A clever bit of reuse

Giovanni Battista Carpanetto, a respected painter from Turin. Behind the poster lies a clever bit of recycling by the artist. Shortly before FIAT was founded in July 1899 by Giovanni Agnelli and others, the group of founders acquired the Ceirano brothers' small automobile workshop. Ceirano had recently developed a prototype called the Welleyes. Because FIAT wanted to start advertising immediately after its founding, but there was little time to create an entirely new design, Carpanetto reused a poster he had already designed for the Ceirano Welleyes. He simply changed the lettering: he replaced the brand name at the top with the letters F.I.A.T. and added the words Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino at the bottom.