A Test Track In The Sky: The Story Of Fiat's Lingotto Factory

Automobile factories are often impressive, be it for their sheer size or the complex manufacturing processes happening inside them.
But few become true architectural landmarks, and possibly none is more iconic than Fiat's Lingotto in Turin, whose defining feature is a rooftop test track that's been sparking people's imagination for decades.
Here's the story of Fiat's famed Lingotto production plant, about a hundred years from its inauguration and forty since it produced the last vehicle.
Designed by the engineer Giacomo Matté Trucco, the Lingotto was deliberately inspired by Ford's Highland Park plant, and Fiat's not-so-secret aim to streamline production the same way is visually evident in the five-story, over five hundred meters long structure.
The rooftop test track's total length is about 1.5 Km, with the two straightaways connected by two spectacular banked curves designed for speeds of up to 90 Km/h: more than enough for the 1920s, when most cars struggled to go past 70.
But the Lingotto was soon to prove less than ideal for high-volume production: the multi-story structure meant the heavier machinery had to stay on the lower levels for structural reasons, and the presence of support columns every six meters was also a constraint.
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This more or less capped the Lingotto's output to around 300 vehicles per day by the 1930s, leading Fiat to start designing the new, sprawling Mirafiori complex less than ten years after the Lingotto's completion.
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