Emotional cars

Ask any Italian over the age of 50 about the Leoncino and they will tell you it was a powerful, rugged truck that was used for transporting all kinds of materials and could be converted into an ambulance, a fire truck, a camper van or even an off-road vehicle.
The vehicle’s maker OM, established by Officine Meccaniche in Brescia in 1917, is one of the iconic brands that have shaped the history of the Italian and international automotive industry. The three cars taking podium places in the first edition of the legendary Millemiglia race in 1927 were all built by OM, and in 1950 the brand launched the legendary Leoncino. A medium-light class truck with a highly modern design, it was a huge global success and was re-released in following years as the OM 40, the Fiat 40 and finally the Iveco 40. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles were produced over the subsequent 37 years.
Throughout its hundred-year history, Officine Meccaniche has made an enormous contribution to the development of many different sectors, including trucks, buses, steam and electric locomotives, agricultural and earthmoving machinery and most recently forklifts.
It is a success story that continues to this day thanks to the 2011 merger between OM and the German group STILL. The company now operates under the STILL brand name and is a leading producer of forklifts, warehousing machinery, tractors, conveyors and integrated logistics systems.
Fortunately, the memory of the legendary OM brand lives on, and in 2017 a museum was opened in Lainate in the province of Milan to mark its 100th anniversary. The museum is housed in the renovated STILL headquarters and celebrates a century of history through archive images, vintage machinery, documents and original licence plates.
The image collection, curated by the Brescia-based non-profit Fondazione Negri, is a vast photographic archive that can be searched automatically by subject and date. And thanks to the expertise of a team of professionals including industrial historians, journalists, photography history experts and graphic designers, the foundation can provide photographic material, research projects, texts and studies for use in books, exhibitions and museum galleries.
The layout of the project and the architecture of the museum space were supervised by STILL’s marketing department.
The renovation of STILL’s corporate headquarters in Lainate created space not just for the OM History Museum but also for a new showroom for contemporary vehicles. For the flooring in these spaces, the designers chose ceramic surfaces from Cercom’s Genesis Loft collection in a Fossil colour and with an industrial aesthetic, creating the perfect setting for a journey back in time through photographs, documents, objects and vintage motors.
Opened in September 2017, the Museum is part of Museimpresa, the Italian Association of Business Archives and Museums founded in 2001 with the support of Assolombarda and Confindustria. The only association of its kind in Europe, it represents the museums and archives of large, medium and small Italian companies that are interested in sharing their heritage with the general public.