CMN

Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali, normally abbreviated CMN, was established in Milan in 1919 when investors acquired the troubled De Vecchi automobile works and retained facilities, designs and skilled personnel, including engineer Luigi Marino. Racing driver and shareholder Ugo Sivocci brought the young Enzo Ferrari into CMN first as a test driver and then as a competition driver. The company's initial and principal automobile was the 15/20 HP, a 2,297 cc side-valve inline-four whose cylinders were cast in two blocks. Competition-bodied 15/20 HP cars appeared in the 1919 Parma–Poggio di Berceto hill climb and Targa Florio; Ferrari drove one with Nino Berretta, an early step in a career later inseparable from his own marque. During 1920 CMN collaborated with Officine Toscane at Pontedera and subsequently acquired that plant, where the inherited four-cylinder design was refined. Recoverable sources identify four defensible CMN families: the 1919–23 15/20 HP; an advanced 1,940 cc overhead-valve Tipo 7 credited with 125 km/h; a separately listed but unnamed approximately 2.2-litre four-cylinder; and the large 25 HP with an approximately three-litre inline-six. Sources disagree whether the latter three appeared in 1922 or were presented in 1923, so the catalog preserves a 1922–23 uncertainty rather than choosing an unsupported exact date. Automobile production ended in 1923 and the Pontedera works passed to Piaggio. No reliable serial register, annual output, body catalog, prices, road-versus-racing split or production totals survive, and the additional 2.2-litre car lacks a published factory designation. It is retained as a transparent evidence-gap family because its displacement distinguishes it from both the 2,297 cc 15/20 HP and 1,940 cc Tipo 7. Four rows therefore account for every currently recoverable CMN automobile family without turning racing bodies, individual entries or undocumented variants into extra models.

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