InnocentiAustin A40 Farina

01

Origins

Ferdinando Innocenti's machinery empire — famous for Lambretta scooters — entered car-making in 1960 by licensing BMC's Austin A40 Farina, assembling the boxy little Pininfarina-styled saloon in Milan with Italian trim sensibilities and steadily increasing local content. For Italy it offered British engineering with domestic service and duties avoided; for BMC it opened a protected market; for Innocenti it began a car business that would run for four decades. The A40 suited its adopted home — compact, upright, practical — and the arrangement's success drew the partners deeper: the sportier 950 Spider followed, then licence-built Minis and 1100s that became the company's mainstay. The Milanese A40 is therefore a foundation stone wearing someone else's design — the modest start of Italy's most anglophile carmaker.