Turin Car Museum

Click on images to expand

MUSEO NAZIONALE DELL’AUTOMOBILE DI TORINO

The quality of Turin’s National Automobile Museum is quite unexpected, even keeping in mind the City’s long history of car production. The collection is deeply impressive and the cars are displayed in a range of innovative ways. No classic car enthusiast should miss an opportunity to view this museum. It is not clear to us here at The Classic Motorist as to why this superb collection does not receive more attention from people outside Italy.

Broadly speaking, the display is in chronological order and commences with a remarkable 1854 twin cylinder steam-engined version of a stage-coach style of horse-drawn landau. This is a genuine “horseless carriage” and was built by Virginio Bordino at Turin’s Military Arsenal. The rear-mounted steam engine drives the crank shaped rear axle through conrods connected to a crankshaft-shaped rear axle. The vehicle had a top speed of nearly 8 km/h.

The next room contains no less than seventeen cars from 1903 or earlier. These include a Peugeot Tipo 3 from 1892, a Benz Victoria from 1893, a 1903 De Dion & Bouton and a 9.5 hp Darracq built in 1902.

Jumping forward to 1907, I was struck by the Italia in which Prince Scipione Borghese won the Peking to Paris race in 60 days. The car arrived a full twenty days ahead of the second car to finish the 16,000 kilometre race. The Itaila was subsequently known as the “Peking-to-Paris” type. More than a century later, Italy remains justifiably proud of this car’s resounding win.

As well as cars built for performance, the Museo’s collection includes some exceedingly luxurious models from before the Great War. These include a 1909 Isotta Fraschini AN 20-30 hp, an Italia 35/45 hp and a manificent Delage AB-8 and Rolls Royce 40-50 hp “Silver Ghost”.

While the chronological ordering collection shows the steady development of the motor car, there are all sorts of mechanical oddities to remind the visitor that the world’s car designers explored a few dead-ends on their journey to the modern car. These included a runabout in which just the driver sat behind the sole passenger. Built between 1911 and 1914 by Bourbeau and Devaux, this extraordinary 210 kg car had a two-speed gearbox and bilateral chain drive, but no clutch nor reverse gear. To change gears, the driver has to shift the entire rear axle forward with a lever so that the slackened chains could pass from one gear to another. The car was reputed to reach 60 km/h.

The Turin collection remains strong in its coverage of the 1920s, mainly with Italian cars. There are two Isotta Fraschinis, one from 1920 and one from 1929 as well as a Spa 23S and a Diatto 30, for example, along with a Citroen C3-5CV from France.

The 1930s were a highlight with everything from an Austin Seven and Fiat 500 to a Packard Super-Eight 1501. Most spectacular of all was a Mercedes Benz 500K. Famously powered by a straight-eight engine supercharged through a positive-displacement blower which could be engaged or disengaged from the driver’s seat. This magnificent car was an unexpected delight.

The immediate post-war period was represented by a lovely 1948 Lancia Aprillia which underlined just how important this Italian car maker has been to the development of the modern motor car. The museum also has a Cisitalia 202 SMM Spider Nuvolari. Its streamlined shape pointed the way for many sportscars that followed. Even more influential (and, I suspect the pride of the collection) is the Pininfarina-styled Cisitalia 202 coupe. There is one of these cars in the Museum of Modern Art in New York where it is described as “one of the world’s six most beautiful cars”. With its low-set bonnet, nestled between higher-set front guards with built-in headlights, this car clearly influenced everything from Lancias to Aston Martins, Ferraris and even Bentleys of the next two decades. With the Cisitalia, Pininfarina drew on aerodynamic thinking to create a unified design that ensured that the car flowed together as a single unit, rather than being broken down into separate blocks to house the engine, passengers and luggage. All the car’s features, including door handles and headlights, were incorporated into the lovely shape, rather than appearing as separate units. Like a Frank Lloyd Wright house, it is easy at first sight to think the Cisitalia is merely a well-executed example of something decades younger. It is only when you realise how old it is that the revolutionary nature of the design is clear.

However, as in earlier decades, not all post-war technical advances laid pathways for the future. Much like Rover’s similar (but less beautifully styled) effort in Britain, the gas turbine powered 1954 Fiat Turbino on display never made it beyond prototype testing.

The Citroen DS19 of just a year later has proved more influential in the long term. Presented at the 1955 Paris Show as a successor to the famous “Traction Avant”, the Citroën DS 19 is one of the most important cars of the post-war years. Hugely advanced with its hydro-pneumatic suspension, gear change, steering and brakes, nearly one and a half million of them were produced up to 1975. The Torino museum holds the car displayed at the 1957 Milan Triennale Exhibition. As an aside the museum also had a small display downstairs with comments from a large collection of the world’s living car designers. The vast majority of these designers, which included Chris Bangle and others from the modern era, cite Citroen’s Goddess as the greatest influence on their thinking.

From the 1960s, the museum has on display small cars such as the Mini and the Fiat 500 as well as an E-Type Jaguar. From that decade, but looking so much more modern was the NSU Ro80. Famously powered by an under-developed version of Wankel’s rotary engine (a design kept alive today by Mazda who have pretty much solved the problem of sealing the rotor tips), this car was a commercial flop but pointed the way to the future in terms of its low-drag, large glass area styling and other features. The car had pretty much the best of everything in the late 1960s, including a semi-automatic transmission (with a vacuum operated clutch arrangement), as well as four wheel disc brakes (inboard on the front to reduce unsprung weight), rack and pinion power steering.

The Turin Museum also has a spectacular, and inevitably very red, collection of racing cars, excellent displays of motors and a strong focus on social history. Furthermore, in addition to the normal collection, the Museo also hosts visiting exhibitions. When The Classic Motorist visited, we saw a fabulous Bertone exhibition including everything from a Lancia Stratos and Alfa Montreal to Nuccio Bertone’s personal Lamborghini Miura (pictured above).

The depth and quality of Turin’s National Automobile Museum means that it really takes at least a full day to enjoy it. For a genuine enthusiast, a delightful two days savouring the collection certainly would not be out of the question. If you are in northern Italy and you do not make the effort to visit this museum, you have done yourself an injustice.