Isotta Fraschini

Milan's Isotta Fraschini was the Italian answer to Rolls-Royce, and for a time the more advanced: its Tipo 8 of 1919 was the world's first production straight-eight, and the Tipo 8A that followed became the chariot of Hollywood's silent-era aristocracy — an association immortalised when Gloria Swanson's faded star was chauffeured in one in Sunset Boulevard. Car production faded after the Second World War, but the great Tipo 8s remain fixtures of the classic era's top table, prized for coachwork from Castagna and Sala at its most theatrical.