This week in our history article I will describe a company that started out making a non-motoring product, was acquired and revamped into a car manufacturer and after it failed, its descendant became a successful property group. Iso Rivolta started out as Isothermos and developed refrigerators and equipment for railways. In 1948, Renzo Rivolta bought the company to move into … [Read more...]
Itala
Itala is one of the pioneers of the motor sport industry notably the 1907 Peking to Paris race that an Itala won. Starting life as Itala Fabbrica Automobili, then simply Itala, it ended life as Itala Societa Anonima Costruzioni Automobilistiche after several re-incarnations. Itala was founded in 1903 by Matteo Ceirano and several partners including Guido Bigio an engineer. … [Read more...]
Abarth
Karl Abarth was born in November 1908 in Vienna and as a boy became a very competitive bicycle racer who could maintain his own bikes and as he got older he started to look at the new motorcycles that were hitting the market. By the time he was 16, he was working for a motorcycle chassis builder and a tuner and he designed his first full motorcycle at the age of 20! The … [Read more...]
Innocenti
This weeks history article is about Innocenti who built cars under licence and were the makers of the famous Lambretta scooter. Ferdinando Innocenti set up his company in 1922 to make steel tubing. During the Second World War, his factory was flattened in a bombing raid. After the war, in an attempt to rebuild his company, Innocenti saw a market for a cheap transport method … [Read more...]
De Tomaso
The De Tomaso brand was an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Modena – the home of Italian sports cars. Alejandro De Tomaso was Argentinean of Italian heritage and it is rumoured that he did a runner from Argentina after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Juan Peron, the President at that time. His father was a politician and his mother’s family managed a huge … [Read more...]