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Siata Mitzi - Don't cry for me, Argentina

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Created on March 2, 2022

Text:

Paul Krüger

Photos:

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Siata Mitzi (1953) - At the Turin Salon 1953

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Siata Mitzi (1953) - With suicide doors - Turin Salon 1953

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Siata Mitzi (1954) - At the Turin Salon 1954

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Siata Mitzi (1953) - extremely spartan interior with spare wheel under the dashboard

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Siata Mitzi (1953) - two-cylinder engine in the rear

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Siata Mitzi (1953) - Headed parallel twin with integrated gearbox

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Siata Mitzi (1953) - The innards of the gearbox

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Siata Mitzi (1953) - rear axle with angular torsion bar and eccentric differential

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Piaggio Vespa 400 (1957) - Not related to the Siata Mitzi despite outward resemblance

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Autoar Rural (1950) - The first car made in Argentina

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Gilda S 500 (1956) - prototype of a mid-size sedan with a V4 engine, built by Rosati y Cristofaro SA (RyCSA) in Argentina

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Summary

Today, the "Società Italiana Auto Trasformazioni Accessori" is best known for its Fiat-based sports cars. But shortly before SIATA achieved world fame with the 208 roadster, they also tried their hand at a modern small car with an air-cooled rear engine, which made it halfway around the world but never onto an assembly line. This article tells the story of the Siata Mitzi and shows it in historical pictures and in the sales literature of the time.

This article contains the following chapters

A small car from the sports car manufacturer
No series production in sight
Three cars from Argentina
No French successor
Fiat comes

Estimated reading time: 6min

Preview (beginning of the article)

According to official statistics, more than 25 million Argentinians, around 36% of the country's total population, have Italian roots. Argentina's very small car industry is also largely descended from Italian products. In 1949, Piero Dusio founded the company Automotores Argentinos in Tigre, east of Buenos Aires, after plunging Cisitalia into insolvency with the Tipo 360 all-wheel drive monoposto project. In addition to a station wagon called "Rural", the company, known as "Autoar" for short, also built Fiat models under license from 1950, according to Halwart Schrader. The Italian exile held the monopoly for four years until "Rosati y Cristófaro Industrias Metalúrgicas S. A." (RYCSA, "Rosati & Cristófaro Metallurgie AG") decided to build an Argentinean people's car and signed a license agreement with the Italian sports car manufacturer SIATA in December 1954. It may at first seem surprising that a small-series manufacturer of expensive sports cars was chosen to produce a cheap mass-produced vehicle, but it certainly made sense.

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