I was running out of ideas, I didn't know what to write, so I decided to recycle an old post published on the facebook page a long time ago.
For car lovers, I want to tell you about Automobili Del Frate.
It is an Italian car company, and you are rightly thinking, but what does this have to do with history? and maybe you would also be right, but in the past I have spoken to you several times about Microhistory, and for those new to these parts, microhistory is the story of small events that serves as an anchor point to analyze in detail the great events, and that it differs from macro history, or the history of great events, only in the phase of general classification. One of the fathers of this method, now very recurrent in American historiography, is Carlo Ginzburg and his essay “the cheese and the worms” is perhaps one of the most iconic and formative.
For the layman, I will give you a practical example to frame the Microstoria, talking about the economic boom in Italy of the 50s and 60s, can be done in two ways, talking directly about the boom in a very broad way, thus falling back into traditional historiography with a macro-historical approach and addressing a theme of economic history, or we can do it starting from the bottom and address the issue of the economic boom starting from the ordinary history of a small workshop that in those years began its business and that 50 years later became one of the workshops largest and most important in Italy, and by telling the story of this company we are indirectly talking about the economic boom and economic history, in fact we are dealing with a theme of "micro history", as I said, something apparently small and irrelevant, something that seems not to be intended for history books, but which, in its simplicity, tells us a fundamental piece of the story itself broader and more general enso.
And so, for this very reason, I wanted to tell you something about a small Italian company inserted in the general context of the years immediately following the Italian economic boom.
Today, I'll tell you the story of the Del Frate brothers and their “historic” workshop.
This company was born in 1967 from the passion for cars of two brothers, Enzo and Roberto Del Frate , and initially theirs was a small village body shop and after a few years of activity, in the heart of the 70s, thanks to a collaboration with the then Fiat group, which included the Fiat and Lancia brands, the small company began to grow and expand.
In 1967 there were 2, Enzo and Roberto, after some time Aurelio Gori, the first historic employee of the workshop, would also join them and thanks to the collaboration with Fiat, the company grew by increasing its employees, with the need to also expand its offices and this growth was accompanied by innovation and courage, opening the company to new horizons and new sectors.
Today Del Frate offers multiple services to its customers, and while remaining faithful to the spirit of the old Fiat, it also takes care of other things.
In fact, among the services offered we can find in addition to the original garage that deals with bodywork and mechanical repairs, also tire sales and repair services, roadside assistance, sale of new and used cars.
In short, Del Frate today is an automotive company operating in the field in the field and its history travels hand in hand with the history of the Italian car, Del Frate was born on the wave and in the dream of the economic boom, it was born at the end of the sixties setting out on a rough road like a Rally track, from which, however, it would have come out as the winner and even today, more than 50 years after its birth, with its founding partners now retired, the company does not cease to exist and thrive.