Moretti Motor Company
| Industry | Automotive |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1925 |
| Headquarters | Turin, Italy, USA |
|
Key people
|
Giovanni Moretti, founder |
| Products | Automobiles |
Moretti Motor Company is a former automobile manufacturer that was based in Italy. It was founded in 1925 and ceased automobile production in 1989. Today, many of its sports car models can still be found at various European auto shows,. Moretti Motors produced a variety of models at various times including motorcycles, microcars, and several commercial vehicles.
Moretti Motor Company was founded in 1925 by Giovanni Moretti in order to design and build motorcycles, both of his own design and with agreements with other companies. Using the same motorcycle engines, Giovanni Moretti also dabbled in microcars in the late 1920s and early 1930s. During World War II, Moretti found success constructing various commercial vehicles, most notably a range of electric powered small trucks and a 5- or 7-seat electric car. In 1946, with the war over and thus demand for their commercial vehicles wavering, Moretti began production of conventional cars.
The first conventional car model released by Moretti Motors was the 'Cita'. Shortly afterwards Moretti came out with the '600'. Then, in 1953, the '750' was released. Various versions of the '750' were built during the 1950s including estates, taxis, berlinas, coupes, single seat racing cars and commercial vehicles. Some competitive success was achieved in the 1950s with the 600 and 750 models.
A major shift in Moretti Motors' operations came in the latter part of the 1950s when they ceased designing and building complete cars. In an effort to reduce costs and overhead, the company switched to using Fiat mechanicals and chassis for all of its conventional automobiles. Despite offering a full range of model versions based on the '750' (saloon, coupé, spider, estate and more) though, Moretti was still unable to compete with Fiat's 600, which cost almost half the price and consequently dominated much of the marketplace. Mass production of all models were subsequently slashed due to continued low sales and financial struggles. However, thanks to the friendship between Giovanni Moretti and Gianni Agnelli, Moretti Motors was able to strike a favorable angreement with Fiat to continue using the Fiat chassis for a series of special/low volume models. Sporty-looking coupés with very similar bodywork utilizing 127, 128, 124, and 132 underpinnings were built in the late sixties and early seventies.
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