Venturi (company)

Venturi is a Monaco-based automotive manufacturer. Founded in 1984 by French engineers Claude Poiraud and Gérard Godfroy as MVS (Manufacture de Voitures de Sport). Venturi operated for nearly sixteen years, before declaring bankruptcy in 2000. The same year, Monegasque Gildo Pallanca Pastor purchased Venturi, and decided to focus on electric-powered motors.

The first team to commit to the Formula E World Championship, Venturi competed under the name of ROKiT Venturi Racing with its drivers Edoardo Mortara and Lucas di Grassi during its last season, in 2022.

In April 2022, Venturi announced that it would be applying its knowledge to the challenges of space. The brand entered into strategic partnerships with Venturi Lab (Switzerland) and Venturi Astrolab (United States) in order to be a candidate for the development of mobility technologies for the Moon.

On 31 March 2023, the Venturi Group announced that its American strategic partner Venturi Astrolab had signed an agreement with Elon Musk's company SpaceX to send the FLEX rover to the Moon in 2026.

On 19 June 2023, at the Salon international de l'aéronautique et de l'espace de Paris-Le Bourget, Venturi presented the lunar wheel designed by Venturi Lab for the FLEX rover. It is made up of 192 cables and is presented as being hyper-deformable, even at the very low temperatures of the Moon's South Pole.

On 3 April 2024, Venturi Group announces that the American company Venturi Astrolab, Inc. (Astrolab), a strategic partner of Venturi Group, has awarded a NASA contract to support the development of Artemis campaign’s lunar terrain vehicle. Its rover, known as FLEX, is equipped with batteries and wheels developed by Gildo Pastor's teams in Monaco and Switzerland.

The first Venturi came out in 1984, created by Claude Poiraud and Gérard Godfroy, two former engineers at Heuliez. The goal was to present the only "Grand Tourisme" French car capable of competing with the English Aston Martin, the Italian Ferrari, and the German Porsche. The first car shown had a Volkswagen Golf GTi engine and the name was originally spelled "Ventury", with a "y" at the end. In 1985, the car was shown with a 200 PS (147 kW) Peugeot 505 Turbo engine, but by the 1986 Paris Motor Show it had reached its definitive form with the PRV V6 engine. Production began in 1987, with five cars built in the first year with production increasing in the subsequent years. The headquarters of the company was located in Couëron, Pays de Loire, where almost 750 cars were produced in the forthcoming 20 years.

From 1987 to the mid-1990s, they built mid-engined coupés and roadsters with turbocharged PRV engines and Renault gearboxes. Engine power ranged from 200 to 260 PS (147 to 191 kW) for the then offered MVS Venturi Coupé and Transcup series. The naturally aspirated Venturi 160 used the catalyzed 2849 cc version of the PRV V6; this was meant to be sold in Japan and was therefore also available with an automatic transmission. There was also the 185 PS (136 kW) Venturi 180, mainly developed for Italy, which used the turbocharged 1995-cc inline-four Douvrin engine from the Renault 21 Turbo.