Thursday, May 29, 2014

Stabilimenti Farina's Ferrari 166 Inter

The Italian carrozzeria (coachbuilder) firm Stabilimenti Farina is virtually unknown today, and what little notoriety it has is related to the fact that it was where Battista "Pinin" Farina got his start in the trade.  Pinin, you see, was the younger brother of Giovanni Farina, who owned and ran Stabilimenti Farina ("Farina Works"), founded in 1919 and closed in 1953.  Pinin founded his own coachbuilding firm in 1930.  As for Giovanni, I could find next to nothing on the Internet other than his year of death, 1957.  I suppose information exists, and readers with knowledge of him and links to source material are encouraged to pass that along in Comments.  At any rate, here is the best link I could find.

There are Internet sources showing images of cars created by Stabilimenti Farina in period photos, and I used some of those images for the gallery show below.  The subject car for these custom bodies was the Ferrari 166 Inter, the firm's first model intended for street use.

Gallery

1948 Ferrari 166 Inter, number 009S


1949 Farrari 166 Inter, number 011S


1950 Ferrari 166 Inter, number 063S

My impression is that these late-period Stabilimenti Farina designs are mainstream examples of what I consider the Golden Decade of Italian coachbuilding.  Clean, functional envelope bodies with just enough sculpting and ornamentation to provide interest to what otherwise might be functional drabness.  But these examples seem to lack the spark that competing firms such as Pinin Farina, Vignale, Bertone, Touring and others were offering.  Giovanni Farina's designs seem tired, as perhaps was Giovanni himself.

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