Before the Mouse, Came the Boy

1939 Balilla 1100 Fiat’s Step into the Future

One of the problems with owning a car like none other is figuring out its history—where it came from, who built it and why they built it. There are plenty of Fiat Balillas around, but the one Jeff Lane, founder of the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, has is like none other. Lane bought it for the museum because it is just so good looking. Being unusual also helps, since the museum is full of unusual cars, such as the 1919 Layat Helico propeller car replica that was featured in this magazine a few years ago (January 2014). Like all organized collectors, Lane has a file on every one of the cars in the museum…except this one. He neither received nor can he find any history of this particular car. What he does know is that someone put a lot of effort into building the special body for this car and probably intended to race it.