Automotive industry in Italy
The automotive industry in Italy is a large employer in the country, it had over 2,131 firms and employed almost 250,000 people in 2006. Italy's automotive industry is best known for its automobile designs and small city cars, sports and supercars. The automotive industry makes a contribution of 8.5% to Italian GDP.
Italy is one of the significant automobile producers both in Europe and around the world.
Today the Italian automotive industry is almost totally dominated by Stellantis ; in 2001 over 90% of vehicles were produced by it. As well as its own, predominantly mass market model range, Stellantis owns the mainstream Fiat brand, the upmarket Alfa Romeo and Lancia brands, and the exotic Maserati brand.
Background
The Barsanti-Matteucci engine was the first invented internal combustion engine using the free-piston principle in an atmospheric two cycle engine. In late 1851 or early 1852 Eugenio Barsanti, a professor of mathematics, and Felice Matteucci, an engineer and expert in mechanics and hydraulics, joined forces on a project to exploit the explosion and expansion of a gaseous mix of hydrogen and atmospheric air to transform part of the energy of such explosions into mechanical energy. The idea originated almost ten years earlier with Barsanti when, as a young man, he was teaching at St. Michael's College in Volterra, Italy. An engineer from Milan Italy, Luigi de Cristoforis, described in a paper published in the acts of the Lombard Royal Institute of Science, Literature and Art, a pneumatic machine that ran on naphtha and an air mixture, and which constituted the first liquid fuel engine. During the twelve years of collaboration between Barsanti and Matteucci several prototypes of internal combustion engines were realized. It was the first real internal combustion engine, constituted in its simplest realization by a vertical cylinder in which an explosion of a mixture of air and hydrogen or an illuminating gas shot a piston upwards thereby creating a vacuum in the space underneath. When the piston returned to its original position, due to the action of the atmospheric pressure, it turned a toothed rod connected to a sprocket wheel and transmitted movement to the driving shaft. Numerous patents were obtained by the two inventors: the 1857 English and Piedmont patents, the 1861 Piedmont patent of Barsanti, Matteucci and Babacci which was then used as a base to construct the engine of the Escher Wyss company of Zurich and put on exhibit during the first National Expo of Florence in 1861, and the 1861 English patent.The Italian automotive industry started in the late 1880s, with the Stefanini-Martina regarded as the first manufacturer although Enrico Bernardi had built a petrol fueled tri-cycle in 1884. Bernardi completed his secondary education in Verona and enrolled in the University of Padua in October 1859. He received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Padua in June 1863 and remained at the university as an assistant to the chairs of the departments of Geodesy, Hydrometry, Rational Mechanics, and Experimental Physics. In 1867, Bernardi became the chair of Physics and Mechanics at the Royal Institute of Vocational Industry in Vicenza. He became dean of the Royal Institute and remained in that position until 1878, when he became a Professor of Hydraulic and Agricultural Machinery at the University of Padua and directed the Institute of Machinery there from 1879 until 1915.
Description
From 1890s to 1920s
In 1888 Giovanni Battista Ceirano started building Welleyes bicycles, so named because English names had more sales appeal, and in October 1898 he co-founded Ceirano GB & C with his brothers Matteo, and Ernesto to build the Welleyes motor car. As they encountered challenges of scale and finance they contacted a consortium of local nobility and business-men led by Giovanni Agnelli and in July 1899 Fiat SpA purchased the plant, design and patents – so producing the first F.I.A.T. – the Fiat 4 HP. The Welleyes / F.I.A.T 4 HP had a 679 cc engine and was capable of. Known from the beginning for the talent and creativity of its engineering staff, by 1903 Fiat made a small profit and produced 135 cars; this grew to 1,149 cars by 1906. The company then went public selling shares via the Milan stock exchange.Agnelli led the company until his death in 1945, while Vittorio Valletta administered the firm's daily activities. Its first car, the 3 ½ CV was based on a design purchased from Ceirano GB & C and had a boxer twin engine. In 1903, Fiat produced its first truck. In 1908, the first Fiat was exported to the US. That same year, the first Fiat aircraft engine was produced. Also around the same time, Fiat taxis became popular in Europe.
Isotta Fraschini, an Italian luxury car manufacturer, was founded in 1900 at first assembling Renault model automobiles. It was founded in Milan by Cesare Isotta and the brothers Vincenzo, Antonio, and Oreste Fraschini. The firm was named for its founders, Cesare Isotta and Vincenzo Fraschini, who had been importing Mors and Renault automobiles as well as Aster proprietary engines since 1899. Prior to establishing their own products in 1904, Isotta and Fraschini assembled cars very similar to Renaults, with Aster engines. They differed from the real Renaults in having a neater underslung front radiator arrangement. The first automobile bearing this marque featured a four-cylinder engine with an output of.
Itala was a car manufacturer based in Turin, Italy, from 1904 to 1934, started by Matteo Ceirano and five partners in 1903. Three cars were offered in the first year, an 18 hp, a 24 hp and a 50 hp. In 1905 they started making very large-engined racing cars with a 14.8-litre 5-cylinder model which won the Coppa Florio and the year after that the Targa Florio. In 1907 a 35/45 hp model driven by Count Scipione Borghese, 10th Prince of Sulmona who won the Peking to Paris motor race by three weeks. These sporting successes helped sales dramatically; the company continued to grow. The company experimented with a range of novel engines such as variable-stroke, sleeve-valve, and "Avalve" rotary types and at the beginning of World War I, offered a wide range of cars. During the war, Itala built aeroplane engines but made a loss producing them. An Itala mod. 35/45 HP, now exposed at the Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile in Turin, became famous for the victory at the Peking to Paris.
Alfa Romeo was founded on 24 June 1910 in Milan as A.L.F.A—an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. The company was established by Cavaliere Ugo Stella to acquire the assets of the ailing Italian subsidiary of French carmaker Darracq, of which he had been an investor and manager. Its first car was the 24 HP, designed by Giuseppe Merosi, which became commercially successful and participated in the 1911 Targa Florio endurance race. In August 1915, ALFA was acquired by Neapolitan entrepreneur and engineer Nicola Romeo, who vastly expanded the company's portfolio to include heavy machinery and aircraft engines. In 1920, the company's name was changed to Alfa Romeo, with the Torpedo 20–30 HP being the first vehicle to bear the new brand.
Lancia was founded in 1906 in Turin by Vincenzo Lancia and Claudio Fogolin. It became part of Fiat in 1969. The brand is known for its strong rallying heritage, and technical innovations such as the unibody chassis of the 1922 Lambda and the five-speed gearbox introduced in the 1948 Ardea. Despite not competing in the World Rally Championship since 1992, Lancia still holds more Manufacturers' Championships than any other brand. Sales of Lancia-branded vehicles declined from over 300,000 annual units sold in 1990 to less than 100,000 by 2010. Despite Lancia's much smaller brand presence, the Lancia Ypsilon continues to be popular in Italy; in fact it was the second best-selling car there in 2019.
File:Alfa Romeo Montreal Classic-Gala 2022 1X7A0198.jpg|thumb|Alfa Romeo Montreal, designed by Bertone
Gruppo Bertone was an Italian industrial design company which specialized in car styling, coachbuilding and manufacturing. It was also a car manufacturing company. The company was based in Grugliasco, northern Italy. Gruppo Bertone was founded as Carrozzeria Bertone in 1912 by Giovanni Bertone. Designer Nuccio Bertone took charge of the company after World War II and the company was divided into two units: Carrozzeria for manufacturing and Stile Bertone for styling. Until its bankruptcy in 2014, the company was headed by the widow of Nuccio Bertone, Lilli Bertone. At the time of bankruptcy, it had around 100 direct employees. In 2014, most employees lost their jobs and were not absorbed by following acquisitions. Cars from the company museum went to other museums, like Automotoclub Storico Italiano and Volandia. After its bankruptcy, the Bertone name was acquired by an architect and retained by some of its former employees, who continued as a Milan-based small external design office, Bertone Design, more focused on industrial design and architecture. Bertone Design was sold to the group AKKA Technologies in the second quarter of 2016, which already had automotive design activities through Mercedes-Benz Technologies. The AKKA Technologies group subsequently sold the Bertone brand in 2020 to Mauro and Jean-Franck Ricci, the new owners. In 2022, Mauro and Jean-Franck Ricci revived the Bertone brand. The first in a series of limited edition vehicles, the GB110, was presented in December 2022, then unveiled in June 2024.
Maserati was established in 1914 in Bologna. The company's headquarters are now in Modena, and its emblem is a trident. The company has been owned by Stellantis since 2021. Maserati was initially associated with Ferrari. In May 2014, due to ambitious plans and product launches, Maserati sold a record of over 3,000 cars in one month. This caused them to increase production of the Quattroporte and Ghibli models. In addition to the Ghibli and Quattroporte, Maserati offers the Maserati GranTurismo and two SUV models, the Maserati Levante and the Maserati Grecale. Maserati has placed a yearly production output cap at 75,000 vehicles globally.
Zagato is a coachbuilding company founded by Ugo Zagato in 1919. The design center of the company is located in Terrazzano, a village near Rho, Lombardy, Italy. Ugo Zagato was an Italian automotive designer and builder. He was born in Gavello, near Rovigo. He began his coach building career in 1919 when he left "Officine Aeronaut Aluminum Ti Che Pomilio" to set up his own business in Milan. He intended to transfer various construction techniques from aeronautics to the automotive sector. Cars of the time were often bulky and heavy; Ugo Zagato conceived them as lightweight structures with a frame in sheet aluminum similar to an aircraft fuselage.
The automobile industry grew quickly and manufacturers included Aquila Italiana, Fratelli Ceirano, Diatto, Itala, Junior, Società Ceirano Automobili Torino, S.T.A.R. Rapid, SPA, and Zust. During the first and the second World Wars and the economic crisis of the 1970s, many of these brands disappeared or were bought by FIAT or foreign manufacturers. Over the years, the Italian automobile industry has also been involved in numerous enterprises outside Italy, many of which have involved the production of Fiat-based models, including Lada in Russia, Zastava and Yugo in the former Yugoslavia, FSO in Poland and SEAT in Spain.
File:Fiat 124-Sedan Front-view.JPG|right|thumb|Fiat 124, 1967 European Car of the Year, the ancestor Soviet and Turkish mass car industry
File:Fiat 127 1 v sst.jpg|right|thumb|Fiat 127, 1972 European Car of the Year, the catalyst of Spanish and Yugoslavian automotive industry