CreFaRo Automobili, the history of…
CreFaRo Automobili is a Fruinian car manufacturer born in 1946 in a village near the city of Crevosa. The founder, Augusto Boncompagni, wanted to build his own cars, something that represented him and his soul, without caring too much about performance or sales.
Links to car posts
- 1947 CreFaRo Cheta - The project comes to life
The backstory
Disclaimer
This story takes inspiration from real-life events that happened in Italy during the war. The exact event is the following: The resistance in Prato – Museo della Deportazione. I just ask you to be respectful as always.
Augusto Boncompagni was a farmer and had worked his father’s lands in his childhood. They farmed vegetables, primarily shallots, courgettes and leek, and sold most of them in their village. The remainings, especially shallots and leek, were sold in Crevosa: to deliver the goods, his father drove a cheap and popular Fruinian family car to the city and back. He knew nothing about cars: he just knew the name of his car and pointed at pictures of the same model when he saw them on the local newspapers.
Augusto and his father got used to the words “Mille Monti” written over such pictures, but never got interested (nor could they read about it). The only experience they had of the Mille Monti was of few fellow countrymen retiring early from the race and heading back to their houses.
Suddenly, war came, death and destruction with it, and in the last years of conflict he joined the Fruinian partisans against the oppressors.
On June 11th, 1944 he was with a small group of partisans on a sabotage mission when things went wrong: their aim was to cut off a railway connection between Fanella and Meranio that was used by the opposing military forces. The plan was to explode a train full of TNT, but the primer went off before they all got to safety: 4 of them died. Augusto was wounded but managed to survive and recover. After the mission, Augusto kept fighting for his country until 1946, when things finally settled down and new political institutions were voted by the population, on June 2nd.
During the war, his father got injured and was unable to work; the family lands were heavily damaged by the bombardments, but their shed somehow escaped disaster and was still in good shape. Their car was also in one piece…
Augusto had learned a thing or two about cars during the war: he learned that they get modified to suit certain uses, he learned how they work and how to disable one. He developed an attraction towards them and, looking at their family car, he saw something more, something he could grow a special connection with. That’s when the idea (quite a crazy one) came to life.
On June 11th, 1946 he founded CreFaRo Automobili… and immediately asked for a loan: he bought the materials and tools to work on his car and shape it out to make it his own creation.
The beginning
Augusto took the chassis and front suspensions straight from his previous car, then built some double wishbone suspensions for the rear and slightly remodeled the body panels with heat, presses and a lot of hammering. He took the engine and overbored it from 69 mm to 72 mm, reaching 1173 cc of displacement and tuned it to around 34 kW (46 hp), then changed the gearing to suit his intentions.
It wasn’t fast by any means, it still kept its “family car that’s not a boat” vibe, but with a sportier tone. He had to come up with a name, as if that was his child…
È lenta, è lenta… ma che ci faccio con una macchina lenta? Ci dormo, mica la guido, visto quanto mi rilassa… mi cheta?
(It’s slow, it’s slow… what do I do with such a slow car? I won’t drive it, I’ll sleep in it since it makes me so relaxed… so calm?)
That’s how the first CreFaRo Cheta was born: the name’s first meaning was from the adjective cheto (a regional word for “calm” in west fruinian/italian), but it also fit perfectly with the region, since Fanella (the biggest city near Crevosa) was founded along the river Chetone.
Satisfied (for now) with his work, Augusto used the remaining funds to bring his family’s farmland back to normal and went back working on them to sell all the vegetables he produced in order to repay the loan.
