Agents in Argentina

Our previous post on the Constellations for the Santa Fe, Argentina, police led me to correspondence with Sergio Scalerandi  who lives in that province. He sent me quite a bit of information about the importers of Royal Enfield to Argentina in the late 1940's that I proceed to share here.

As we mentioned, the distributor at the time was Casa Iturrat, a large importer of many types of products, particularly paper ones. This company went defunct in the 1980s'. But in another Enfield mystery, the factory records in England indicate the bikes were sent to an exporter in London called "Somportex" (the name is not clearly legible in the records). There seems to be a British company named Somportex that sold chewing gum and various types of children's cards.

Here is some correspondence between Casa Iturrat and the Argentine Customs. It certifies that a particular J2 motorcycle was imported by them and that it arrived in a ship called "Highland Chieftain" as part of 135 machines that arrived in that ship in 1948.  That ship was built in 1929, served in World War II and was converted to whaling use in 1959. Luck would have it sunk in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1960, its mast still visible today. Tourists routinely mistake it for the Graf Spee. In addition to bikes it also carried quite a few post-war immigrants to Argentina.

The letterhead indicates the company had offices in Rosario, Córdoba, Mendoza, Santa Fe, Tucuman, Bahía Blanca, Mar del Plata, Resistencia and Mercedes, so it must have been quite a company.

This typewritten document, that accompanied one of Sergio's bikes, lists Royal Enfield's agents in Buenos Aires and surrounding towns. In Buenos Aires itself we have 

José R. Monti Santa Fe 4935

Armando Poggi Moldes 3021 Giambiagi & Schiavi Cerrito 544

And in the province of Buenos Aires,

Jorge Busin Avellaneda 88 Bernal (FCS) Juan Meza Santa Fe 1479 Martínez (FCCA) J. C. Bentancourt y A. Loperfetti Lavalle 575 Tigre (FCCA) Bergamino Hnos. 3 de Febrero 124 San Martín (FCCA) José Fernández Acevedo 1275 Banfield (FCS) Angel Buracchi Rivadavia 12.900 Ciudadela (FCO)

The initials in parenthesis indicate the railway lines running through the towns, as it was customary at the time to differentiate towns with similar names. FCS is Ferrocarril Sur, FCCA, Ferrocarril Central Argentino, FCO, Ferrocarril Oeste. Dealers were also listed in this ad for Iturrat,

Here are ads for José R. Monti, with a different address,

There was also Joaquín Travasa, in Maipú 1280 in Buenos Aires, an iconic corner in Buenos Aires facing the Mitre Railway terminal and the Plaza San Martín, that now is occupied by a Starbucks.

This is a promotional flyer of Casa Iturrat about the model J,

Sergio also got more information from the REOC about importers in Argentina. In addition to Casa Iturrat, they list Goldenburg, Albert Moule (which we covered before), Tocagni and Casa Mezai.  Here is an article in REVS about Moule,

Goldenburg only imported a lot of 25 ex WD/CO. Apparently it was quite common buy war surplus vehicles very cheap and various people jumped on the business. Some of the bikes were reconditioned for civilian service by dealers in the UK and as a consequence do not appear in the factory export records.

I decided to pay a visit with Google Street View to some of to those dealers. Let us start with Jose Monti, Santa Fe 4935. The place does look the part, it is the pull down curtain on the left,

Then there is Jorge Busin at Avellaneda 88, Bernal, which is now an electrical supply store,

The others seem to have been replaced by modern constructions. Once again, kudos to Sergio for all this information!