Legore Badge 2001-Present
EST.1956
Opulence, Performance, Endurance
Legore was born from the 1955 disaster at Le Mans, as a conseqeunce Amadeo Scagliati cancelled his company’s racing program, leading to designer Orazio Legore (Lig-Ore-Ray) to leave Scagliati and form his own company in his home city of Genoa. Orazio’s aim was to build cars of as superior quality to that of his ex-employer but to have the ease of use that high performance Scagliatis lacked at the time.
Without the funding to build the charismatic twelve cylinder engines of his previous employer, Legore chose an unlikely ally in the Apollo Motor Company choosing to utilise their Big and Small Block V8’s to power his hand formed automobiles, the first being the 6400GT.
However, Orazio knew the company could not survive solely manufacturing custom GT cars so in 1970 their first higher volume model, the mid-engined Apollo V8 powered Martora was unveiled to the public. Apollo purchased shares in Orazio’s company to increase the appeal of their luxury and sports models.
The Martora was sold in America in select Apollo dealerships from 1971 until 1977 when the ramifications of the oil crisis caused Legore to be dropped from US showrooms. However Legore soon became an instrument of Apollo’s to flex its muscles in the European racing series’, such is the case of the Legore Martora Group 5 Turbo with its immensely powerful turbocharged 353CI V8 that took to storming the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1981 taking victory in the race.
The partnership remained strong until 1984 when Apollo ended supply of Lance Series V8’s which powered the then aged Martora super car, consequently Legore begin outsourcing them from Barada (Apollo Australia) to then be transported to Italy where they would be tuned to specification.
Apollo began to step back from managing Legore in 1987 following the fiasco when vast amounts of funds where sunk into jointly developing a Carbon-Kevlar V12 prototype replacement for the Martora with the British based Vertigo Formula 1 team all behind the backs of Apollos Board of Directors, Legore’s profit margins began to fall dramatically as Apollo drew further away and all plans for the Martora’s replacement were scrapped.
In 1991 Apollo sold its shares to Indonesian electronics company Sinolia for $15,000,000.
The company stayed afloat selling the now much evolved Martora model with the last one leaving the factory in July 1995, giving it a final production run of 25 years.
The first and only model designed under Sinolia ownership, the SS, sold only 57 models over a 4 year period, despite the injection of extra funding, when in 1998 the Asian financial crisis hit, a deal was struck with the fast expanding Ceder Automotive Groupe to purchase the entirety of the non-profit making Legore for $25,000,000 bringing it, in part, back alongside the Apollo Motor Company which had also joined under the umbrella of the Ceder Groupe.
Ceder began to introduce its Millennial Rebirth program to all subsidiaries in 1999 with the goal of appointing Legore as the crown of the Groupe, first starting by following the growing trend of high-tech European supercars, using the 1987 EM12/P prototype as inspiration for the new age, emblazening each new model with the newly designed ‘Lanterna Alata’ badge calling inspiration from Lanterna the symbol of Genoa.
At the 2001 Geneva Motor Show the Legore Vadaris was unveiled sporting a vast V12 engine sitting midship in its carbon fibre body, the Vadaris was available to be outfitted in any paint scheme desired as a leather interior available to custom specification using any hide desired as part of Legores ‘Firma Esclusiva’ programme.
In 2007 Legore began turning a profit for the first time under Ceder ownership.
