Pirelli on the Autostrada del Sole
The Autostrada del Sole was opened on 4 October 1964, connecting Milan to Naples. It was designed by Piero Puricelli, an engineer and architect who had built the Monza race track in 1922. The famous A1 is the longest Italian motorway still in use, covering 760 kilometres along the peninsula and passing through Bologna, Florence and Rome.
The history of Pirelli is intertwined with that of the Autostrada del Sole: it came at the end of economic boom years, in an Italy that was changing, expanding, and on the move. Consumer choices and lifestyles were changing and the motorway project was a symbol of this change: a broad strip of asphalt now connected the North and South, crossing the Po Valley and the Apennines. It was a symbol of one of the emblems of those days: travel. And Pirelli was very much a part of it, as one of the four companies (with FIAT, Agip and Italcementi) that formed the SISI (Società Iniziative Strade Italiane), a company consortium set up to promote their shared interest in road networks. In those years, Pirelli communicated and gave great visibility to this project in its advertising materials, audio-visuals, photographic reports, and articles published in Pirelli magazine.
We see a Jaguar E type and a truck with the Pirelli logo racing along the asphalt, as stars in the famous documentary The Tortoise and the Hare, which was inspired by La Fontaine’s famous fable and made in 1966 by Hugh Hudson, the future director of Chariots of Fire. The medium-length film uses an alternating montage to show the journey up the Autostrada del Sole from Naples to Milan, with a young foreign lady aboard the sports car and an Italian driving the truck. It is a tale of 1960s Italy in a mix of tradition and modernisation, and it went on to win numerous national and international awards, from the International Industrial Film Festival in 1966 to the Moscow Industrial Fair competition in 1968.
Motorists began to stop off on the Autostrada del Sole on their long journeys. They would take a break in the rest areas that began to appear on Italian roads and that dotted the landscape that flew past their windows. And during their break they could take advantage of a Pirelli garage to change their tyres or to check them before setting off again, because safety – now with the Pirelli Cinturato tyre – always comes first.
The autostrada project was also followed in Pirelli magazine, which published many articles by the engineer Guglielmo Zambrini, an expert in questions of mobility, transport and territory in motorway policies and planning at the time. The pictures that pass by are those of tall viaducts that took modern construction engineering to new heights, with an innovation in infrastructure that would forever change the way Italians travelled. These were the years of the new Italian highway code and new signage based on international standards.
The motorway is one of the many examples that show how Pirelli has always promoted modernity, playing an active part in transforming the country and helping Italians discover a new way of finding out about and enjoying their country.


The Autostrada del Sole was opened on 4 October 1964, connecting Milan to Naples. It was designed by Piero Puricelli, an engineer and architect who had built the Monza race track in 1922. The famous A1 is the longest Italian motorway still in use, covering 760 kilometres along the peninsula and passing through Bologna, Florence and Rome.
The history of Pirelli is intertwined with that of the Autostrada del Sole: it came at the end of economic boom years, in an Italy that was changing, expanding, and on the move. Consumer choices and lifestyles were changing and the motorway project was a symbol of this change: a broad strip of asphalt now connected the North and South, crossing the Po Valley and the Apennines. It was a symbol of one of the emblems of those days: travel. And Pirelli was very much a part of it, as one of the four companies (with FIAT, Agip and Italcementi) that formed the SISI (Società Iniziative Strade Italiane), a company consortium set up to promote their shared interest in road networks. In those years, Pirelli communicated and gave great visibility to this project in its advertising materials, audio-visuals, photographic reports, and articles published in Pirelli magazine.
We see a Jaguar E type and a truck with the Pirelli logo racing along the asphalt, as stars in the famous documentary The Tortoise and the Hare, which was inspired by La Fontaine’s famous fable and made in 1966 by Hugh Hudson, the future director of Chariots of Fire. The medium-length film uses an alternating montage to show the journey up the Autostrada del Sole from Naples to Milan, with a young foreign lady aboard the sports car and an Italian driving the truck. It is a tale of 1960s Italy in a mix of tradition and modernisation, and it went on to win numerous national and international awards, from the International Industrial Film Festival in 1966 to the Moscow Industrial Fair competition in 1968.
Motorists began to stop off on the Autostrada del Sole on their long journeys. They would take a break in the rest areas that began to appear on Italian roads and that dotted the landscape that flew past their windows. And during their break they could take advantage of a Pirelli garage to change their tyres or to check them before setting off again, because safety – now with the Pirelli Cinturato tyre – always comes first.
The autostrada project was also followed in Pirelli magazine, which published many articles by the engineer Guglielmo Zambrini, an expert in questions of mobility, transport and territory in motorway policies and planning at the time. The pictures that pass by are those of tall viaducts that took modern construction engineering to new heights, with an innovation in infrastructure that would forever change the way Italians travelled. These were the years of the new Italian highway code and new signage based on international standards.
The motorway is one of the many examples that show how Pirelli has always promoted modernity, playing an active part in transforming the country and helping Italians discover a new way of finding out about and enjoying their country.