TURIN OR BUST...
A full ten-day driving adventure had preceded our arrival in Turin, and when you are driving a classic Mini that’s pretty meaningful. You would have expected extreme fatigue, but not in this car. The 2000 Mini Cooper I was piloting had proved remarkably civilised. Long legs in top gear had proved very useful on the autostrada and with decent power on tap, along with plenty of padding on the leather clad seats, I was beginning to doubt I would ever want to drive anything else.
The next phase of our journey, the Turin section, was where the Italian Job part of this marathon would really inhabit its ‘job’ description. Pre-empting the city-based film location safari, I first took a 100-mile solo adventure, up into the Italian Alps, to the Nivolet Pass where the film’s final scenes had been filmed in the autumn of 1968.
I made it up there late in the afternoon and snuck under the barrier just before the pass was closed for winter. Up at the top, at the very place that Big William had got the Bedford Val’s back end out a bit too far, I enjoyed a solitary moment with my Mini. 56 years on from filming, I wanted to know why the film had endured. Why such extraordinary popularity, bordering on obsession for so long.
The conclusion I came to was simple. It’s the same reason the Mini endured. The Italian Job was a clear concept, a great idea. It had a real sense of fun running through it and it was down to earth, a prince or a plasterer could enjoy it. It was sexy and it was ice-cube cool, but it also stuck two fingers up at ‘the establishment’. It had the never say die spirit of the true underdog-optimist and, most importantly, it had a twinkle in its eye and never took itself too seriously. Very British. Not particularly profound, but it worked for me as I stood there getting cold at 3000 metres.
THE LINGOTTO
Three hours later, back in Turin, another treat, the Lingotto. This is the former Fiat factory where the rooftop test track was the backdrop to one of the film’s many iconic chase scenes. The Italian Job tour had made a block booking and I was staying there along with the 40 other teams and their minis (one Fiat 500 and one solitary E-type).
Yet another dream come true, the former factory is now a huge complex of venues and attractions, including the hotel we were staying in, a shopping mall and a college. Building work started in 1916 and, for a while, it was the largest car factory in the world. It built its last car in 1982, a Lancia Delta, and since then has avoided demolition by adapting. It has done this and still kept much of what made the building a work of art in itself in the first place. The rooms occupy space on the manufacturing floors and both the windows and ceiling heights give that game away.
As for the rooftop test track, well, it is now an art installation… with flower beds and big signs and other sculptury type things. It’s OK, and if it keeps it secure as a visitor attraction, I suppose it has merit but, I can’t hide my disappointment. Last time the Italian Job tour came here, before lockdown, the Minis were all allowed up for a blast around… not anymore, the place where Topolinos and 500s first turned a wheel is now ‘post-car’. The track itself was where complete cars would run after climbing five floors through the construction process… having arrived on the ground floor as raw material.
How did the completed cars get down from the roof? Two car lifts and two ramps. I’m not sure if the lifts still work, but both ends of the huge building still house a beautiful geometric work of art in reinforced concrete, the Lingotto ramps. Today one of the ramps is used for service access and the other exists within the shopping centre and is a running track. I kid you not. This sweaty, old, fat man tried it out and I can report it is most effective! Put simply, the survival of this place is based on how it has been updated. Commendable.
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