The oldest car entered into this year’s Run is also the first car ever to have been driven on an Italian road. The 1892 Peugeot Type 3 Vis-à-vis, which forms part of the collection of Italy’s Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile di Torino, has an intriguing history that wasn’t fully confirmed until 1999. 

Since 1896 it had been owned by Guido Lazzari who died in 1953. By this time the car had been laid-up for nearly four decades after parts of it had been stripped for use by the Italian army during World War One. In 1955 Lazzari’s family gave the car to the museum in return for a (then brand-new) Fiat 1100.

At that time, the earliest car known to have been driven in Italy was a Panhard et Levassor which was driven in Florence in 1894. The Peugeot was believed to be a later model than this.

In 1999, however, research by Fabrizio Taiana of the Club Storico Peugeot Italia revealed that the car was actually chassis number 25, which had been ordered in 1892 by a friend of Armand Peugeot, the wealthy textile manufacturer Count Gaetano Rossi of Schio, Vicenza. The car was completed before the end of 1892 and Rossi took delivery in January 1893. Three years later, Rossi bought a newer Type 3 Peugeot - and gave the original car to his friend Guido Lazzari. 

The newly-discovered 1892 date made the Peugeot the earliest known car to have been driven in Italy, ‘beating’ the Panhard et Levassor by two years.

In 2017 the car made its debut on the Veteran Car Run.