Autobianchi is an Italian car brand that started making cars in 1955, although the founder Edoardo Bianchi was already working with car parts before the war. Twelve years later it was already taken over by the much larger Fiat. The most successful model was the A112, which was introduced in 1969. Fiat released a test balloon about the succession of the Fiat 500.
Fiat actually wanted to use Autobianchi as a somewhat more luxurious brand than its own brand. That was not successful, but the brand did function as a testing ground for later Fiat models. The A112 was in fact succeeded by Lancia's (also owned by the carmakers from Turin and the later luxury brand of Fiat) Y10, the later Lancia Ypsilon. Some early models of the first A10 were given an Autobianchi logo. Later Lancia simply 'branded' these cars as Lancia Y10s. Today, the brand has fallen into obscurity, although there is one real club is in the Netherlands.
