In 1975, the team entered the European Formula Two Championship with Giorgio Francia and Duilio Truffo, achieving some success with its own car, the BMW-powered Osella FA2.

In the following years, the FA2s were occasionally entered by privateers, one of them being the Swiss touring car driver Charly Kiser.

The Osella FA3 Formula Three car, powered with Toyota or Lancia engines, competed in the 1976 German and Italian F3 championships without making any great impression.

Osella returned to the European Formula Two Championship in 1979, with American driver Eddie Cheever racing the well-used FA2, again powered by a BMW engine.

After securing the sponsorship of the Ente Tabacchi Italiani tobacco company via their flagship brand MS, Enzo Osella decided to upgrade his activities to Formula One.

Powered by Ford Cosworth DFV, the car was presented in a black and white livery with large Denim branding on the sidepods.

The team hired Giorgio Valentini and Tony Southgate to design a new car, with input from Enzo Osella himself.

Towards the end of the season tragedy struck, when Riccardo Paletti was killed in a start-line accident at the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix.

Lack of funding and reliability issues prevented the drivers to qualify for many of the events on the calendar, Fabi's 10th place at the Deutch Grand Prix the best result of the season.

The Alfa engine program helped the team to survive the increasingly professional turbo era but it failed to improve its competitiveness.

Turbos blew up regularly and power output had to be reduced down to the level of the non-turbo cars just to achieve the necessary reliability.

At the end of the season, on the occasion of the Australian Grand Prix, Ghinzani suffered a high-speed collision with the Lotus of Nelson Piquet, leaving him with an injured ankle.

In fact this was one of the few projects that regularly brought work and money to Volpiano, especially in hillclimb races, with Mauro Nesti many times winner of European and Italian Championship, and many other drivers, with PA9 and PA9/90 models.

In the 1990s, Osella moved to Atella in the south of Italy where he built a new ultra-modern facility to produce some very competitive sports cars.