1966 Fiat 1100 R Coupé by Moretti | Global Icons: Zoute Online 2026
Chassis No. 103P1434983
Giovanni Moretti had built complete cars under his own name since before WWII, offering a full range of saloons, coupés, spiders, and estates on the firm's own 750 platform by the mid-1950s. However, Fiat's 600 arrived at roughly half the price and dominated the marketplace, obliging Moretti to cease designing and building complete cars in the latter part of the decade. Thanks to the friendship between Giovanni Moretti and Gianni Agnelli, the firm secured a favorable agreement with Fiat permitting continued use of Fiat chassis and mechanicals for a series of low-volume specials. By late 1961, the Moretti lineup consisted of custom-bodied coupés and spiders on Fiat underpinnings, a range that would eventually extend from the 1100 to the 2300.
The Moretti coupé offered here is one of the firm's most attractive creations, long nosed and low, its flat hood running to a narrow eggcrate grille flanked by exposed round headlamps, with the roofline drawn back in a single unbroken sweep to a short, clipped tail. Finished here in blue over a tan interior, chassis number 1434983 is a handsome and extensively documented example of Moretti's low-volume, custom-bodied Fiats.
Per its original Italian libretto, it was registered on 20 September 1966 in the province of Savona to Stefano Galfrè of Finale Ligure and issued the plate "SV 72180," which it would carry for the next 47 years. The same document records a remarkably complete history of its life in Italy, its pages carrying road tax stamps in near-unbroken sequence from December 1966 through December 1982 and inspection records running from 1992 through December 2007. Galfrè retained the coupé for 31 years before transferring it in July 1997 to his brother Renato, of nearby Pietra Ligure, who owned it for a further 16 years.
The Moretti left Italy only in late 2013, acquired by Pascal Descomps of Ventabren, outside Aix-en-Provence, and struck from the Italian register on 20 December 2013 for permanent export to France. Descomps insured and used the car in France, still on its original Italian plate. In August 2022, the coupé was sold to the current caretaker in Germany, with TÜV Nord inspecting the car at Bremen on 9 December 2022 and granting Oldtimer classification. Invoices on file also record a thorough recommissioning carried out by JH Fahrzeugtechnik in Bremen in February 2023, encompassing new Michelin XAS tires and tubes, all rear axle bushings, rear wheel cylinders, brake hose and fluid, windscreen washer system, and the fitment of a hazard-warning switch and front parking lights, at a total cost of €4.743.
The car is offered with the original Italian libretto, an original Moretti Servizio Assistenza Tecnica booklet, period Fiat European service station directory, and its French and German ownership documents-a paper trail of remarkable depth for a small-series Italian coupé of the mid-1960s.