ardizio believes that more than 130,000 people visited the Storico in 2020.
THE NATIONAL AUTOMOBILE MUSEUM TURIN. For American visitors to Italy, Turin is often an afterthought, overshadowed by itineraries heavy on Rome-Florence-Milan-Venice. For automotive cognoscenti, Turin, Italy’s first capital city before Rome, has a rich history: Lancia, IVECO, Pininfarina, Bertone, Giugiaro and Ghia, magical names in Italian design lore, were all founded here, built around the home of Turin’s industrial megastar, Fiat.
Not surprisingly, the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile is among the world’s largest dedicated to the car. With legacies so rich built around a collection of about 200 models dating from 1854, one ought to receive a bachelor’s degree in history after spending an intense few hours here. Felipe Vergara, our guide said that the museum was established in 1933. It has been renovated every year since then and attracts approximately 200,000 people annually.
The museum is a place where science meets sport. One display showcases Formula 1 championship cars driven Fangio or Michael Schumacher. Another spotlights the 1854 Bordino Steam carriage that wow the Turinese while it cruised without a driver. horsepower through the city’s narrow streets.
Mr. Vergara also becomes animated about the Italia (a 40-horsepower car that competed at the 1907 Peking–to-Paris automobile race). The car is wartorn and battered, but it’s inspiring. There are removable mudguards to cross water and oversize tanks for gasoline.
“The idea was, is anybody crazy enough to go from Peking to Paris, a trip of 16,000 kilometers?” Mr. Vergara asked. “Five teams showed up.”
The Gobi Desert, Siberia, and other obstacles were just two of the many that the drivers faced. The Italia was driven by Prince Scipione Boergese, a military officer. After 61 days, he rolled the Italia into Paris. The second-place car arrived three months later. The news coverage was phenomenal; those who dismissed the automobile as a fad were shocked.
The museum, for good reason, is inextricably tied to Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana di Automobile Torino, not “Fix it again, Tony”) and its brilliant but politically divisive founder, Giovanni Agnelli. (At one time, he was aligned to Mussolini, while at another he was tried for fraud.
More than once in the last 120 years Fiat has tipped toward bankruptcy — the brand is practically invisible now in the United States — but its cars are ubiquitous in Turin and at this museum. A gas turbine powered, red-and white Turbina from 1954 is especially notable. A jet engine, in other words. The concept never saw series production, but it did make a memorable whine at auto shows.
Overall, the museum’s intelligent layout — a chronological journey over several floors — offers a visual narrative of the automobile, from the very beginning: da Vinci’s windup, spring-loaded “car” to the touchstone Jaguars and Ferraris of the present day.
“People come in and say, ‘I wasn’t interested in cars’ before they got here,” Mr. Vergara said, “and after, they realize how interesting it gets.”
PIRELLI FOUNDATION MUSEUM (Milan). Who knew tires could be used to foster museums? Fondazione Pirelli is a museum that is supported by rubber, and not sheet metal or fuel injection.
Pirelli, an Italian institution, has been influential for decades. It will turn 150 next year. But Pirelli is more than just tires. Motorsports fans are familiar because Pirellis are the only tires allowed to race in Formula 1. The displays at the foundation, including paintings, films and Pirelli’s collection of ultrasophisticated advertising posters, emphasize the company’s work to propagate art and culture among its work force. (In 2017, the Orchestra da Camera Italiana performed in a Pirelli plant.
There’s pride of place here as well for the notorious Pirelli Calendar. The full-color, oversize calendars — called “the Cal” — became cult items in the 1960s and ’70s, featuring glamorous women in various states of undress. The calendars became more artful and less playboy after easy nudity was out of fashion.
There’s also an extensive archive of historical documents and articles if your interest in Pirelli is more academic. Access is granted to researchers and students by arrangement.
Source: NY Times
