For its occasion of its 80th anniversary, which has
kicked off this week, Pininfarina has given itself an all-new
"Collection",
the result of a restyling project by the Pininfarina Extra team. The Collection
is the true custodian of the company’s values, and the "visiting card" with
which Pininfarina will present itself to guests, the place where past, present and
future blend, conveying to visitors all the magic of the Pininfarina brand.
It
has been updated as part of the company strategy to raise the prestige of the
brand even higher. The cars on display are among the most significant of the
hundreds that have written the company’s history, from the Cisitalia to the
Alfa Romeo
Giulietta Spider, the Sigma Grand Prix prototype and the Maserati Birdcage 75th. At the
centre, the star of the exhibition, is Pininfarina’s latest creation: the
2uettottanta, a 2-seater open sports car that was presented at the 2010 Geneva
Motor Show.
The layout of the main exhibition has been rearranged to enable visitors to
really appreciate the design excellence that has made the Pininfarina name
famous the world over. New interactive display panels link the milestones of the
past and project them into the future, with the perspective vision typical of a
company that is eminently innovative and creative.
A show window enables visitors to admire articles designed expressly for fans of
the Pininfarina brand. This display contains awards won by the company,
publications that illustrate the company’s history and products, and some of the
items designed recently for its clients by Pininfarina Extra, but also articles
that are exclusive to the Collection.
The Pininfarina Collection reflects the evolution of the company from its
foundation to the present day, constantly aware of its roots and of the culture
of its products and quality. The Collection includes about forty important
models from the 1940s to the present, exhibited on a rotation basis, in a space
that is deliberately kept small to highlight the quality rather than the
quantity of the items on show: it is a selection of historical cars, one-off
models, small production runs and mass-produced models, styling models and
research prototypes, each with a specific creative, technical and industrial
significance.
Some examples include the Cisitalia 202 Berlinetta of 1947, marking the
international consecration as a designer of the Founder “Pinin” Farina, and the
first car in the world to become a permanent exhibit in a Modern Art Gallery,
the MOMA of New York; the Lancia Florida II of 1957, the Founder’s personal car
for almost ten years up to his death; the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider of 1954,
the car which, more than any other, represents the watershed between
Pininfarina’s artisan past and industrial present; the Fiat 124 Sport Spider,
which immediately became one of Pininfarina’s most successful cars, as in the
end 200,000 examples were
built, while it exported to America on a large scale; the Maserati Birdcage 75th, a
prototype developed jointly with Maserati and Motorola for Pininfarina’s 75th
anniversary, which was voted the “Best Concept” by the American magazine
Autoweek, included on the Forbes list of the ten “coolest concept cars” of 2005
and winner of the Louis Vuitton Classic Concept Award in 2005. The display also
includes the styling models for the most recent projects created by Pininfarina
for prestigious clients, like the Ferrari 458 Italia and Maserati GranCabrio.
The rotation of the models is not due solely to the inevitable need to maintain
the cars and the desire to periodically update the message of the display; it is
also a response to the continuous requests that come in from all over the world
for cars to participate in cultural events in the design field, and automotive
events in particular. For example, the Sintesi of 2008, is currently the star of
an exhibition in Belgium, while the Ferrari P6 is about to leave for Korea.
