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The Fiat that failed to save Mussolini

The black luxury coupe was bought by a Swiss intermediary for an unidentified American collector, said a spokesman for British auctioneer Brooks.

It was on offer as lot 283 in an auction of vintage cars at Geneva's Automobile Museum.

Simon Kidstone, managing director of Brooks Europe, said American and European collectors had expressed interest in the car "partly because of the Mussolini factor".

The sleek black Berlinetta two-door coupe played a role in a defining moment of 20th century history.

Mussolini, a notorious womaniser reputed to have fathered a string of illegitimate children, gave the Berlinetta to his lover Claretta Petacci as a present. Petacci could not drive so Mussolini had the large luxury coupe chauffeur-driven for her.

After Italy's armistice with the Allies in 1943, Mussolini became the ruler of a German-supported rump fascist state in the north of the country.

From September 1943 until 1945, he lived in Gargnano, a small town in northern Italy on Lake Garda.

But on April 28 1945, with the rump state on the verge of collapse, Mussolini and Petacci tried to flee in the Fiat coupe.

They were caught by opposing partisan forces as they headed for an airstrip at Chiavenna, where an airplane was waiting to take the pair to neutral Switzerland.

The partisans shot Mussolini's 16-man escort. Mussolini and Petacci were also shot dead and their mutilated bodies hung in Milan's Piazzale Loreto square, along with those of other fascist officials.

The Fiat was pushed into a lake by the resistance, who considered it a symbol of fascism. But the sleek coupe was later recovered from its watery grave and smuggled to Switzerland on a railway car under piles of hay.

There is no sign of damage in the car's interior of sumptuous red leather, aluminium bodywork and fastback tail.

The car has only travelled 1,000 km (620 miles) in the past 40 years and since 1950 has remained in the family of its current Swiss owner in French-speaking Switzerland.

Mussolini, who ruled Italy from the early 1920s until 1943, was a keen motorist and owned a series of Alfa Romeos.

The only Mussolini car to hit the market recently was a 1935 Alfa 6C 2300, which Brooks sold for $320,000 (£195,000) three years ago.

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