For Pietro Cozzi, the line between passion and work was always blurred. His first love was Alfa Romeo and the second was his car dealership with the “Biscione” dragon logo, Fratelli Cozzi, opened in 1955. The economic boom was still in its embryonic stages and the automobile was still an unobtainable dream for many Italians. Alfa Romeo moved from elite to mass production. The Giulietta charmed everyone and became the “girlfriend of Italy”.  But what happened in those days when cars got old? With no second-hand market, they were demolished and their metal was sold by weight. But Pietro Cozzi, known by his title of Commendatore, still saw something worth saving in those abandoned cars. His intuition and farsightedness stopped him from scrapping the cars and made him leave them there to remind people of the history and passion that went into producing them. This is how he began collecting all the Alfa models built from 1950 onwards. He collected limited series, special editions, rare cars and one-off models. The collection remained private until 2015, when to mark Pietro’s 80th birthday and the company’s 60th anniversary, it was made public thanks to a project by Oscar and Gabriele Buratti. The Fratelli Cozzi Museum was thus born. In Legnano, the museum houses over 60 cars, arranged as if they were on a catwalk, in a fascinating setting where the visitors’ eyes will gleam as brightly as the chrome.

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Pirelli has left an indelible mark on the history of the automobile, design and culture – industrial and otherwise. Pirelli began producing rubber items in 1872: the first tire for velocipedes was made in 1890. Its global and far-sighted approach, its ability to innovate, and its entrepreneurial spirit that has always strived for excellence, helped the Milanese company grow in a very short time. By the early 1900s, Pirelli had already become a multinational company with factories and offices in Europe and South America, while rubber was harvested on plantations in Southeast Asia. The historical and cultural heritage, that the company has built up over 150 years, has been showcased at the Pirelli Foundation, in the heart of the company’s Bicocca headquarters in Milan, since 2008 This collection of thousands of documents, sketches, photographs and films highlights the importance of Pirelli’s role in business culture. References to advertising and humanistic culture are also present. In the 1950s, Bruno Munari collaborated with the company and designed and created reinforced foam rubber toys (the Meo Romeo cat and the Zizi monkey, with which he won the Compasso d’Oro award in 1954). He also created advertising campaigns and designed exhibition stands. And then there is the Pirelli Magazine which, between 1948 and 1972, published combined technical-scientific culture with humanistic culture, featuring articles by Dino Buzzati, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco and Elio Vittorini and illustrations by Renato Guttuso, Renzo Biasion and Fulvio Bianconi.

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“We do not own any of this, we are merely its custodians for the future…”. This is the philosophy on which the Nicolis Museum is based, the result of 50 years of enthusiasm, passion and enquiring minds. Inside, the story of a man, Luciano Nicolis, who succeeded in making his boyhood dreams come true thanks to his love of engines, technology, mechanics and the recovery of materials and objects. It all started from the idea of collection and reuse when his father, Francesco, started a waste paper recycling and recovery company. That is when Luciano started tirelessly hunting for vintage cars to restore and collect all over the world. After the cars came motorcycles, bicycles, musical instruments, cameras and typewriters – fascinating objects that tell the story, creativity and work of people. Set in a unique and futuristic space, under the guidance of Silvia Nicolis, Luciano’s daughter, the museum is a promoter of culture, innovation and the local area. It acts as a cultural enterprise where collections come to life thanks to collaborations with institutions and businesses, and through thematic exhibitions, artistic experiments and performances.

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Moving south, Emilia-Romagna’s Motor Valley is home to companies that become part of the history of supercars. One of these is Lamborghini, a company that has always been ahead of the game when it comes to its history, avant-garde technologies, high-performance engines and design. Ferruccio Lamborghini was born in 1916 in Renazzo, in the province of Ferrara. He was fell in love with engines from a very young age, so much so that he went against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to work in the fields around the family farm. However, after finishing technical school, Ferruccio first became an apprentice to a local blacksmith and then went to work as a laborer in Bologna’s most important car repair shop. When he was only 18 years old, he opened a repair shop in Renazzo, where he bought and repaired motorcycles and cars. After WWII, while agriculture in Ferrara was in crisis, Ferruccio Lamborghini – whose foresight and entrepreneurial spirit always set him apart – decided to turn to the agricultural machinery market. Success was not long in coming: in 1950 he produced 200 tractors a year and employed 30 workers. One year later, the Trattori Lamborghini production plant was established. In the 1960’s, the company was an industry leader. But for Ferruccio Lamborghini cars were a fixation. He wanted to produce one with a 12-cylinder V engine, four overhead camshafts, two valves per cylinder, six carburetors and dry sump lubrication. He summoned the best designers and mechanics on the market – including those who worked for the competition. In 1963, Lamborghini Automobili was founded in Sant’Agata Bolognese, while engineers were fine-tuning the 350 GTV. Ferruccio Lamborghini chose the golden bull as a symbol to be placed on the hoods of his cars. Since then, it has been – and forever will be – a symbol of power, luxury and eccentricity. The history of the company and its founder can be discovered in the Lamborghini Museum. Inaugurated in 2014, it displays documents, projects, vintage photographs and the incredible cars produced during half a century of business. The factory can also be visited, reservation required.

On the outskirts of Milan, in the former Alfa Romeo business center in Arese, the Museo storico Alfa Romeo, inaugurated in 1976 and completely restyled in 2015, showcases the most significant pieces of the brand’s historical collection in a tour that tells the story of the Milanese brand and the evolution of the automobile concept.

In Turin, the former officina 81 – Fiat’s historic mechanical production plant – has been transformed into the FCA Heritage Hub, a multi-purpose center that houses an exhibition of 250 vintage cars from Turin-based Fiat, Lancia and Abarth. A few Alfa Romeos pop up as well, but the focus is all on what was “invented here”.

Also in Turin is the historic MAUTO, the National Automobile Museum, founded in 1932 by Cesare Goria Gatti and Roberto Biscaretti di Ruffia. However, it was Roberto’s son, Carlo, a great car enthusiast, who brought the first collection to life. Today, the exhibition offers an emotion-packed journey through vintage cars, prototypes and iconic models.

In Maranello, just a few kilometers from Modena, the extraordinary Enzo Ferrari designed and built the first legendary car bearing his name, putting it on the road in 1947. Here, visitors can explore the Ferrari Museum that houses the largest collection of Ferraris in the world, tracing the development in mechanics from the 1940s to the present day, the factory, where mechanics and designers design and build the cars, and the test track. The Museo Enzo Ferrari can also be visited where the fascinating life of a man who went from being a driver to the founder of an epic racing team is told through memorabilia and stories.

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