Diatto was an Italian manufacturing company founded in 1835 in Turin by Guglielmo Diatto (1804–1864) to make 'carriages for wealthy customers'. In 1874 Guglielmo’s sons, Giovanni and Battista Diatto, began building railway carriages for Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits and the Orient Express. In 1905 Guglielmo's grandsons, Vittorio and Pietro Diatto, began Diatto-Clément, a cooperative venture making motor-vehicles under license from French manufacturer Clément-Bayard owned by industrialist Adolphe Clément-Bayard. By 1909 they had full ownership of 'Autocostruzioni Diatto' and began developing their own motor-vehicles and exporting them worldwide.
Diatto
Diatto 20 DA Torpedo (1921)
The workshop on the banks of the river Po in Turin
Gustave Adolphe Clément, from 1909 Clément-Bayard, was a French entrepreneur. An orphan who became a blacksmith and a Compagnon du Tour de France, he went on to race and manufacture bicycles, pneumatic tyres, motorcycles, automobiles, aeroplanes and airships.
Pictured in 1899
Clément and his wife, c. 1894
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec publicity poster from the 1890s, Constant Huret riding with a Simpson chain behind the Gladiator tandem pacer at the Velodrome de la Seine.
1903 poster Advertising Clement Cycles and Automobiles. (Musee Automobile de Reims)
