Turin ’97

Turin ‘97

It’s been 40 years since I first visited Italy with three friends from University. We had been interested in the Italian films shown at University and other specialist cinemas, including the work of Fellini, Pasolini, Lina Wertmueller and others. I’m sure we set-off thinking we could emulate the style of actors such as Giancarlo Giannini and others but probably looked like four dags on holiday! We spent a lot of time looking at important architectural sites, old and new, visited galleries to view works of art by the Renaissance masters and visited what people generally believe to be important landmarks – like the Colosseum in Rome and the towers of San Gimingnano.

All of this time, though, I was probably more interested in the amazing variety of Italian cars to be seen everywhere. I’m sure I bored my travel companions with my constant chatter, such as “there’s a Lancia Fulvia and an Innocenti mini”, or “look, a Fiat Dino…and an Autobianchi A112!” These exclamations were often followed by a monologue about the features of each particular model. The same year I made that first trip to Italy, I also bought my first car- a 1969 Fiat 124 coupe. It was to be the first of a long history of exclusively Italian car ownership.

Thirty years on and I was no doubt boring Lynne on our first trip to Italy together. “Look! There’s a Fiat Panda”. I was a little obsessed, so we agreed that I was to only mention one model of car, once a day. I did manage to include a visit to Turin (the home of FIAT and Lancia) in our itinerary, even though this involved quite a detour from our chosen route. Not that the itinerary was fixed – we had an Italian rail pass, which meant we could travel anywhere we liked. We only booked accommodation when we arrived at a new destination and realised early on it was best to arrive early enough, so we had time to look for the best deal, not too far from the railway station. Lynne usually was the negotiator, as she had studied Italian at school before we did our night classes together. I would stand guard over the luggage or listen to the proprietor’s replies in case Lynne missed the odd critical word in Italian.

In Turin, I knew of the Fiat museum and the Biscaretti car collection, which I was keen to visit. There was also the old Fiat factory at Lingotto, which had recently been restored and converted into a convention centre and the old Lancia office building, which was built in the 60’s and spans a road. Perhaps naively, I thought we would just be able to turn-up at these places and gain access. This was the case at the Biscaretti museum, but sadly not for the other locations. We spent quite a long time on busses and walking to get to these places, only to be turned away. Lynne was losing patience, I think, especially when we finally made it to the old Fiat offices, which contained a small collection of cars, only to be told it was closed for lunch. Typically, it wouldn’t be open again until 3pm. We walked off to find somewhere to have lunch, which turned out to be a sort of trucker’s café. We decided to go in, even though it looked a bit dodgy because there didn’t seem to be much else nearby and we’d had more than enough walking for one day. Inside there were a lot of guys who looked like truckers, and probably were. The proprietor was very charming, however and offered us a taste of the day’s soup special. It was good and reasonably priced, so we were happy to return to the Museum again after eating. On arrival we found two doormen, who informed us that because it was Monday, the museum was closed. (Perhaps we had mis-heard on our first visit – our Italian language skills not being too good). Anyway, that was enough for Lynne, who had probably had her fill of wandering around Turin’s backstreets by this time and she had a sudden outburst in English, without a pause, explaining we had travelled all the way from Australia to visit and that earlier we were told to return after 3pm and wasted hours doing this and so-on. I’m not sure if the doorman understood her, or just guessed what she was saying from her tone, but he asked me if I just wanted to see the cars and I replied that I did. He motioned us to enter for our own private viewing.