Pininfarina

Pininfarina S.p.A. (short for Carrozzeria Pininfarina) is an Italian car design firm and coachbuilder, with headquarters in Cambiano, Turin, Italy.  It was founded by Battista "Pinin" Farina in 1930. On 14 December 2015, Mahindra Group acquired Pininfarina S.p.A. for about €168 million.

Pininfarina is employed by a wide variety of automobile manufacturers to design vehicles. These firms have included long-established customers such as Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Peugeot, Fiat, GM, Lancia, and Maserati, to emerging companies in the Asian market with Chinese manufactures like AviChina, Chery, Changfeng, Brilliance, JAC and VinFast in Vietnam and Korean manufacturers Daewoo and Hyundai.

History

The days as a specialist coachbuilder 
When automobile designer and builder Battista "Pinin" Farina broke away from his brother's coach building firm, Stabilimenti Farina, in 1928, he founded "Carrozzeria Pinin Farina" with financial help from his wife's family and Vincenzo Lancia. That first year the firm employed eighteen and built 50 automobile bodies.

After World War II 

After the war, Italy was banned from the 1946 Paris Motor Show. The Paris show was attended by 809,000 visitors (twice the pre-war figure), queues stretched from the main gate all the way to the Seine. Pinin Farina and his son Sergio, determined to defy the ban, drove two of their cars (an Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 S and a Lancia Aprilia cabriolet) from Turin to Paris, and found a place at the entrance to the exhibition to display the two new creations. The managers of the Grand Palais said of the display, "the devil Pinin Farina", but to the press and the public it was the successful "Turin coachbuilder's anti-salon".

The Ferrari partnership 
It started in 1951 with a meeting at a restaurant in Tortona, a small town halfway between Turin and Modena. This neutral territory was chosen because neither Farina nor Enzo Ferrari wanted to meet at the other's headquarters. Battista’s son, Sergio Pininfarina recalled, "It is not difficult to imagine how I felt that afternoon when my father, without taking his eyes off the road for one moment told me his decision as we drove back to Turin: "From now on you'll be looking after the Ferrari, from A to Z. Design, engineering, technology, construction—the lot!"—I was over the moon with happiness."

The move to large-scale manufacturing 

From 1954 to 1955 Pinin Farina purchased land in Grugliasco, outside of Turin, for a new factory. "The factory in no way would look like the one of Corso Trapani. It would be a car no longer on my measurements but on those of my children, built looking like them; I had this in mind and wanted it," said Farina.

The second generation of leadership 
Starting with the planning for the new plant in Grugliasco in 1956, Farina started to groom his replacements–Sergio his son and Renzo Carli his son-in-law. To his heirs apparent, Farina said of the Corso Trapani facility "This old plant has reached the limits of its growth. It has no room for expansion and is far from being up to date. If I were alone I'd leave it as it is. But I want you to decide which way to go–to stay as we are or to enlarge. Either way is fine with me. It's your decision to make and I don't want to know what it is. I'm finished and it's your time to take over. The future is absolutely up to you." In 1958, upon leaving for a world tour Farina added, "In my family, we inherit our legacies from live people–not from the dead."

Change of corporate name to Pininfarina 
In 1961 at the age of 68, “Pinin” Farina formally turned his firm over to his son Sergio and his son-in-law, Renzo Carli, it was the same year that the President of Italy formally authorized the change of Farina’s last name to Pininfarina and the business took on the same name.

Pininfarina was run by Battista's grandson Andrea Pininfarina from 2001 until his death in 2008. Andrea's younger brother Paolo Pininfarina was then appointed as successor.

References