WHAT A LOT OF FUTURE IN OUR PAST... In late nineteenthand early twentieth-century Italy, France, Germany and Great Britain, as well as America, hundreds of people who believed in the enormous potential unleashed by the invention of the automobile created new professions and became entrepreneurs, engineers, manufacturers, coachbuilders, advertising agents and more besides. They set up countless little (and not so little) car companies, recruiting the most skilled and expert craftsmen in order to make their great dream come true: that of building a car, giving it their own name, and selling it around the world. Garages, little repair shops, and mechanical schools forchauffeurs were also set up in Turin and in many other cities in Italy and around the world. And there were dealers, sole agents, intermediaries... The first car to circulate in Italy was a Peugeot. It was sold in December 1892 and delivered in January 1893 to Signor Gaetano Rossi of Piovene Rocchette in the province of Vicenza. Yes, it is indeed the Peugeot that opens this display. The earliest ancestor of all the cars on the roads in Italy today.