From the first factory to the skyscrapers, passing through the most iconic cars of Italian design. The celebrations at the National Automobile Museum
95 years have passed since, on May 22, 1930 in Turin, Battista Farina The Pinin Farina Pinin Farina company inaugurated. For Lucia Morselli, president of the board of directors Pininfarinapresent at National Automobile Museum For the official celebrations, they are only “the first of the next 950” of a company that has always been projected to innovation since Battista Farina, for all Pinin, had decided to abandon the bodywork of his brother Giovanni to open his own.
Pinin’s vision
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In those years he had seen a luxury for the elite in those years the future of mobility. A fundamental tool that had to be beautiful and efficient first of all. His cars, at the beginning small artisan projects and fuoriseries on order for wealthy customers, including queens and maragià, had the “form of speed” because Farina had been among the first to understand the importance of herodinamics starting from his Lancia Aprilia aerodynamica racing Berlinetta, which in 1937 had a CX of 0.40, an absolutely revolutionary figure for the time.
A personal salon
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After the difficult war period for Pininfarina, international success came, starting from that edition of the Paris Motor Show in which Pinin and his son Sergio parked an ‘Alfa Romeo 6c 2500 s and one Lancia Aprilia Cabriolet in front of the Grand Palais. Italy had been excluded from the event because they defeated in the war, but Pinin’s gesture was noticed by the press, the title famous “Ce diable de farina a ouvert son antisalon personnel” (That Farina Devil opened its personal salon), and by the organization that promised, for the following year, the official participation. It was the beginning of a long series of successes that transformed a small artisan reality of the Turinese into a brand symbol of beauty and design in the world. There Cisitalia 202from 1947, was the first car to enter the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1951, after meeting the commander halfway in a restaurant in Tortona, he then began the long collaboration with Ferrari, mostly managed by the son of Pinin, Sergio. Among the over one hundred cars signed by Pininfarina, the former stand out, the Ferrari 212 (1951) and the Ferrari 250 GT (1954), then the Daytona of 1968 and the iconic F40 (1987), still very ambitious by collectors.
Research and innovation
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In the 1960s Sergio Pininfarina, the nickname became part of the surname by decree of the President of the Republic Giovanni Gronchi, continued to grow the company with the inauguration of the Study and Research Center of Grugliasco. Pininfarina Sigma, a bodywork study with different solutions of up to then never implemented, combined beauty with safety. In those years they also debuted the Fiat 124 Sport SpidertheAlfa Romeo 1600 Spiderrenamed “Duetto” and many other iconic cars (designed for houses such as BMW, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Honda and Maserati) born from a Pininfarina increasingly oriented towards the future of design and engineering thanks to investments in research. With the 80s, the listing on the stock exchange arrived, the prizes, the global expansion. Until the crises of the early 2000s, before the car and components sector, then for the sudden disappearance of Sergio’s children, Andreain 2008, and Paolo, in 2024, both at the top management summit.
towards the future
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Pininfarina, today part of the Mahindra group after the acquisition of 2015, has been able to reinvent itself and reconstruct. In addition to collaborations with the greatest international brands, with “the ability to interpret the customer’s needs without distorting their brand identity” as Paolo Pininfarina recalled, he takes care of projects in other areas. “Today Pininfarina is much more than a brand linked to the automotive: we are a creative laboratory that embraces architecture, sustainable mobility, product design and digital experiences” said the CEO Silvio Angori to the mauto. From the mobile house with artificial intelligence to nuclear energy, to skyscrapers and air force, Pininfarina continues to do what the designers can do better: give shape to the future.
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