Alessio

Introduce

Est. 1895

In its short existence, Carrozzeria Alessio played an important role in the very first years of the Italian automotive industry. The Alessio coachbuilder was born at the end of the 19th century by the will of Marcello Alessio, a young and enterprising entrepreneur who thus wanted to be among the first and most competitive suppliers of bodies of the then newborn car industry. Marcello Alessio, thanks to the experience acquired at the Locati and Torretta workshops since 1890, thus opened his company in Turin, in via Orto Botanico, near what will soon be the headquarters of Fiat. And in its first years of life, the Turin car manufacturer was the main client of the bodies at Carrozzeria Alessio, which proved to be the most competitive among the various local body shops. Carrozzeria Alessio actually produced bodywork which for the time were very pleasing to the eye, as the Fiat top management of the time also underlined. On the other hand, the owner, Marcello Alessio, quickly proved to be very brilliant in running his company, as he showed very exhaustive catalogs to customers, also illustrating the various optionals that it was possible to have. At Fiat, however, there were those who maintained a certain reserve in judging the bodywork too positively and it was thus that Carrozzeria Alessio began to be kept in check by the Fiat management. Thus it was discovered that many customers of Fiat cars procured accessories from Carrozzeria Alessio, but without Fiat having any profit. Not only that, but the brilliance of Marcello Alessio made it so that in the minds of customers, the cars purchased from Fiat were too often associated with the name of Carrozzeria Alessio rather than with that of Fiat itself. Finally, as if that weren't enough, Carrozzeria Alessio served as a showroom for Fiat cars. In short, the very first years of Fiat were dangerously conditioned by this coachbuilder, which among other things also established the delivery times and methods of the finished car. But Carrozzeria Alessio made its first misstep when it became the representative in Italy of two French brands, Kriéger and Rochet-Schneider, thus further souring the spirits of Fiat's top management. This and other aspects pushed the Turin car manufacturer to run for cover. After having acquired from the German Daimler the license to assemble and resell the latter's radiators in Italy (radiators for which, among other things, Carrozzeria Alessio itself had tried in vain to obtain the exclusive concession), Fiat began to make contacts with another new body supplier, Carrozzeria Industriale Giovanni Lanza & C., which is acquired entirely by Fiat and begins to leave the dependence on Carrozzeria Alessio. In mid-1905 there is a collapse of the Italian stock market, which puts various companies in difficulty, including Carrozzeria Alessio, which will never recover, despite some relaunch attempts consisting of the opening of two branches, in Rome and Naples. . In a very short time, Carrozzeria Alessio ends up in the orbit of a textile industry. In a short time, there was a revolution at the top of the coachbuilder and even Fiat itself took over a part of the Alessio body shop. For its part, the same owner was gradually losing more and more authority and at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the body shop was completely absorbed and later extinguished by other companies.