Sarto Sotto Sette Rurale 1.0

SARTO AUTOMOBILI is an Italian automobile manufacturer, founded in 1929 by Giuseppe Sarto during the interwar boom in manufacturing. The first plant opened in 1930 with the express purpose of building the Sarto SA35, a 3498cc 6-cylinder light truck intended for industrial and agricultural use. By 1938, the SA35 and its variants – the SD29 4-cylinder diesel and SA24 4-cylinder petrol – were not only the most popular light trucks in Italy but its best-selling commercial vehicle, full stop.

During the Second World War, Sarto’s well-proven truck chassis was leveraged to produce various armed and armored vehicles, including half-tracks, rudimentary armored personnel carriers, and a failed prototype of a light armored fighting vehicle.

After the establishment of the Italian Republic, demand for military vehicles dropped precipitously. Sarto found itself entering the second half of the 20th century with a product line consisting solely of outdated truck chassis, facing a populace with an ever-growing desire for personal automobiles. To this end, Giuseppe Sarto personally commissioned the development of two passenger cars in 1952 in an effort to revitalize his company.

The first was the Sotto Sette, a small, two-seater runabout with a pioneering front-wheel-drive system which allowed for an unprecedented luggage capacity for its size. Limited by Italian regulation governing engine size, Sarto’s engineers developed a 699.8cc four-cylinder petrol motor which gave the car its name and just barely avoided the Italian road tax on engines over 701cc in displacement. Economy of materials and construction governed the production & design of the Sotto Sette.



Only two trims were available, separated not by luxury or performance but by target environment: the Rurale, for use in the Italian countryside where roads were generally still unpaved; and the Città, with firmer suspension and shorter gearing suitable for urban driving. The Sotto Sette Rurale was famously described by British automotive journalist John August as a car “designed to ferry a couple of Italian peasants across a ploughed field, holding a basket of eggs, without breaking any – eggs or peasants.” All models came with a folding canvas roof, which saved both weight and cost compared to a steel roof. The 23hp motor was sufficient to carry either trim of the Sotto Sette to a top speed of 80kph. First released in 1953, the Sotto Sette was lauded by the world’s press as an affordable, reliable, practical vehicle within reach of the masses– the German press gave it the affectionate nickname Volkswagen, or “people’s car.”