Italy’s National Automobile Museum (MAUTO) is situated a few blocks from the historic FIAT car factory in Turin (Torino), see our previous post. To be near to this museum, we moved from our original hotel in Centro to the NH Collection Lingotto Congress which is housed within a converted section of the old FIAT car factory.
There is so much pop music celebrating the automobile – we have selected six of our favorites here – songs by The Rolling Stone, Rush, Queen, The Beatles, The Cars and Gary Numan.
Click ▶ to play
The MAUTO – Museo dell’Automobile of Turin boasts one of the rarest and most interesting collections of its kind, with over 200 original cars of 80 brands from all over the world.
The exhibits are on two floors organized under the themes of “The Man and Cars” on the first level and “Cars and Designs” on the ground level.
This is a mecca for car enthusiasts. The museum’s web site contains pictures as well as information on the museum’s collection of historic cars, allowing searches made by brand, model, period, and country.
The oldest items in the collection are linked to the history of its founder, Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia, who collected cars, chassis and engines.
The collection on display shows the ongoing evolution of motor vehicle, telling stories of the manufacturers, entrepreneurs and drivers behind the unrelenting progress in technology and passion for speed.
I (Chris) loved this exhibit which displays a parade of Formula 1 racing cars from the vintage to the recent with audiovisual effects on the ground and behind the cars. We were standing at the front end facing the most recent models. The illusion of speed was amazing.
Click ▶ to start the video.
As expected, we saw lots of Ferrari, although the cars are not made in Turin (they are made in Maranello).
Also on display are some very exotic vehicles. Not bothering to read the display notes; judging by their looks, they were probably built to break some speed records back in the days.
To illustrate the unique environment of Turin for auto engineering, there is an interactive map of Turin on the floor marking the suppliers of parts for Fiat’s – the supply chain is established in town.
We saw many engines from different eras on display. This 1996 engine is built by Alfa Romeo.
The museum also traces the development of cars for the masses – Autobianchi, Volkswagen GTI, VW Beetle, and Citroen 2CV.
Many FIAT cars were on display since they were manufactured in the factory located only a few streets away. The FIAT 127 was singled out as representative of modern Italian design in the 1960’s.
The museum is focusing only on passenger cars and race cars. There were no other types of vehicles on display, except this FIAT 600 Multipla passenger minivan.
Four mid-century classics were placed in the lobby of the museum to welcome visitors. They were small and charming, like toy cars, and can really be described as cute (not a term generally used to describe cars).
The four cars are: Autobianchi Bianchina, BMW Isetta 300, FIAT nuova 500 and another Autobianchi.
Overall, the historic and technical exhibits are both informative and entertaining. Recommended for everyone.
We wished we had more time to look closely at the exhibits and the stories, and enjoy Turin, but we had to get on the road to Genoa which was our next stop on the trip from Lausanne to Tuscany (click to see the first post of the series).
If you like to follow us on this Italian road trip, click here for the next post.