Along with the sprawling Mirafiori factory just a few kilometres away, Lingotto is a name that is synonymous with the Italian carmaker and its rise to global power from the city Turin, and from Friday to Sunday, in the shadow of the legendary factory, Fiat honored its past. With it's famous rooftop test track that rounded out five ascending floors of heaving industrial activity, the reputation of Fiat was carved out here. Today Lingotto has been refurbished and now comprises of a mall, cinema, hotel, supermarket, theatre and art gallery, while the legendary rooftop test track is strewn with hefty concrete blocks to dissuade any enthusiastic attempts to recreate the past. However history lingers heavily in the air and the ghosts still stalk the silent spiralling roof-to-ground level track, while the word 'FIAT' cast high into the exterior façades gazes imperiously outwards with barely a disdainful glance at the hive of classic cars assembled below.

To sum up 111 years of raw achievement in a quartet of cars is always going to be a curator's worst nightmare but Fiat plundered it's rich history to make sure visitors stopped to take note, choosing its latest world-leading innovation, the TwinAir technology and three cars that set the standard for 'sports' motoring between the wars: the Fiat 501 SS (1920), Fiat 514 Mille Miglia (1930) and Fiat 508 Balilla Sport 'Siata' (1933).

The present day era was represented by a Fiat 500C fitted with the ground-breaking new 900cc TwinAir engine. The new-generation 500 model perfectly links the distant past with the present, the Car of the Year award winner carefully reinterpreting arguably the most significant model to emerge from Fiat's long history, the car that launched the modern day empire and put the Italian nation onto wheels. Then, the 500 broke the mould for affordable motoring, and today Fiat is still pushing the boundaries of downsizing innovation: The Fiat 500 TwinAir 85 CV has a useful top speed of 173 km/h and can hit 100 km/h from standstill in 11 seconds while its tiny new engine helps it reduce emissions by 30 percent over the 100 CV 1.4 FIRE petrol engine and has record record-breaking emissions of just 92 g/km.

Alongside the pale blue roll-roof 500C TwinAir the historic gems were all ground breaking cars that were assembled between the two wars. The elegant and attention-grabbing Fiat 501 SS (1920) is the 'sports' version of the model that signalled the recovery of the Italian automobile industry following the end of World War I, while the Fiat 514 Mille Miglia (1930) kicked the bar away as the first 'compact sports' model. The final model on show was the nimble and pretty Fiat 508 Balilla, a car which was built between 1932 and 1937 with 112,000 examples eventually being churned out. The version at the Lingotto Fiere was the 'Sport' version from 1933 badged as the Siata' (Società Italiana Applicazioni Tecniche Auto-Aviatorie).