Battista Pininfarina
Turin coachbuilder (1893–1966), founder in 1930 of Carrozzeria Pinin Farina, creator of the Cisitalia 202 displayed at MoMA.
Battista Farina, known as "Pinin" and, from 1961, legally Pininfarina (Turin, 2 November 1893 – Lausanne, 3 April 1966), was the Turin coachbuilder who turned a sheet-metal workshop into one of the best-known names in world automotive design. In 1930 he founded the Carrozzeria Pinin Farina, designed the Cisitalia 202 that entered the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in 1958 moved production to Grugliasco, on the edge of the city.[1]
The last of the brood
He was born in Turin to Giuseppe Farina and Giacinta Vigna, a family that had come to the city from Cortanze, in the Asti area. He was the tenth of eleven children and the last of the boys: at home they called him "Pinin", Piedmontese for "the little one".[1] The Piedmontese language thus gave him the name that would become a brand. According to the Dizionario Biografico entry on his son, his grandparents had left the Asti countryside for Turin in 1898, driven out by the agricultural crisis.[2]
At twelve he entered the workshop of his elder brother Giovanni, who had learned the trade from Marcello Alessio, one of the city's best-known coachbuilders.[1] The workshop, opened in 1905, became the Stabilimenti Farina.[2] Turin was already Italy's automobile capital, with FIAT, Lancia and other makers: while still very young, Pinin negotiated with FIAT's management the supply of bodywork for the Zero, and during the First World War he directed aircraft production. In 1920 he visited the United States and met Henry Ford, who offered him a job; he returned to Turin instead, where in 1928 he became director of the Stabilimenti Farina.[1]
Corso Trapani, 1930
On 22 May 1930, before the notary Annibale Germano, he set up the joint-stock company Carrozzeria Pinin Farina, with capital of one million lire. Decisive support came from Olimpia De Bernardi, his wife's wealthy widowed aunt, who put up the million-lire capital, and from Vincenzo Lancia, a friend and shareholder, who immediately ordered fifty examples of the Dilambda.[1] The Corso Trapani plant covered, according to the Dizionario Biografico, almost 10,000 square metres with 90 workers; the company itself gives the figures as 9,250 square metres and 150 employees.[1][3] Among the workshop's men were panel-beater Alfredo Vignale and designer Mario Felice Boano, who later became coachbuilders in their own right.[1]
Pinin himself drew little: the historian Franco Amatori describes him as a man of the workshop floor, at ease with the panel-beaters, and as the inspirer and strict supervisor of his designers. As early as 1930 he had clients such as the Queen of Romania and the King of Iraq, joined in 1932 by Guglielmo Marconi; that same year he won the grand prize of honour at the Villa d'Este concours d'elegance. The crisis of fixed costs led in 1933 to a reduction of capital and a proposed liquidation, overcome by committing his personal assets; by 1939 the company was producing 800 bodies a year with 500 employees.[1]
From the 1930s he was drawn to aerodynamics, which in his memoirs he called "the shape of speed".[3] It produced the 1935 Alfa Romeo 6C 2300 Pescara coupé and the aerodynamic Lancia Aprilia, with a drag coefficient of 0.40.[1][3]
The Cisitalia and the post-war years
In December 1946 a fire destroyed the Corso Trapani plant; two months later work resumed in temporary sheds. That same autumn, Italy, a former enemy nation, had been excluded from the Paris Motor Show: Pinin drove two cabriolets all the way to the French capital and parked them in front of the exhibition entrance, drawing praise from the local press.[1]
In 1947 came the Cisitalia 202 berlinetta, with its fenders integrated into the body and built in a small series with an aluminium shell welded to a steel frame.[1][3] MoMA exhibited it from 1951 and took it into its permanent collection, the first car ever to enter a museum of modern art.[1][3]
"sculpture in motion"
Drexler's phrase has remained attached to the car and to the name of the Turin coachbuilder.[3]
From custom bodies to series production
The 1950s changed the nature of the firm. In 1951 came the Lancia Aurelia B20, runner-up overall at that year's Mille Miglia; in 1952 began the exclusive relationship with Enzo Ferrari, and, in the same year, the American firm Nash commissioned the Ambassador series and the Nash-Healey, hundreds of which were built in Turin. From 1955 the Peugeot 403 opened a partnership that would yield more than twenty models. With the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider, presented in 1954, the coachbuilder moved firmly into series production: 27,000 units were built by 1965.[1][3]
In June 1958 the whole operation moved to Grugliasco, into a new plant of 36,500 square metres divided into five departments; within a year the workforce rose from 662 to 921 and output from 3,140 to 5,466 cars.[1] It was among the first large firms to choose the western edge of the city: the municipality recalls that in the late 1950s, during the economic miracle, Pininfarina, Bertone, Vignale and other engineering firms settled in Grugliasco.[4] In 1963 the plant reached its peak of 19,864 bodies with 1,683 employees.[1]
The Pininfarina surname
From the early 1950s Pinin had brought his son Sergio and his son-in-law Renzo Carli alongside him at the helm, handing them the management in 1961 while remaining as supervisor.[1][3] On 6 June of that year President Giovanni Gronchi authorised by decree the change of surname from Farina to Pininfarina, on the proposal of the Minister of Justice and, according to the company, in recognition of his social and industrial merits;[1][3] Mole24 reads it as the consecration of the Pininfarina name as an excellence to be exported to the world.[5] Il Post, retracing the company's history, presents it as founded by Battista Farina, "who later changed his surname to Pininfarina".[6]
Honours arrived in those same years: Cavaliere del Lavoro in 1953, appointed by President Luigi Einaudi, Royal Designer for Industry in 1954, the Compasso d'Oro in 1957, an honorary degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Torino in 1963, and the Legion of Honour in 1965. He also took part in social and cultural initiatives: in 1956 he contributed to saving the ancient temple of Ellesiya, in Egypt, and in 1963 he promoted a vocational and recreational centre for young people in Grugliasco.[1]
About a month before his death he appeared in public for the opening of the company's Centro Studi e Ricerche, in the presence of the Head of State. He died on 3 April 1966 in a clinic in Lausanne, and Sergio became chairman.[2][3]
Legacy
Pininfarina went on to design the bodywork of famous sports cars such as the Alfa Romeo 6C, the Maserati A6 and the Ferrari Testarossa.[6] The Grugliasco plant, closed in 2012 after De Tomaso's bankruptcy, was bought in 2019 from Finpiemonte Partecipazioni by three companies (Leva, Sargomma and Febametal), which announced more than 400 jobs there.[7] In December 2018 Automobili Pininfarina named the Battista after its founder, a 1,900-horsepower electric hypercar produced in a run of 150.[5]
Pages linking here
Related articles: Grugliasco, Pininfarina
Sources
- Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani —
- Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
- Pininfarina
- Città di Grugliasco
- Mole24 — 13 December 2018
- Il Post — 14 December 2015
- Mole24 — 21 April 2022