No Unleaded Petrol Please, We are Italian»:

The Italian resistance to the “greening” of the car

Federico Paolini (University of Siena, Italy)

My paper examines an aspect little studied by the Italian historiography on transport: the resolute opposition to the sale of cars with engines fitted with catalytic converters and fuelled with unleaded petrol. The time span covered by this paper goes from 1981 (the year in which British consumer groups denounced the high toxicity of leaded petrol) to 2000, when gasoline with lead additives was withdrawn from the market in twelve European Union member states with the exception of Italy, Greece and Spain, which won a one-year exemption.

In Italy, the reasons for the opposition to engines fuelled with unleaded petrol were basically three. The first is of a socio-cultural nature: the Italian drivers, in fact, were (and still are) very attached to some very popular cars (like, for example, the Fiat 500 and Fiat 127) and did not accept limitations on the their movement. The second is of an economic nature: a characteristic of the expansion of private vehicles in Italy, in fact, is represented by the slow renewal of the fleet of cars, which over the years has remained a constant feature of Italian car ownership. Italian drivers, therefore, opposed the new engines fitted with catalytic converter because they feared being forced to pay a very high cost for replacing their vehicles. Finally, the third, is of a productive nature: the largest producer of Italian cars – Fiat – was opposed to low-octane unleaded petrol because its cars used motors with high compression ratios requiring gasoline with high octane. My paper will frame these issues in historical perspective.