This Factory Was Abandoned 13 Years Ago, yet Somehow Looks Like It's In-Between Shifts

But time is ticking. That is where famous Fiat nameplates saw the light of day. After closure in 2011, sale, fraud, and arrests, the facility will be demolished, a move that will mark the end of the Sicilian car industry.

Along the Sicilian coastline, stands a legendary car factory. The Fiat 500 and Panda were assembled there. However, the facility was abandoned over a decade ago. But it looks as if the one with the camera got there between shifts.

The production center is a time capsule. The offices look deserted. There are items misplaced, wires hanging, and plastic bottles on the floor, as if someone is going to show up and clean everything before the next shift comes. However, that is not going to happen.

Now, the place is abandoned, and it looks like a horror movie was shot there. The production lines are still in place but inert. The last time those machines moved was almost 13 years ago. There are still tire traces on the floor. Carts that used to carry car parts stand still and empty now.

The doors to the offices screech. In there, the awards won by Fiat were left behind, now covered in a thick layer of dust. A clock on the wall shows 6 sharp, while writing in a rectangular frame, written with a brown pen on some other wall, reads "25-02-2017."

Decades ago, while the Italian car industry was all centered in the northern part of the country, the Italian government came up with a solution to push the economy of the south: the carmakers would build factories in the south as well, creating thousands of job opportunities. This is how the Fiat Termini Immerse, located some 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) northwest of Palermo, came to life.

At the time, it was a state-of-the-art facility with very modern assembly lines. It produced the Fiat 500 and the Fiat 126, replaced in the 1980s, by the Panda in the huge halls full of machines and people.

In the 1990s, the Termini Immerse started building the Fiat Punto and, later on, the Lancia Ypsilon. Even though sales were going well and the production soon hit 2 million Pandas manufactured there, rumors of closure sparked.

The executives kept denying them. However, the factory was a financial black hole, and in 2011, the rumors were confirmed. The last car to roll off the production line was a Lancia Ypsilon in November 2011. The factory closed down, and around 2,000 employees were left without jobs.

BluTec eventually bought the facility with the intention to produce electric cars. In 2019, following an investigation, the president of the company, then 76-year-old Roberto Ginatta, was arrested for large-scale fraud.

The land on which the factory sits was sold, and the center will be demolished.