The story of a sign and its dialectical relationship with mind and matter. Telling the parable of Sergio Pininfarina ten years after his death is, after all, summarizing the story of that sign, born as a signature on the sheet metal of the bodybuilder Battista (Pin) Farina, which has become the brand and surname of his son Sergio, today freed from materiality and even from the relationship with the four wheels to become a symbol in itself of design, of pervasive creativity. President Paolo Pininfarina and CEO Silvio Angori are the heirs of that history, charged with translating it today and bringing it to its industrial consequences in the era of dematerialization and digital.
Angori, who was Sergio Pinifarina for you?
“I didn’t have the privilege of working directly with him. When I arrived at the company, he no longer had operational positions. He was the honorary president. The operative presidency of him was of his son Andrea ».
What do you remember of those first meetings?
«Kindness and elegance. I would have entered the operational leadership of the company in January 2007. A few days before Christmas 2006 Andrea told me that his father wanted to meet me. We went to his office in Grugliasco. He greeted me kindly: ‘Welcome to our family. I wish you every success ”. Then he was silent for a few seconds. And he added smiling: “Also because it involves me” ».
What legacy did he leave behind? She arrived shortly after the decision to leave the helm.
«He had conveyed to everyone the sense of corporate responsibility and his social role. It hadn’t been easy years. The clashes with the counterparts had also been very bitter. But he knew that one had to try never to break the thread of confrontation. And I believe that the trade unionists who had to do with him can testify even today. He maintained this attitude of respect towards the social role of the company even when he held important positions representing entrepreneurs and when he was appointed senator for life ».
What was your teaching from an industrial point of view?
«He soon had the intuition that the profession of the traditional coachbuilder would change radically. For this he created a group of people, coordinated by his son Paolo, who began to study the non-automotive applications of our design. The work of that group is the seed from which an important part of today’s Pininfarina was born ».
How important are non-auto activities in your company?
«They represent 25%. And they tend to have to represent half of our business ».
Is the future out of four wheels?
«The future is in the value of the sign, in its recognizability, in its ability to speak to the world. Whether that sign contributes to designing the side of a car or the control tower of an airport, what really matters is the footprint it leaves “.
Are you referring to the tower of the new Istanbul airport?
«Our creatives designed it and today it has become the symbol of Istanbul and Turkey. It speaks of us to a reality far from us ».
At one time the design of cars was pencils, sheets folded with wisdom, matter. Today? Algorithms, sequences, computer strings?
“It’s all these things together. But it is above all the passion that our 300 creatives put into it. Young people who come from all over the world, from very different cultures and experiences ».
What remains, then, in this melting pot, of the creative tradition of Battista and Sergio?
«The ability to impress a DNA on those who come to work with us. It happens as in Renaissance Florence: it is the workshops of the masters that imprint those who work for them, making the work of one recognizable from that of the other ».
Who created that imprint?
“I think everyone who has worked with us has done their part. But it still happens to me today that perhaps Sergio Pininfarina’s most important legacy was precisely that of beginning to imagine beyond the automobile ».
Yet under his presidency, Pininfarina produced wonderful models …
“Of course. But going beyond the car doesn’t mean forgetting the car. It means learning to go beyond the walls, beyond the predictable. Knowing that the car is an evolving object and that design is by its nature impossible to enclose in an object. Despite the crisis and difficulties, the same ones that many automotive companies have had to face, we too have been able to regenerate ourselves ».
Today’s convention, a tribute to his “vision, passion and commitment” on the ten-year anniversary of his death, is scheduled for 5 pm at the Congress Center of the Industrial Union, with a round table moderated by the journalist of La Stampa, Marcello Sorgi. Participants will be Paolo Pininfarina, Giorgio Marsiaj, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Giuseppe Facchetti and Gianni Letta.