Italian underdogs
No matter how great or small your motoring knowledge, you have almost certainly heard of Fiat, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and perhaps half a dozen more Italian manufacturers.
However, Italy’s status as an automotive-industry powerhouse does not rest entirely on those, but also on many others whose names may be less familiar to you.
Here are 30 examples, listed in alphabetical order. Congratulations if you already knew about any of them, and if you didn’t, we’re glad to have been able to help.
1. Ansaldo
Ansaldo was founded in 1853, and became one of Italy’s largest engineering companies.
Car building was a brief diversion from its regular work, which frequently involved creating instruments of war, but it lasted for nearly all of the 1920s.
The model shown here is a 4CS saloon, built in 1926 and featuring a 2-litre engine and coachwork by Harrington.
Ansaldo is not to be confused with the earlier Ansaldi, whose only car was sold as the Fiat Brevetti.
2. Aquila Italiana
Created in either 1905 or 1906 (there are differing accounts), Aquila Italiana manufactured around 1500 cars until it was taken over by SPA, which we’ll be discussing in more detail later.
It mostly concentrated on high-performance models such as the 25/30hp pictured here, which had a 4-litre straight-six engine and was successful in motorsport.
The cars were designed by co-founder Giulio Cesare Cappa, who went on to work for Fiat and later set up his own technical studio.
3. ASA
The Autocostruzioni Società per Azioni was formed in the early 1960s to take over a project for a small car originally developed, but then dropped, by Ferrari.
The 1000 GT, available as both a coupé (pictured) and a Spider convertible, was undoubtedly pretty, but it was priced similarly to the AC Cobra, Chevrolet Corvette and Jaguar E-type, which was a bit much for a car with 1-litre engine.
Understandably, customers were hard to find, and the ASA project soon folded.
4. Aurea
Aurea was the brand name of cars built in Turin by the Società Italiana Ferrotaie (later the Fabbrica Anonima Torinese Automobili), one of several manufacturers in which members of the Ceirano family were involved.
Roughly contemporary with Ansaldo, Aurea functioned mostly in the 1920s, though some cars are believed to have been assembled early in the following decade.
All of them had four-cylinder engines with capacities of just under 1.5 litres, the more adventurous having their valves above the cylinders rather than alongside them.
5. Autobianchi
Autobianchi manufactured mostly small cars from the mid 1950s until the mid 1990s.
Fiat was involved right from the start, and used the smaller company to try out (in the Primula) a transversely mounted engine in a front-wheel-drive car, a system it later employed in its own 128.
One of Autobianchi’s most famous and popular cars was the A112 (pictured), which was related to the Fiat 128 and produced from 1969 to 1986.
The brand’s final model was the Y10, marketed outside Italy as a Lancia.
6. Bizzarrini
After working first at Alfa Romeo and then at Ferrari, where he was chief engineer for the 250GTO, Giotto Bizzarrini founded a new company under his own name in 1964.
This firm did work for other manufacturers, but also produced cars of its own, notably 133 examples of the 5300GT (pictured).
A new Bizzarrini company was created in 2020, and revealed a V12-powered hypercar (appropriately called Giotto) three years later – Giotto Bizzarrini died on 13 May 2023, aged 96.
7. Bugatti Automobili
Although Ettore Bugatti was born in Italy, only the second of the three car companies to bear his name was based there.
Owned by Romano Artioli, it produced the EB110, a thoroughly modern supercar with a 3.5-litre quad-turbo V12 engine built in a new factory in Campogalliano.
There was just one traditional element – the classic Bugatti radiator shape was used as a design feature at the very front of the car.
Bugatti Automobili soon ran into financial trouble, and closed down in 1995.
8. Casalini
Casalini was founded in 1939 in Piacenza, where it is still based today.
Its first model which could reasonably be called a car was the Sulky (pictured), a tiny machine introduced in the early 1970s and powered by an engine with a capacity of just 50cc.
Since 1994, it has been producing what are officially termed light quadricycles, starting with the Kore 500 and including a new Sulky introduced in 2008.
Its 2024 line-up consists of the 550 Alpina, the 550 Trofeo, the 550 Gransport, the Granturismo and a commercial vehicle called the Kerry, all of them powered by engines measuring less than 500cc.
9. Chiribiri
Antonio Chiribiri set up a business to build aircraft parts, and soon moved into the production of road and competition cars.
In the hands of his son Amadeo, his daughter Ada and the great Tazio Nuvolari, among others, the racers performed exceptionally well.
Despite the publicity this brought Chiribiri, the road cars, all of them powered by engines of 1.6 litres or less, were unsuccessful, and the company closed in 1929.
10. Cisitalia
The most famous model made by Cisitalia, a Turin-based company founded by businessman and former footballer Piero Dusio, was the 202, which was built in several forms even though total production was only around 170 (1950 Cisitalia 202 SC Cabriolet pictured).
In 1972, a 202 became the first car to go on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Other Cisitalias included the D46 racer and an extraordinary Grand Prix machine designed by Porsche and featuring a supercharged, mid-mounted, 1.5-litre, flat-12 engine.
11. Diatto
The Diatto company started out as a wheel manufacturer in 1835, and moved into other areas of transport engineering in the 19th century.
In 1905, a new division was created to build Clément cars under licence in Turin, and after a break from Clément the first Diatto models began to appear in 1909.
Many successful road and racing cars followed (including the Type 30 pictured here), but financial troubles brought production to a halt in 1929.
Nearly eight decades later, a new model called the Diatto Ottovù Zagato was revealed at the 2007 Geneva show.
12. Ferves
Ferves is a contraction of Ferrari Veicoli Speciali (the Italian for Ferrari Special Vehicles), though designer Carlo Ferrari was not closely related to the more famous Enzo.
The company’s only vehicle was the Ranger, a tiny off-roader whose mechanical parts came from the Fiat 500 and 600.
Around 600 examples are believed to have been built, in both rear- and four-wheel-drive forms, between 1965 and 1970.
13. IATO
IATO (for Indutria Automobili Tuscano, or Tuscan Automobile Industry) was part of the Metalli & Derivati group, and produced just one model.
Often compared to the Suzuki SJ, which it slightly resembled, it was a small off-roader with a two-door body – made, according to the brochure, of glassfibre and carbon fibres – and four-cylinder engines supplied by Fiat.
According to one source, IATO was in existence from 1985 to 1993, but the vehicle was not announced until January 1990, and very few examples appear to have been built after that.
14. Iso
Familiar to classic car enthusiasts for other reasons, Iso is perhaps best known to the general public through its first model, the Isetta bubble car, whose design was sold to BMW not long after its launch in 1953.
Iso then changed tack completely, building a series of sports cars with powerful American engines, such as the 7-litre Grifo pictured here.
The story ended in the mid 1970s, but restarted much later when the GTZ went into limited production in 2021.
15. Isotta Fraschini
Founded by Cesare Isotta and Vincenzo Fraschini, this was once one of the grandest of all Italian automobile manufacturers, building powerful and expensive luxury and racing cars.
The 5.9-litre engine in its Tipo 8 of 1910 (pictured), later enlarged to 7.4 litres for the Tipo 8A and 8B, is generally agreed to be the first straight-eight ever fitted to a model sold to the public.
Car production had come to an end by 1950, but there have been several revivals, the most recent involving the construction of the Tipo 6 LMH-C sports racer which competes in the World Endurance Championship.
As of 2024, Isotta Fraschini Motori builds very large engines and generators for customers including the Italian Navy.
16. Itala
Matteo, the youngest of the prolific Ceirano brothers, founded Itala in 1904.
The marque came to global prominence three years later, when its 7.4-litre 35/45hp model (pictured) won the Peking to Paris race by nearly three weeks, its crew brushing off a minor incident when they landed upside down after falling through a bridge.
On Itala’s behalf, Giulio Cesare Cappa designed a supercharged V12 racing engine intended to be built in the remarkably small capacities of 1.1 and 1.5 litres, though it powered a car only for the duration of a single test session at Monza.
One of the most inventive manufacturers of its day, Itala did not survive the 1930s, and was eventually absorbed into Fiat.
17. Junior
Giovanni Ceirano’s Junior company was known variously as Ceirano Junior or Fabbrica Junior Torinese d’Automobili, conveniently shortened to FJTA.
Its models included small road cars and a much more powerful 8-litre racer, which competed in the Targa Florio in 1907 and 1908 (Guido de Martino pictured at the wheel in the former year).
Having been established in 1905, Junior was no more by the end of 1910.
18. Lawil
The name Lawil is derived from the surnames of designer Carlo Lavezzari and the director of the French Lambretta importer, Henri Willame.
First appearing in 1966, the Lawils were tiny vehicles with engines of 250cc or smaller, built in the Italian village of Varzi, south of Milan.
They were offered with several body styles, including the van and pick-up pictured here, and sold in the home nations of the men who had formed the company.
Although its products appealed only to a narrow range of customers, Lawil managed to survive until 1988.
A Lawil whose front-end redesign made it look very like a miniature Jeep was built and sold in Switzerland from 1984 to 1986.
19. LMX
The only model ever produced by the short-lived Linea Moderna Executive, or LRX, was the Sirex, a two-seater available as either a coupé or a convertible.
Its shape, created by the renowned Franco Scaglione, suggested greater performance than that provided by the 2.3-litre Ford V6 engine.
This could muster only around 100bhp as standard, though double that was said to be available after turbocharging.
The Sirex was manufactured from 1968 to 1974, but very slowly – total production does not appear to have come close to three figures.
20. Moretti
Giovanni Moretti’s company was created in 1925, and at first produced motorcycles and microcars.
It moved into building conventional cars after the Second World War, initially ones of entirely its own design.
Commercial imperatives dictated that later models such as the 2300S (pictured) used Fiat running gear and, later still, Morettis were simply unusual versions of regular Fiat models.
This could go on for only so long, and Moretti eventually left the car business in 1984.
21. Nazzaro
Felice Nazzaro was one of the greatest of the early racing drivers, winning the French Grand Prix, the German Kaiserpreis and the Targa Florio road race in Sicily in 1907.
At that time he was a works Fiat driver, but in 1911 he formed a company to build road and racing cars.
More competition success followed – Nazzaro won the Targa Florio again in 1913, this time in one of his own cars, and Guido Meregalli did the same seven years later.
Production came to an end in 1923, by which time Nazzaro was once again working for Fiat.
22. OM
Officine Mechanica was founded in 1899 and became a major manufacturer of many types of vehicle.
Its involvement with cars was relatively brief, but it did include a spectacular result in the inaugural Mille Miglia road race in 1927, when all seven OMs on the entry list finished the event, and three of them took the first three places overall.
OM was later taken over by Fiat, and stopped building cars in the 1930s.
The company still exists today, however, as a producer of forklift trucks, a market sector it entered in 1951.
23. OSCA
The Maserati brothers sold their racing-car manufacturing business to Adolf Orsi in 1937, on the understanding that they would remain with the company for another 10 years.
At the first opportunity, they left, and set up the Officine Specializzate Construzione Automobili (Specialised Car Construction Workshops), known more conveniently, if less operatically, as OSCA.
The new company built racing cars, supplied engines to Fiat and produced its own sporty roadgoing models such as the MT4 (pictured).
In 1962 the brothers once again sold, but continued working for a company they had created. However, business was not good and OSCA closed in November 1966.
24. Piaggio
It might seem perverse, in a study of Italian manufacturers, to mention a car which was only ever built in France.
However, although the Vespa 400 was assembled in Fourchambault by the Ateliers de construction de motocycles et d'automobiles (ACMA), it was in fact designed, like the many scooters of the same name, by Piaggio, which is based in the Tuscan town of Pontedera.
ACMA, which also built Vespa scooters under licence, began producing the 400, a tiny saloon with a 393cc, two-cylinder, two-stroke engine, in 1957, and had some success to begin with, but sales dropped to the point where the project had to be abandoned in 1961.
Piaggio also devised the Poker, a four-wheeled version of its normally three-wheeled Ape truck which, unlike the 400, was built in Italy.
25. SCAT
Shortly after creating Junior, which was active only briefly, Giovanni Ceirano founded the more successful Società Ceirano Automobili Torino.
In its first decade, the company developed a reputation for building formidable racers – its cars won the Targo Florio in 1911, 1912 and 1914, making SCAT the most successful manufacturer on the event until Bugatti completed its own hat-trick in 1927.
At the height of its success, SCAT’s roadgoing models included the 18/30hp, pictured here with ‘torpedo’ bodywork by Solaro.
SCAT was never the same after the First World War, and was closed down by its new owner, Fiat, in 1932.
26. Siata
Siata opened for business in 1926 and specialised in making tuning parts for Fiats, before turning to production of its own models in 1948.
The first, a sports car called the Amica, was followed by several others including the 208 S (pictured here in unique CS coupé form), which had a 2-litre Fiat V8 engine.
The last was the Spring, based on the Fiat 850 but with retro styling including a large radiator grille which was there simply for show since the radiator itself, like the engine, was at the back.
When Siata folded in 1970, production of the Spring was taken over by a new company called ORSA, but ended completely five years later.
27. SPA
The Società Piemontese Automobili was founded in 1906 by Matteo, the youngest of the Ceirano brothers, and Michele Ansaldi, who was mentioned earlier as the creator of what became the Fiat Brevetti.
SPA produced aero engines and military vehicles, and is perhaps most famous in a motoring context for its victory in the 1909 Targa Florio.
Roadgoing models included the 23S, pictured here at the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile in Turin.
SPA retained its independence until 1925, when it was taken over by Fiat.
28. Stanguellini
Established in 1879 as a manufacturer of orchestral timpani, Modena-based Stanguellini switched to motoring in 1900, tuning existing cars and later building racing models (including a series of Formula Junior single-seaters) of its own.
Roadgoing vehicles included the Berlinetta (pictured), and the company was also involved in the development of the Chevrolet-engined, Frua-bodied Momo Mirage, before that project was canned in the early 1970s.
Stanguellini is still in business today, restoring cars it built many years ago and providing tuning kits for classic Fiats.
29. Welleyes
The first of the many car manufacturers founded by members of the Ceirano family was derived from one that built bicycles.
These were known as Welleyes, a curious name to the ears of a native English speaker, but appealing to late 19th century Italians who considered use of the language fashionable.
Matteo and Giovanni Battista Ceirano used the name for the only product of a company they established in 1899.
Almost immediately, they sold out to a group of investors who made the 3.5hp car the first model built and sold by their own new company, the Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, known today as Fiat.
30. Zust
Founded by Roberto Züst, the Zust company built large cars in Milan from 1905 and smaller ones known as Brixia-Zust in Brescia from the following year.
Brixia-Zust was unsuccessful, and was absorbed into Zust in 1912.
Five years after that, Zust was taken over by OM, which continued building one of its models for a few more years.
A Zust was the last of the three finishers in the 1908 New York to Paris race, a modest result made more creditable by the fact that the three other cars entered were unable to complete the course.
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