AS LEFT BY A GENTLEMAN OF VERONA

Just outside the Italian city of Verona is Museo Nicolis, home to 200 cars - and so much more. Massimo Delbò takes us on a privileged tour

- Massimo Delbò

If you remember Penelope Pitstop of the Wacky Races, when you meet Silvia Nicolis you can't help but smile. She loves to drive her favourite car from the collection kept by Museo Nicolis - the museum founded by her late father - so much that it is the museum's mascot: the one-off 1938 Lancia Astura MM by Carrozzeria Colli. While she's driving it, she wears her classic racing helmet and, as she admitted in Gearbox (see Octane 221), she can't be without her Chanel lipstick. Yet behind this façade is a talented entrepreneur, one who has managed the family's museum since it opened in 2000.

Inside the museum are around 200 cars, but the ten collections also include bicycles, cameras, typewriters, Formula 1 steering wheels and more. The museum is the incarnation of my father Luciano's dream,' says Silvia. 'He was born in 1933 into a poor family, and worked hard every day of his life to better himself. As a teenager he began riding a bicycle, later with a trailer behind it, to collect used paper, and so began what remains our family business of recycled paper. While out pedalling, he saw the first small trucks and dreamed of owning one. He was a gifted mechanic; I remember he was always fixing something. When he bought his first light truck in 1959, an OM Lupetto that we still have, he carried out all the maintenance himself. He started to gather mechanical items, and that is the origin of several of our collections.