Lot 212: 1963 Autobianchi Bianchina Cabriolet

Originally a bicycle manufacturer and arguably best known as a maker of fine racing motorcycles, Edoardo Bianchi built his first automobile around 1900. A wide variety of models was manufactured over the next 30 years, though by 1940 the firm was concentrating on motorcycles and commercial vehicles. Car manufacture resumed in 1957 when Bianchi joined partners FIAT and Pirelli to form Autobianchi. Production commenced at a new purpose-built factory in Desio, Autobianchi’s debut model being the FIAT 500-based Bianchina, named after Edoardo Bianchi’s first ever automobile. The Bianchina debuted as the Transformabile coupé, with full-length folding sunroof, and showed clear signs of American influence, its size excepted, exemplified by two-tone paintwork, whitewall tyres and plentiful chromework. Positioned up-market from the FIAT 500, which had been conceived as basic transportation for the impecunious masses, the Bianchina was marketed as a ‘second car’ or luxurious ‘recreational vehicle’. Appealing strongly to affluent middle class ladies, it reflected Italian society’s increasing prosperity.
In 1960 the newly introduced and more powerful FIAT 500D engine became standard equipment on the Bianchina range which was augmented by two new models: a Cabriolet and the Panoramica estate car that used the FIAT Giardiniera’s space-saving horizontally-opposed engine. A fourth version, the Quattroposti saloon, arrived the following year to be followed by a brace of vans.
The Autobianchi Bianchina Cabriolet is, of course, famous as the car driven by Peter Sellers’ bumbling Inspector Clouseau in the original Pink Panther movie. This white-and-black Cabriolet ‘Eden Roc’ was sold new in 1963 in the Italian province of Trento and in 2001 was bought for his wife by a Dutch collector. While in the vendor’s care the car has been kept in dry, heated storage and regularly maintained. Equipped with stylish Borrani wire wheels, an original option from the period, it is offered with Netherlands registration papers and presented in very good condition, ready for boulevard cruising on sunny days.