Sometimes an object becomes a monument through simple reiteration. Through stolidity. It happened with the Eiffel Tower, a mass of iron that Parisians hated for years until it became the symbol of their city. It happened, on a smaller scale, with a car owned by Angelo Fregolent. This 94-year-old found a good place to park his car. So good, in fact, that he decided not to move it.
It was 1962. Six decades later, anyone with Google Maps can see that Fregolent was a man of his word. His gray Lancia Fulvia is still parked at number 7 Via Zamboni, in the Italian town of Conegliano.
At least in the virtual world. In the real one, the car was moved a few months ago to be exhibited for a few days in the Padua Automobile Show. The idea was to restore it for free and then put it back in the town, but the process has stalled because of a lack of funds.
Residents feel this car is just one more urban element, as common as the church or the pizza parlor. Even the president of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, has expressed his admiration for this car, which he saw each day as a child when going to school. And so a crowdfunding campaign has begun to raise money to clean up the car and return it to its original place. As long as nobody has stolen that parking spot.
The Lancia Fulvia of signore Fregolent has become a symbol by being pretty and always being there. Because it’s been there for half a century and because we now see it as something retro about it. But in the beginning it was just one more car, semi-abandoned (although signore Fregolent washed it with a certain regularity) halfway down the street. Townspeople asked him why he had left the car there. Later, the journalists asked him. Fregolent, who has given several interviews to the local press, explained that when he stopped driving he thought it would be a good idea to use the car as a place to store things, including extra newspapers from his newsstand, which is right beside it.
Once they were retired, both he and the car, he decided to leave it just where it was. He couldn’t drive, but he liked seeing it from his home: he had become accustomed to admiring his old Lancia. So had the other people in the town: it felt only natural to have one less parking place, but one more monument.
