An old rusty wheel could look like a piece of junk to many,
but, actually, it can be turned into something special.
I'm Matteo Bosisio, and I'm the Production Manager
at Ruote Borrani Milano,
a historical company in the automotive sector,
an icon of the Italian automotive sector.
In a few words, we produce spoke wheels.
The spoke wheel is totally handmade.
We make it today the way it was made 50, 60, 70 years ago.
There's no other solution for that.
It's like a dress, so everything is made like in the past,
with the original machinery.
There's so much work and passion behind it.
We have learned everything from previous workers,
and now we are all very happy and have a lot of fun
as we carry on this Italian, or even better, Milanese tradition.
A spoke wheel can't be made differently.
It can't be industrialized.
It can't be placed and assembled on a machine.
Unfortunately, the human factor, which is also great, is 100% necessary.
A spoke wheel needs many hours
of work, sweat, and fun to be made.
It all started with a trip that our founder, Carlo Borrani, took
to England, where he was offered the license to a new, modern system.
We are talking about 1922, obviously, by the Whitworth Company.
This system consists of a central closure with a single die.
That was mind-blowing.
And even now, the wheels of F1 cars have a single die.
They still have the original central closure
with the "Millerighe" rims designed in 1911 by Whitworth Wheels.
And since this great story, we've produced this item,
improving it, and an English project has become a great Italian glory.
Our biggest support was the use of light alloy.
The weight of a wheel matters as much as where the weight is placed.
Because of it, our founder's son,
Cesare Borrani, in 1931 studied the new technologies at the time.
The light alloy was then called hard aluminum.
Alfa Romeo then started experimenting with these wheels
from Whitworth Wheels Milano,
and the pilots found it incredible,
so they started assembling them to the legendary P2.
From that moment, Maserati also came over with all their cars,
and we equipped all the Maserati cars then.
Since its release in F1, in 1965, life went on
until the end of the '70s
with Supersport, Le Mans, and all these races.
Henry Ford also made an exceptional car in 1963
that is still legendary, the GT 40, and he wanted it to have
a European style to compete with Ferrari and Maserati,
using the Borrani spoke wheel.
Nowadays, we offer a renovation service.
That means the spoke wheel, like everything, is prone to wear.
Wear usually takes place in the spokes, the safety item of the wheel.
With time, as it happens to us, the molecular structure
of this main accessory changes--
it gets dry, old, weak.
A spoke wheel can be disassembled.
It is not monolithical,
so, since it's composite, we can bring it down to many pieces,
cut all the spokes, check the channel, redo the series, polish it...
And even if, many times, it's only a matter of aesthetics,
we can intervene in the functional structure.
It can be the teeth, or we can substitute the loose parts,
as well as all the spokes.
We refresh the capacity and resistance of the wheel,
giving the owner an object
that is 100% as capable and safe
as it was when purchased in the '50s, '60s, '30s, '40s.