Exploring Italy in an impressive Ceirano

A reader has sent us this photograph and desires to know a bit more about it. He says the car "should be a Ceirano"—we'd agree that it is—and the picture dates from 1928, but that still doesn't tell us too much about the car. What model is it, and what year?

Our first thoughts were that it looks like an early vintage model, and indeed it probably is, since Giovanni Ceirano did not establish his eponymous marque until 1920. The first model, as far as we know, was the 1½-litre Tipo CS, and we're tempted to suppose that that's what this is. There were bored-out sports versions, too, though, so we can't be sure. Can any of our readers point us in the right direction?

Once we've ascertained all we can about the car, we've still got a lot more we'd like to know, such as where was the picture taken and what were the occupants of the car getting up to? It was clearly taken in the Ceirano's native Italy, and outside a bicycle storage facility, it seems, but Italy's a big country. None of the other signs on the building are legible to us, but somebody out there might recognise them.

The driver's dress has attracted our attention, too. While the rear passengers are casual enough, the driver looks almost as if he's dressed to go racing, with his flat cap and goggles. Surely that's overdressing if one is just going for a Sunday drive to a local beauty spot and, in any case, what advantage could the goggles possibly serve with a vintage touring car with a decent-sized windscreen? The chaps in the back might have been lured out under the pretext of going for a gentle sight-seeing drive, but we can't help wondering if the driver might have other ideas, such as folding the windscreen flat, slamming his foot to the floor and making for Sicily and the Targa Florio route. He's got quite an appropriate car for it, considering that it was SCATs, also made by Giovanni Ceirano, which won the Targa Florio in 1911, 1912 and 1914.

Words: Zack Stiling