It will come as no suprise to you that we do love a good retro super car here on RSM, one of our favourites being the De Tomaso Pantera, Italian style matched with American muscle is a great formular for and interesting car.  De Tomaso produced many other sexy wedges during the last four decades, however they also had a hand in some slightly more consumer level cars, most notably the De Tomaso Innocenti.
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Innocenti as a name has a history that stretches back to 1920, initially a company that built industrial machinery it changed direction post World War 2 and produced Lambretta scooters for many years.  In 1961 Innocenti started to produce a licensed version of the BL Mini, in 1972 British Leyland took over Innocenti completely.  Sadly for Innocenti, which was a hugely popular brand in its native Italy, this resulted in the company getting caught up in BL running out of money and being nationalised in 1975.  Step forward Alejandro de Tomaso to save the day, and the company.

Rechristened Nuova Innocenti, the company started to produce a Bertone designed five seater in 1976, still on the Mini underpinnings.  The engine produced a respectable 71bhp being closer to a Cooper 'S' in tuned than a standard mini.  The car looks more like a shrunk down Golf than a Mini the hatchback allows the boot to be larger than a mini, but the slightly larger seats mean less leg room and a more cramped interior.  To our mind this car has everything, very modable for more speed with its reliance on mini parts, cool boxy 70’s styling, a super car name on the badge, and that little bit of Italian throw into the mix, fantastic.

Contemporary reviews of the car found it to be a great drive, possibly superior to the comparable standard Mini.  Which makes us even sadder that it was never officially imported to the UK, any you see in the UK are private imports.  They turn up on Italian ebay occasionally, so keep you eyes out.

What followed the Innocenti mini was equally as cool, in 1984 the line ceased production and De Tomaso struck up a new deal with Diahatsu to provide the under pinning’s for the follow up. The Innocenti 650 and 650SE were based on the Daihatsu Charade with a 617cc 2 cylinder engine, later the Mini 3 would come along with a 3 Cylinder engine, running production through to 1992.  Innocenti finished as a company in 1995, but have left us a legacy of some cool cars to hunt out.

During the deal with Diahatsu it turns out the De Tomaso were partners in a bid to make a Charade Group B car, which the guys at 7tune have a great entry on that is well worth a read.

When putting together our rare car pieces we usually have a fair idea of what’s in store, a car we already know about, or know of.  This time we started out down one path and had to change tact half way through, so this isn't exactly a rare car entry, but a rare company entry.
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Usually you'd associate low volume Italian cars with their famous prancing horse and raging bull brands, high end super cars and sports GTs.  Moretti came from a different angle, they approached the market via small coupes, the Gran Sport and the Cita.  Later they moved into more family oriented small cars, the 600, 720B and 750 all being fine examples.  All these cars were beautifully designed in the Italian tradition of smooth styling.  Moretti tried a number of different versions of their 750 platform, everything from racing cars to estates and commercial vehicles proving the platforms versatility.  Their real problem was not the quality of the cars but the cost, in the face of competition from Fiat, specifically the Fiat 600.

Ultimately it was Fiat the saved the Moretti name, by allowing them  to produce specials based on their cars, like the 500 Moretti Coupe or the fantastic 2500 Moretti SS.  This work continued all the way into the 1980s the last Moretti car being the Fiat Uno Moretti Folk from 1983.  In December 1989 the company ceased to exist.

Whilst Moretti isn't hugely well known the cars they did produce are really something special, perhaps their problem is that they were pitched too high for the families buying small cars and pitched too low for those that could afford Ferrari exclusivity.  However any company that leaves us with a car as pretty as the Fiat 850 Moretti Sportiva S2 (pictured above) deserves a special place in our hearts.

Michael Ward Photos on Flickr has some more Moretti pictures, which have graced the pages of the excellent Auto Italia magazine.

There is also a lot of information on the Moretti Registry including photos of all their models.

It has been a while since we did a Rare Car piece, I've got a couple lined up to do, but when I found this I knew I'd have to post it up as soon as I could.

Triumph made some very nice British touring sports cars in their post war years, some elegant design, but none of them seemed to have the flair of the Italians, who were at one of their peaks for designing beautiful cars.  Enter stage left Salvatore Ruffino, managing director of a company distributing Triumphs in Italy, not content with the standard Triumph styling he believed that more well heeled Italians would pay for a prettier car and commissioned Vignale to build a two seater coupe.  Vignale engaged Giovanni Michelotti to design the car and then set about producing the prototypes.

The prototype was recieved very well at the 1958 Turin motor show and went into production with Vignale in 1959, with some slight alterations to the front ends lighting arrangement.  Production however is too strong a word for what this car went into, with the bodies being hand formed it meant that these would always be a low volume car.  Ruffino's original plan was to produce a thousand vehicles; this is the number of chassis' he had agreed with Standard-Triumph that they would supply.  Sadly this wasn't how things panned out, when British Leyland took over Triumph in 1961 they decided to concentrate on the forthcoming TR4, indeed they engaged Michellotti to pen the car and it bears a number of similarities to the Italia.

With the withdrawal of support from Triumph Ruffino went it alone and financed Vignale to continue to produce cars, but eventually stopped in 1962.  Over that time period 329 cars had been produced, all bar six were left hand drive.

Technically the Triumph Italia is a TR3A underneath, 1991 straight 4, overhead valve, 4 speed manual with overdrive, rear wheel drive, disc front brakes and drums at the rear.  The very last few Italias had the TR3B's improved gearbox.  Really this car is all about its beautiful styling though.

If you fancy picking one up Fine Cars of Switzerland have one for £70,000 ...

A much more detailed write up of the Triumph Italia can be found here, well worth your time reading.

Photos from this Flickr Set

In the UK at least the Taunus 20M is a rare enough car, however if you add to that some smooth Italian styling and limited production, you've got the recipe for a very nice rare car!

The Ford OSI 20 M TS Coupe, to give its full name, is the design work of Sergio Sartorelli coupled with the engineering underpinnings of the Ford Taunus 20M, a great car in its own right.  Whilst the Turin based OSI (Industriali Officina Stampaggi) as a company had produced designs for Alfa Romeo, Fiat and Innocenti, they had always been in very limited numbers, the Ford OSI however saw a move into higher production figures.  We're not talking great number though, just 2,220 units were produced between 1967 and 1968.  Of those that were produced only around 200 have survived.

The car came in 2 litre V6 and 2.3 litre V6 varieties, just as in the standard production model, performance was around the same as the standard model as well.  There was an attempted to improve the acceleration by modifying the rear axle, but that was counteracted by the larger wheels and rolling radius.

A single convertible car was made and is still around today, the rarest of this rare car.  Pictures and (German) details of this car can be found here.

It really is a very attractive European coupe, German engineering coupled with attractive Italian styling, what more could you need in life?

More information can be found here (OSI site) and the owners club website is here.