Description
This new book traces the first fifty years in the history of the FIAT (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino) company from establishment in 1899, when a group of well-to-do young men in Turin decided to found one of the first Italian motorcar manufacturers, having watched imported French cars putter around and realising their country had no equivalent industry.
This is the story of how Fiat became one of the largest motor manufacturers in the world, it covers all the models made in the period 1899-1949, the men who designed them, the administrators who guided the company through WWI, the Roaring Twenties, the Depression and ensuing problems of the 1930s, the social, political and economic state of Italy during that time and Mussolini’s war of 1940-1945. Fiat not only made cars, but complete aircraft, aero-engines, vast marine engines, trucks and buses.
There are many individual model histories on Fiat cars, this is the first for many years to cover a broad spectrum of the company’s history and products.