The company was founded in the mid 1950's by Italian immigrants Benso Bonadimani, Ercole Montini and Savino Caselli, all of them mechanical engineers. Montini worked for Beretta in Italy. At the beginning they were producing parts for the now defunct Argentinian arms manufacturer Ballester Molina. Their first handgun was a modified version of a Ballester model which they called "Luan", combining the first two letters of the last names of the 2 designers of the pistol, Luce and Antonovich. The gun didn't have much commercial success and very few of them were produced; nowadays they are quite rare collector's items.
