Until this morning my answer would have been no.
But today around 10 AM I took my coffee and than I drove my car (OK, it's my lovely blue Fiat Idea and not a grey De Lorean) to an address about two miles away. An address very well known on old brochures, that only by chance still exists.
It was the address of a very famous coachuilder, but what makes it different from anyone else is that one day in the 80s they realized that time was over, the fuoriseries era was ended and there wouldn't have been any possibility to survive in a different way. Therefore, they simply turned off the key on December 31st of one given year and gave everything to the automotive history.
But...
But they just made a step behind. They dind't went in bankrupcy as many of their competitors. Their company was healthy, so on January the 1st of the year after they just sold all their machinery, they emptied the factory and rented it to other activities.
And they kept untouched the directional office!
From one day to another their job moved from manufacturing cars to administratring buildings, but the office is stille there.
This morning at 10.30 I rang the bell.
I waited 25 seconds thinking that those things only happen in movies... and then the door opened.
I walked upsairs and, passing thorugh the main door, I jumped back in the 60s.
Trust me: I was going to cry!
Everything was back as when they shut down the light in the 80s. More, everything was as when they were in their golden-age in the 60s.
The dark green moquette on the floor, the mahogany director's desk, the sitting corner, the big luxury meeting table, the assistant desk with her old Olivetti typing-machine covered with its dust-jacket.
And a wonderful bookshelf full of cups: Concourse of Elegance Stresa 1948, Cortina 1950, Venice 1962...
It took me almost a hour to explain that I was there only to unearth automotive history, to write the truth and nothing else.
Finally, I got full opening to colect all their memory... and to access to the second room!
I felt like Alice in Wonderland!
Imagine to have spent a hour telling to a man who was the director of a major Italian coachbuilder back in the time and that he says: "Ok, bud, let's give a look to our history: we didn't kept everything, but we still have some shelves of drawings, catalogues, photographs".
I was amazed!
Ok, my collector soul was impressed by the thousand old brochures they still have. But this is not the main point: all of you have a copy of those brochures.
But my historian soul was still kneed in front of the shelf full of drawings. I cant't say how many they are, but they can be some hundreds. I only took in my hands a few rolls and there was a whole world to be discovered there.
Photographs are still there, too. Two or threee drawers full of photos! Very soon my wife and me will spend some time there to scan all them.
I hope everything will become a nice book. Definitely, it worhts!
