The whole page is printed in one blue, and the most luxurious name in Italian motoring is here selling trucks. «Isotta Fraschini» sweeps across the sheet in flowing script; the small print underneath says what the script does not: AUTOCARRI CIVILI E MILITARI.
Drawn lorries drive diagonally through bands of speed-lines, and the IF Milano roundel sits in the top corner. The single-colour printing and the half-page proportions mark it as a magazine insert, like its companions in this group — but the blue gives it a elegance the black-and-white sheets lack, fitting for the marque involved.
From the most prestigious cars to army lorries
Isotta Fraschini, active in Milan from 1900 to 1949, built some of the most luxurious and prestigious cars in the history of the automobile — the Tipo 8 limousines of the 1920s were Hollywood and royalty material — and its engines also powered numerous Italian military aircraft. By the time of this sheet the luxury-car era was effectively over, and the company’s bread was heavy transport and military supply: the «autocarri civili e militari» the small print names. That is the quiet story of the page — a grand name of the belle époque re-purposed for the era of mobilisation, with only the script logo keeping the old glamour.
Marks and date
The collector attributes the sheet to Erberto Carboni, reading an EC monogram near the word «MILITARI»; on our scan no monogram resolves there. Published without an attribution; no printed date, with the military emphasis pointing to the end of the 1930s or the war years.
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