Presented by Politecnico di Torino

(Italy 1854)

Virginio Bordino, an officer in Italy’s Royal Engineers and a pioneer of locomotion in Italy, built this vehicle in Turin’s Military Arsenal by fittine a two-cylinder steam engine below the suitably reinforced bodyshell of a horse-drawn landau, together with a boiler and burner at the back. It was driven by an original transmission system consisting of con rods directly linked to a crankshaft-shaped rear axle, and consumed 30kg of coke per hour.