Driving the 1892 Peugeot that started it all
This 1892 Peugeot Type 3 was the first car imported into Italy – when it was brand new. Now Octane drives it
It was New Year’s Eve, 1892. Back then, Italy was an agricultural country that relied on horses and oxen. The beasts of burden slept, unaware that a new machine – one that would soon render the animals redundant – was crossing the Swiss border at Chiasso, just above Como. It was a Peugeot Type 3, only the 25th car made by the French company, being transported on a train from Zurich and about to make history as the very first car on Italy’s roads, where it would be driven for the first time on 2 January 1893.
In the late 1800s, the automobile was an exciting new prospect. Karl Benz had patented the three-wheel Motorwagen on 29 January 1886, his invention being a carriage paired with an internal combustion engine. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach gradually improved the concept, building the first twin-cylinder engine in 1888, which became a huge commercial success. A year later, at the Paris World Fair – the event at which the Eifel Tower was commissioned – Daimler met Émile Levassor and René Panhard, who wanted to market his engine in France for industrial applications. Their 100-strong order would shape history.
Armand Peugeot, already the leading bicycle manufacturer in France and in charge of an empire of five plants and 2000 workers, was a supplier to Panhard et Levassor. He was convinced that the automobile was the future of transportation. And so in 1886 he signed an agreement with Léon Serpollet to manufacture a trio of three-wheeled steam cars, the Peugeot Type 1, to be launched at that same 1889 Paris World Fair. A few months later, Daimler met Peugeot in Alsace, inviting Panhard and Levassor too. The result was that Panhard et Levassor would build Daimler engines under licence in Paris, and supply them to Peugeot.
In April 1891, Peugeot launched the Type 2, its first petrol-engined car, and the improved Type 3 followed in September. A total of 64 were built, with a vis-à-vis body on a tubular steel chassis and the 1160cc Panhard-Daimler 17° V-twin engine – 2bhp at 1000rpm! – driving the rear wheels via a three-speed dual-shaft gearbox and chain transmission.
Italian businessman Gaetano Rossi was the thirdgeneration owner of his family’s textile firm, then the biggest company in Italy. He was 37 and worked at the factory in Piovene Rocchette, about 20 minutes by horse from Schio, the company HQ. He’d studied in London and Paris and, like many forward-thinking gentlemen of the period, felt drawn to the automobile. Rossi posted an enquiry to Daimler but faced a long delivery time, so his partner in Alsace suggested Peugeot and, on 30 August 1892, Rossi ordered a Peugeot Type 3, with four seats and a 2hp engine, complete with soft-top and tablier, a leather skirt to protect driver and passenger in wet or cold weather. He paid FF5567.25.
But by buying directly, Rossi likely created the automotive world’s first commercial dispute! Armand Peugeot wrote to Émile Levassor, questioning his commercial competence. Today the letter bears witness to the early era of motoring, naming Peugeot’s early customers and the most important players in the car world of the time, in which Italy lagged behind. Michele Lanza’s six-seater wagon, built in Turin in 1896, is considered the first car manufactured in Italy, but by then there were several cars on Italian roads, thanks to the Daimler and Benz importer Ricordi of Milano. The Florence newspaper La Nazione reported on Count Ginori driving through the city in a Panhard et Levassor; there were similar stories in other regional chronicles of the time.
Meanwhile, Sr Rossi drove his car – chassis 25, engine number 124 – on an almost daily basis. Reports from the period saw this strange vehicle named ‘a fire carriage’, noting the public’s curiosity and how the Peugeot’s passage scared horses and other animals, resulting in wagons and carriages rolling into ditches.
Rossi sold his Type 3 in 1896 to Guido Lazzari, a family friend, and became the owner of the second Peugeot imported into Italy, chassis 206, a Type 9 of 3.75hp. In 1899 there were reports of the Type 3 being used in Ajello, where it remained, in running order, until the First World War, when General Cadorna of the Italian Air Force asked for some spare parts. From that point – for more than a century! – the car was a non-runner, missing its ignition system and other components that were removed over time.
It was kept by the Lazzari family at its Villa in Cervignano, and Ivo Lazzari remembers spending time playing with the car while visiting his relatives as a child. In March 1953, Guido Lazzari died and the estate was offered for sale. In the January of that year, the Fiat subsidiary in Padua, likely alerted by Lazzari,
‘The Peugeot’s passage scared horses, resulting in wagons and carriages rolling into ditches’
had sent a letter to the Fiat press department in Turin, which was forwarded to Carlo Biscaretti, listing the car in full detail, offering its whereabouts, and indicating that it had been test-driven by Fiat founder Gianni Agnelli in 1894, while he was in the army and happened to be in the area. It was being offered for sale for 500,000 Lire (about €250).
Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia, the son of the Fiat cofounder, a successful designer himself and a great lover of old cars, had been trying to establish a car museum in Turin since the 1930s, known now as the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile. The letter, however, was not answered and, when the furniture from the Lazzari estate was sold to the Marchettis, antiques traders from Udine, the car went with it.
The old Peugeot was offered for sale in the Marchettis’ shop, though the only interest it generated came from the local technical school, which wanted it for training purposes but didn’t want to pay. The local newspaper reported that the old car was – ironically – pulled by horses in the local carnival parade. In October 1954 the Marchettis, unaware of the letter of the year before, sent another to Fiat’s press department via a friend working in the Trieste agency and, following a reply, sent a second in the November.
In this second letter the car was incorrectly named as an 1895-1900 Daimler, in average condition and with Peugeot badges on the wheels. The Marchettis – who are still alive, father and son – recall requesting a price of one million Lire, or a modern car in exchange, and that in the winter of 1954 a gentleman came from Turin, visited their shop, saw the car and left without expressing any further interest. And yet, a few months later, a call came from the director of Fiat’s Trieste agency, telling the Marchettis that there was a brand new Fiat 1100 Giardinetta waiting for them.
The car was stored for several years while Biscaretti finished his museum, and then ‘refreshed’ in the newly opened mueum’s workshop, with dark brown paint and white rims, pale leatherette trim and more recent square lights. A plaque attached to the body bears the imformation ‘Costruzioni Meccaniche di Saronno, number 438, Brevetto Daimler’. That’s the Italian subsidiary of the railway specialist Esslingen Maschinenfabrik of Bad Canstatt, Germany, and is probably the workshop at which the car was maintained between 1902 and 1918. Despite the letters in the archive, the car is still registered in the museum catalogue as an 1894 Peugeot, manufactured in Italy by Saronno, and has been presented as such for 46 years.
It was in 2006 that Fabrizio Taiana, classic car enthusiast and secretary of the Club Storico Peugeot Italia, discovered the real history of the car. ‘In 2000, I visited the Peugeot archive in Sochaux and, looking at the first sales register of the company, I noticed that
‘Except for the two of us, no other living human being had heard the engine for almost 100 years’
one of the very early cars had been sold in Italy, and I took note of the chassis number and the Daimler engine number. In 2007, when editing the second edition of the book Peugeot: an Italian history ,Ireada caption that I must have read a hundred times before, under the picture of the car at the museum in Turin. I jumped in my chair when I saw the engine number!’
Taiana returned to the museum the following morning. ‘Knowing what to look for, I found the number 25 engraved on many panels and, reading the 1953/54 letters that had lain unseen for decades in their archive, I knew I had made an important discovery. However, nobody had any clue about the history of the car. I spent some time in Piovene Rocchette, researching documents without success.’
But that was to change. ‘During a rainy afternoon, after a visit to the local cemetery looking for some evidence, I bumped into an elderly guy who remembered his mother talking about Mr Rossi and his car. He gave me some names, and some places to start looking. And so I found the Lazzaris’ villa, and the antique shop owners, with both son and father still alive after all these years. I also had a contact for the Lazzari family, of which a descendant lives in Germany. He happens to be the family historian, and was able to supply some amazing information. That way I could uncover a story that’s more than a century old.’
Following this, in 2007, Peugeot Italy funded the restoration of the body and chassis. A Venetian wood specialist was enlisted, who employed period techniques to paint the bodywork and managed to save most of the original paint on the wings.
‘During this work,’ says Taiana, ‘we dismantled the whole car and discovered, as further confirmation, that the “Costruzioni Meccaniche di Saronno” plate was attached to a totally different type of wood that had never been touched by the original black paint. We remade seat cushions and the soft-top too, using period-correct materials, and we remade the tablier following the original positions of the clips that located it. It’s probably the only car still to have it.’
W hen the restoration was complete, the car returned to Piovene Rocchette to be reunited with Count Alvise Rossi di Schio and Christian Peugeot, the greatgrandchildren of the first owner and of the man whose company built it. A monument celebrating the first car in Italy was also unveiled, before the car was returned to the museum in Turin.
Fast-forward by nearly a decade to the retirement of Alessandro Rossi, great-grandson of the brother of Gaetano Rossi, an engineer by profession, and a classic car enthusiast. ‘Together with my dear friend Giannotto Cattaneo, another retired engineer, we were working on some of our 1920s cars,’ he says. ‘We were talking about the dream of taking part in the London to Brighton run, but we had no eligible car. His idea was that I should ask the museum if I could use the Peugeot, in return for restoring the mechanical components. To our surprise they accepted, and in the autumn of 2016 we started working on the car.’
The task was more difficult than they’d expected, because many parts were missing or broken. ‘ We spent a lot of time at the Peugeot archive and asking the few specialists for information. We went looking for parts and found almost nothing except for – luckily – the correct water pump, not working but complete, one of the most important parts on a car without a radiator, which uses the chassis tubes as pipes and cooling space.
‘We had to re-manufacture pistons and valves, including the complex system that operates the exhaust valves, plus the valve springs. The most difficult part was undoubtedly the missing ignition system; that we had to create from scratch. Originally it was an incandescent platinum thread, but even before the end of the 1800s it had been replaced by a trembler, more efficient and less sensitive to air temperature and humidity. They’re impossible to find today and we had to manufacture it, starting with an original component from a Ford Model T. We paired it with a newly made distributor, driven by a gear rotating at half the engine speed.
‘The original léchage [surface] carburettor seems to be extinct; at least, nobody we asked seems ever to have seen one, so we went for a more recent version used in the late 1800s and early 1900s and we built a new intake manifold and exhaust system, too. We checked or rebuilt everything else and, on 22 July last year, we started the engine for the first time. To hear its voice after more than a century was truly an emotional experience and we realized that, except for the two of us, no other living human being had heard it for almost 100 years.’
Facing page
Octane’s Massimo Delbò tries motoring, 1893 style; for a vehicle propelled by only 2hp, the Peugeot is a sizable four-seater.
In London, the Peugeot won the trophy for the most historically important car of the 2017 Run and was reported as the oldest car ever entered. Unfortunately, because of a problem with the differential, it broke down. ‘On the Saturday afternoon, driving back from the Regent Street Motor Show, we had to open it up, but we couldn’t repair it,’ says Rossi. ‘That meant it couldn’t make the start on the Sunday morning.’ It was a tragic end to their dreams.
A few weeks later, however, ‘Italy’s Car Number One’ is in perfect working order again – and I get to drive it, outside the now-derelict factory of its original owner. It starts easily, with a half-turn of the crank. The clutch is light, if rather ‘on/off’ in action, and even when the clutch is fully disengaged, first gear selects with a grinding noise that makes me feel guilty.
Steering is via a U-shaped tiller, and works more accurately than you might expect. The engine pulls smoothly though takes time in building speed: you might dream of more power but, as soon as I realise
how high above the tarmac I’m seated, and how ineffective is the wooden brake acting on the right rear tyre, the top speed of 12mph seems more than enough.
I’m impressed by the suspension, which is quite soft and comfortable, and the Peugeot is easy to drive. The main task is to stay focused on the positioning of all the controls, which were designed before any consensus in such matters had even been dreamed of. The tyres are new, perfect copies of the one remaining original, yet even so I’m glad to be driving on a smooth surface, rather than the bumpy gravel of 126 years ago.
As per the agreement made by Alessandro Rossi, the car is soon on its way back to the Turin museum, where its president, Benedetto Camerana, has already allocated a budget for a new attempt on the London to Brighton in November 2018. After more than 100 years of silence, it seems that the first car registered in Italy can’t wait to make its voice heard again.