This article is adapted from the January 11, 2025, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here.
Last week, in a store in Bologna, Italy, I spotted something interesting. Outside on the street, Fiat cars were zipping by. In front of me, a box of chocolates also sported a Fiat logo.
These were no recent brand tie-in. In 1911, the car company held a contest between Italy’s chocolate companies, with the goal of releasing a confection to celebrate their new “Tipo 4” model. The winning chocolate, the Fiat cremino, is still sold today. More on that later.
Here at Atlas Obscura, we talk a lot about the food available on planes and trains. But what about cars, and their connection to food? It’s easy to think of a car as merely a conveyance to a restaurant, or as the place to eat an unglamorous fast-food meal while on the road.
But food and cars go way back. Some people are surprised to learn that the Michelin stars that celebrate the world’s greatest restaurants are doled out by the same company that makes tires. In the early 20th century, though, motorists needed places to go in their new vehicles. In 1900, French brothers André and Édouard Michelin began distributing a booklet of travel information to customers to help them navigate the roads, fill their tanks, and fill their stomachs.
Over the years, car manufacturers also got into the game of publishing guides and, in the case of the Ford Motor Company, the occasional cookbook of recipes from restaurants along their recommended routes. But sometimes, car companies go one step further, lending their names to chocolates, sausages, and even iconic pieces of kitchen equipment. This week, we’re exploring a handful of these curious culinary connections.
The Fiat Cremino
Back to the tale of Fiat chocolates. When the company solicited contest entries, Majani, a business from Bologna, submitted a cremino chocolate with alternating layers of gianduja (hazelnut chocolate) and almond paste. What distinguished it was its four layers instead of the cremino’s usual three: a nod to Fiat’s new Tipo 4.
Majani won the competition, and even after the last Tipo 4 put-putted off the road, they continued to sell the Fiat cremino. These days, it comes in several flavors, but the packaging always carries the Fiat logo, rendered as a gleaming sunburst. In the 2021 obituary of company scion Anna Majani, the New York Times related that “Fiat’s president, Gianni Agnelli, once told Ms. Majani that her company sold more Fiat chocolates than he sold cars.”
The Volkswagen Currywurst
A few years back, sadness took hold of the Gastro Obscura newsroom. We heard that Volkswagen had started to phase out “Product Item No. 199 398 500 A.”
This was not a beloved car component. This was Volkswagen’s very own currywurst, with 30 employees turning out 18,000 sausages a day. Said sausages, served in company cafeterias with signature curry ketchup, were also sometimes packaged up and given as thank-you gifts to German VW customers. Even the writing on the casing (Volkswagen Originalteil, or “Volkswagen Original Part”) denoted the sausage as a proud VW product. In 2015 and 2017, the company made more sausages than it did cars.
In 2021, Volkswagen decided to swap the sausage at their Wolfsburg headquarters for vegetarian and vegan alternatives, leading to heated speculation that the Volkswagen currywurst was not long for this world. However, this move was undertaken only at the main headquarters, and employees there eventually asked for the original currywurst to come back, which it did in 2023.
The company seems to have cottoned on to the absurd appeal of its proprietary currywurst. Last year, to celebrate their 75th anniversary in the USA, Volkswagen of America, Inc., distributed free bottles of “Product Item Number 00010 ZDK-259-101”: their own blend of curry ketchup.
The Peugeot Pepper Mill
Much like how people are surprised to learn that the Michelin tire company is still directly involved in reviewing restaurants, some are surprised to learn that their fancy pepper grinder can trace its roots to a French car manufacturer.
A little background: The Peugeot brand got its start in 1810, when two brothers, Jean-Frédéric and Jean-Pierre II Peugeot, converted their family flour mill into a steel mill, gaining accolades for their springs and saws. It took another three decades for the company to start producing household goods, such as their coffee grinder in 1840. Their pepper mill came along in 1874, with its familiar curvy shape and twisty mechanism. The company christened it the “Model Z,” which, funny enough, wouldn’t be a bad name for a car. However, at this point, Peugeot’s first car was still 15 years away.
As Amanda Sims writes for Food52, when you conjure a pepper mill in your mind, you’re thinking of the Peugeot’s design. She also notes that the company refuses to claim the honor of having invented the table-top pepper mill, but they’re so ubiquitous that many people simply assume they did. While Peugeot cars are now made by a giant multinational corporation, the Peugeot family still produces the pepper mills and other kitchen devices as a separate concern.
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