Alta Logo

Alta Brand Overview

Alta was a small Greek vehicle maker based in Athens, later Eleusis, that built motorcycles, three-wheel trucks and three-wheel passenger cars between the early 1960s and 1978. The business began in 1958 as a maker of a 50cc three-wheeled utility vehicle called the Colibri. Its founder, Ioannis Tangkali, renamed the company Alta in 1962, taking the name from the first letters of his wife’s name, Alexandra Tangkali.

Three-wheelers had a practical advantage in Greece at the time: the law taxed them as motorcycles rather than as cars, which made them far cheaper to buy and license than a proper four-wheel automobile. Alta built its business around that loophole. In 1967 it launched the A700, a three-wheel cargo truck powered by a 35 hp BMW two-cylinder engine with an 800 kg payload. The A700 sold well and became one of the most common light trucks on Greek roads through the late 1960s and 1970s.

In 1968 Alta followed with a passenger model, the A200, a three-wheel car for three occupants powered by a 200cc Heinkel engine with a four-speed gearbox and reverse. Its mechanical layout and general concept were based on the German Fuldamobil microcar, though Alta gave it its own, more modern-looking body rather than copying the Fuldamobil’s shape outright. In 1969 the A200 sold for 39,500 drachmas, and it stayed in production until 1974. A rival Athens firm sold its own Fuldamobil-derived three-wheeler under the Attica name during the same years.

Alta later moved production from Athens to a plant in Eleusis. The company did not survive the 1970s: most sources put its closure in 1978, after about two decades of building three-wheelers for a market that was shrinking as import rules eased and small four-wheel cars became more affordable in Greece. A restored Alta A200 is preserved today in a private vehicle museum in Eggenburg, Austria.

Alta Logo Meaning

Alta’s badge carried the company name in a slanted, hand-drawn capital script, ALTA, set inside a dark green oval and ringed by a gold laurel wreath, the whole thing mounted in a chrome surround. The name itself was not invented as a marketing word: it came directly from Alexandra Tangkali, the wife of founder Ioannis Tangkali, whose first and last names supplied the letters AL and TA. The laurel wreath around the lettering followed a common European badge convention of the period, borrowed from classical wreaths used on coins and medals to suggest quality and achievement, rather than referring to anything specific about the cars themselves.

Alta Logo History and Evolution

Documentation of Alta’s visual identity is thin, as is typical for a small manufacturer that never exported and closed almost fifty years ago. The one badge design confirmed by a surviving example is the chrome, wreath and green-oval emblem used on its passenger car.

1962-1978: The Laurel Wreath Badge

This is the emblem photographed on a surviving Alta A200, mounted as a round medallion on the car’s front panel. It shows the ALTA wordmark in white slanted capitals on a dark green background, framed by a gold laurel wreath and set inside a chrome ring with a stylised spinner-like cutout pattern around it. No source documents an earlier or later Alta badge, so this design is the only one known to have marked the cars, trucks and motorcycles that carried the Alta name through the company’s closure in 1978.

Whatever Happened to Alta

Alta did not survive as a company. It built its last recorded model, the A200, until 1974, kept making the A700 truck a little longer, and shut down by 1978 without being bought out or renamed by a successor firm. No other automaker acquired the Alta name, and it has not been revived. What remains are a handful of preserved three-wheelers in Greek and European collections, including the A200 held in the Eggenburg museum in Austria.

FAQ

Who founded Alta?

Ioannis Tangkali founded the company in Athens, first in 1958 under the name Colibri, then renamed it Alta in 1962 after his wife, Alexandra Tangkali.

Who owns Alta today?

No one. Alta was never acquired; it simply stopped production, reportedly in 1978, and the brand has had no owner or successor since.

What does the Alta logo mean?

The ALTA wordmark comes from the first letters of Alexandra Tangkali’s name, and the gold laurel wreath around it is a decorative badge convention rather than a symbol tied to the cars.

What vehicles did Alta make?

Alta built a 50cc three-wheel utility vehicle (the Colibri, later folded into the Alta range), the A700 three-wheel cargo truck with a BMW engine, and the A200 three-wheel passenger car with a Heinkel engine.

Why did Alta only build three-wheelers?

Greek tax law of the period classified three-wheelers as motorcycles rather than cars, so they carried much lower taxes and licensing costs than four-wheel automobiles, which made them a viable niche for a small manufacturer like Alta.