Once upon a time there was a grandfather, born in 1911, who began repairing the carriage springs of the carts. Then the first cars arrived, and Mr. Antonio Locatelli opened his first automobile repair shop in Bergamo, via Nazario Sauro, with his partner Isidoro Belloli. It was 1930. After two years, they moved to Via Garbelli, where the workshop is still located today.
In 1944, Antonio was succeeded by his son Francesco, who had miraculously returned from the war.
"In those years the main job was to cut car roofs to be able to place machine guns", says Luigi - Antonio's nephew - who started working in the family business in 1970.
The history of the Locatelli family is very long. It crossed through the town and the Borgo d’Oro from where, still today, they have not moved.
Luigi says with simplicity of his beginnings: "At school I was a disaster! And so, I immediately started working." At sixteen he was already driving, moving cars inside the repair shop and learning the job, especially by watching. Then he went back to school, because "time was racing and we always needed to know new things". He first went to the Esperia to learn how to weld, and then he took a more commercial course.
He chuckles, telling that he even had to learn shorthand!
Luigi doesn’t speak much, he prefers to accompany us inside the repair shop. He shows us the space - neat and well-kept -, the new generation of equipment for painting cars, the way in which they dispose of plastic and other waste, ventilation and intake vents. He takes us outside to point out that there are no odours or dust. Here is all his pride. Not in words but in the accuracy of what they do. "If we had moved out of the city, all this attention would not have been necessary and we would have saved ourselves quite a bit of work." But in the end the Borgo is the Borgo, and you can't leave.
He was born and raised here, and so were his two children, Antonia and Matteo, who today work hard in repair shop. Here you find those great relationships that accompany you for a lifetime and that support you even in the most difficult moments.
Luigi is proud of being an artisan, he has always liked manual work. He does not however, hide the fact that at eighteen the goal was to have a car of his own in order to have fun and, why not? He wanted to impress girls in the evening.
The "if you’re good, I’ll buy you the car" was worth more than the effort, and promoted a certain art of making your own way.
"Those of my generation, they sweated to earn their car! That's why we cared more."
At nine-thirty in the morning and three-thirty in the afternoon, every day for the past thirty years, the framer Ghilardi, whose workshop is not far away, picks him up. They drink coffee together in the same bar, chat a little and organise to meet on Sunday.
Once a week, in fact, the two friends meet for a shared passion: antique clocks. Luigi went from the big work of cars to the most meticulous and precise work with watch mechanisms.
This hobby then allowed him to fulfill some of the repair shop’s customers’ wishes by making tiny spare parts, all built with the steady hand of someone who has made patience his virtue.
The children say that he is "square". He asks everyone for his own precision and loves to work on things of which he knows every mechanism and of which respect the most reassuring laws of mathematics.
Luigi does everything that needs to be done, the right amount, because: Those who do too much, make mistakes”.
Once upon a time there was a grandfather, born in 1911, who began repairing the carriage springs of the carts. Then the first cars arrived, and Mr. Antonio Locatelli opened his first automobile repair shop in Bergamo, via Nazario Sauro, with his partner Isidoro Belloli. It was 1930. After two years, they moved to Via Garbelli, where the workshop is still located today.
In 1944, Antonio was succeeded by his son Francesco, who had miraculously returned from the war.
"In those years the main job was to cut car roofs to be able to place machine guns", says Luigi - Antonio's nephew - who started working in the family business in 1970.
The history of the Locatelli family is very long. It crossed through the town and the Borgo d’Oro from where, still today, they have not moved.
Luigi says with simplicity of his beginnings: "At school I was a disaster! And so, I immediately started working." At sixteen he was already driving, moving cars inside the repair shop and learning the job, especially by watching. Then he went back to school, because "time was racing and we always needed to know new things". He first went to the Esperia to learn how to weld, and then he took a more commercial course.
He chuckles, telling that he even had to learn shorthand!
Luigi doesn’t speak much, he prefers to accompany us inside the repair shop. He shows us the space - neat and well-kept -, the new generation of equipment for painting cars, the way in which they dispose of plastic and other waste, ventilation and intake vents. He takes us outside to point out that there are no odours or dust. Here is all his pride. Not in words but in the accuracy of what they do. "If we had moved out of the city, all this attention would not have been necessary and we would have saved ourselves quite a bit of work." But in the end the Borgo is the Borgo, and you can't leave.
He was born and raised here, and so were his two children, Antonia and Matteo, who today work hard in repair shop. Here you find those great relationships that accompany you for a lifetime and that support you even in the most difficult moments.
Luigi is proud of being an artisan, he has always liked manual work. He does not however, hide the fact that at eighteen the goal was to have a car of his own in order to have fun and, why not? He wanted to impress girls in the evening.
The "if you’re good, I’ll buy you the car" was worth more than the effort, and promoted a certain art of making your own way.
"Those of my generation, they sweated to earn their car! That's why we cared more."
At nine-thirty in the morning and three-thirty in the afternoon, every day for the past thirty years, the framer Ghilardi, whose workshop is not far away, picks him up. They drink coffee together in the same bar, chat a little and organise to meet on Sunday.
Once a week, in fact, the two friends meet for a shared passion: antique clocks. Luigi went from the big work of cars to the most meticulous and precise work with watch mechanisms.
This hobby then allowed him to fulfill some of the repair shop’s customers’ wishes by making tiny spare parts, all built with the steady hand of someone who has made patience his virtue.
The children say that he is "square". He asks everyone for his own precision and loves to work on things of which he knows every mechanism and of which respect the most reassuring laws of mathematics.
Luigi does everything that needs to be done, the right amount, because: Those who do too much, make mistakes”.
