Way back in 1859, Corrado Frera was born in Kreuznach, Prussia. He moved to Italy in the 1880’s and became an Italian citizen.
Starting out with a store selling toys and gifts, he went on to sell bicycles and then, in 1898, began constructing motorcycles to order.
By 1906, Frera was producing his own motorcycles in a workshop he established in Tradate, using Swiss Zédel engines. Thef following year they also produced machines using NSU engines.
Things were going well. By 1910 the factory was making 1200 motorcycles a year, increasing to 3000 by 1915, making Frera the most important Italian motorcycle factory in the days before Ducati.
By this time the engines were manufactured in-house, built to the Zedel design under licence.
Frera kept going during the First World War, producing motorcycles for the Italian army. After the conflict, the company was employing over 600 people, with an annual output peaking at 6000 motorcycles annually.
In 1928 the factory proudly announced they’d made 50,000 motorcycles. A year later, as a global economic crisis hit, the company was in trouble and Corrrado withdrew from it amid disagreement with the board.
Corrado Frera died in 1941.
