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Moretti
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| Defunct |
Moretti Motor Company is a now defunct automobile manufacturer formally based in Italy. It was founded in 1925 and ceased operations in the mid-1980's. Today, many of its sportscar models can still be found at various European auto shows. During its existence though, Moretti Motors produced a variety of models at various times including motorcycles, microcars, and several commercial vehicle.
History
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 1920's and early 1930's. During World War II, Moretti found success constructing various commercial vehicle, 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 competiive success was achieved in the 1950's with the 600 and 750 models.
A major shift in Moretti Motors' operations came in the latter part of the 1950's 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, coupe, 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.
In 1967 Moretti produced only 2,600 cars, in 1973 only 3,292 were produced, and by 1974 production was down to only 1,071.
Later, as production continued to fall, Moretti turned to producing personalised conversions of various Fiats such as the Uno, Panda and Regata.
Finally in the mid 1980s, Moretti Motor Company officially ceased operations.
