The Cisitalia D46

designed by Dante Giacosa and Giovanni Savonuzzi commissioned by Piero Dusio, president of the Juventus Football Club and industrialist at the time. Giacosa came into contact with Dusio thanks to Mr. Casalis at the end of 1944, a trusted man of the Turin industrialist, who dealt with bodywork on commission at Cisitalia (Compagnia Industriale Sportiva Italia)[citation needed], at the time a mechanical workshop located in Corso Peschiera which mainly dealt with the production of Beltrame bicycles.

Giacosa, continuing to work for FIAT, worked on the design of the car in his free time. To make his task easier, Dusio offered him to stay in his villa in Corso Galileo Ferraris, abandoned by him and his family after a bombing but fully habitable. The project was thus developed with the help of the designer Edoardo Grosso, not without difficulties related to the war. Giacosa recalls that the first 1:5 scale plasticine model was destroyed by a German police patrol looking for Dusio. The designer also actively contributed to the construction and development of the first prototype.