The origins of the Bianchi company stretch back to 1885, when Edoardo Bianchi opened a factory in Milan to initially manufacture bicycles, the first such fitted with pneumatic tyres. Soon came a pushbike equipped with a clip-on proprietary engine. In such a hot-bed of motor engineering, the Bianchi concern remained fairly small until the early 1920s, when it began to expand rapidly. The first Bianchi car was built in 1900. Soon the factory encompassed its own foundry and wheel-rolling plant. A series of motorcycles followed; a 498cc single in 1910, a 650cc V-twin in 1916, and a 740cc version in 1920.
At the 1921 Paris salon, Bianchi displayed a neat 600cc side-valve V-twin, which had a 3-speed gearbox with primary drive by helical gears, and an all-metal oil bath clutch built in
