Luigi Segre - motor engineer and entrepreneur

Neapolitan who turned Ghia name into symbol of automotive style

Luigi Segre at his desk at the workshop of Carrozzeria
Ghia, which he turned into a global brand

The automobile entrepreneur Luigi “Gigi” Segre, whose short life managed to combine wartime heroics with creating an iconic postwar coupé whose name would come to symbolise luxury styling in mass production cars, was born on this day in 1919 in Naples.

Segre was only 43 when he died but left a lasting legacy as the driving force behind the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia sports car, which proved that beauty and style in automobile design could also be affordable.

It was so successful that when car giants Ford acquired Segre’s former company in 1970 they gave the Ghia name to top-of-the-range versions of their most popular models.

Segre had been working in his father’s construction business in Naples when Italy became embroiled in World War Two. He was a soldier in the Italian army but after the 1943 armistice took up arms against the Nazi occupiers of his home city, taking part in the uprising known as the Quattro giornate di Napoli - the Four Days of Naples - which cost 300 Italian lives but successfully drove out the German forces ahead of the arrival of Allied troops.

He volunteered to fight with the Allies, who gave him some training and sent him to northern Italy on behalf of American intelligence as a liaison officer, parachuted in behind enemy lines to work with partisan groups in Piedmont.

He learned English quickly, earning the respect of  his commanders, and his bravery impressed the Allies, who helped him secure a university place at the end of the conflict. He graduated in engineering and took a job with Siata, a small car manufacturer based in Turin which also made mopeds, a mode of transport that was hugely in demand as Italy struggled with war-damaged roads.

The VW Karmann Ghia, the stylish sports coupé
built on the chassis of the VW Beetle family car

From there he joined Carrozzeria Ghia, a coachbuilding and car design company launched by Giacinto Ghia in 1916 and then owned by the designer Mario Boano. As commercial director, Segre was so successful he was able to buy part-ownership of the business.

Carrozzeria Ghia’s market was largely domestic, making custom bodies for Italian manufacturers such as Fiat and Alfa Romeo, but Segre wanted to expand into global markets. He travelled to the United States, where his fluent English and his familiarity with Americans, due to his wartime activities, enabled him to forge a relationship with Chrysler and its chief designer, Virgil Exner, which would ultimately lead to 18 Chrysler Ghia cars.

The Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, the project that ultimately defined Segre’s legacy, came about through his connection with Wilhelm Karmann, the owner of a German coachbuilding company based in Osnabrück, in the northwest of the country. They would often meet at international motor shows.

Karmann had worked with Volkswagen before and was aware that the company, whose success had been built on the utilitarian Beetle family car, wanted to enhance its range with something more sporty. It was a contract he was keen to land and in 1952 he and Segre hatched a plan to build a sports coupé that could be mounted on a Beetle chassis.

Luigi Segre with Wilhelm Karmann, with
whom he worked on the Karmann Ghia 

Such was the waiting list for Beetles that it would have taken Ghia months to source one in Italy but Gian Paolo - Mario Boano’s son - managed to buy one in Paris and drove it back to Turin. Over the next months, with Segre, Mario Boano plus in-house Ghia designers Sergio Coggiola and Giovanni Savonuzzi all having input, the concept became a reality.

The result was a car that had the look of an expensive marque, with sweeping, sculpted lines and elegant, low-slung proportions, but was as simple to drive and as economical to run as its parent Beetle. 

Production ran from 1955 to 1974, with almost half a million of the cars sold. It cemented the "Ghia" name into the vocabulary of mainstream car buyers worldwide.

Sadly, Segre did not live to enjoy many years of Ghia success. After Mario Boano left the business in 1953, Segre became sole owner in 1954 and hired well-respected designers such as Pietro Frua to ensure Ghia continued to be at the forefront of the market.

However, in February, 1963, following successful surgery to remove kidney stones, his health suddenly and unexpectedly deteriorated and he died in a Turin clinic.

Doctors blamed a viral infection, possibly one he had picked up on a business trip to Brazil, but this was not confirmed. He was survived by his wife, Luisa, whom he had married in 1955, and their two sons, Edmondo and Silvio.

Luisa subsequently sold most of the Carrozzeria Ghia business. It was acquired by Ford in 1970 and remains in that company’s ownership, helping craft designs for the European market from its headquarters in Corso Guglielmo Marconi in Turin.

The Basilica of Santa Chiara in Naples was badly
damaged during a World War Two bombing raid

Travel tip:

Naples was the most heavily bombed Italian city during World War Two, enduring roughly 200 Allied air raids and extensive damage from retreating German forces. Following the war, a massive effort was undertaken to resurrect its historic centre.  Among the buildings worst affected were the Basilica di Santa Chiara, the 18th-century Baroque interior of which was ruined along with historic frescoes when a bombing raid triggered a fire that burned for two days, causing the roof to collapse. Restorers stripped away the damaged plaster to reveal and rebuild the church’s original 14th-century Gothic architecture.  The Royal Palace of Naples was damaged several times, including by the catastrophic March 1943 explosion of the ammunition ship Caterina Costa in the nearby port. Bombing raids damaged the palace's facades, collapsed the roof of the Court Theatre, and destroyed the palace chapel.  The Teatro di San Carlo, Europe's oldest continuously active opera house, sustained direct bomb damage in 1943. The auditorium only narrowly escaped complete demolition, and the foyer and adjacent structural sections were also badly hit. Amazingly, in view of its huge cultural importance, it was one of the first buildings to receive emergency aid. Under the direction of Allied authorities and local craftsmen, it was rapidly patched up and fully restored by 1948.

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Fiat's vast Lingotto Factory was renowned for its
rooftop test track, which was 1,500m in length

Travel tip:

Turin’s identity is closely connected with the Italian automotive industry, earning it the nickname the "Detroit of Italy." The association began in 1899 with the founding of FIAT (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino) by Giovanni Agnelli. By 1906, Turin was home to more than 20 car manufacturers. The city benefited from strategic advantages, including cheap hydroelectric power from nearby Alpine lakes and a direct rail link to France through the Frejus tunnel, which accelerated early technical exchange. The crowning symbol of this era was Fiat’s Lingotto Factory, an architectural marvel completed in 1923, featuring a test track on its roof where newly-assembled vehicles were put through their paces. As well as large-scale manufacturing, Turin became a global centre for elite automotive design and specialised coachbuilding, becoming the home of great design houses such as Pininfarina and Bertone.  Today, its engineering prowess lives on through cultural institutions such as MAUTO - The National Automobile Museum - which exhibits more than 200 cars from 80 global manufacturers.

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Read also:

Filippo Illuminato, the 13-year-old partisan who gave his life for the city of Naples

Battista 'Pinin' Farina, the little brother who became a giant of car design

Why Giorgetto Giugiaro has been described as the most influential auto designer of the 20th century

Also on this day:

1817: The death of painter Andrea Appiani

1830: The death of Francis I of the Two Sicilies

1931: The birth of film director Paolo Taviani

1936: The birth of actress Virna Lisi

1942: The birth of footballer Sandro Mazzola

1979: The birth of actor Salvatore Cascio

1982: The birth of golfer Francesco Molinari

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7 November

Niccolò Machiavelli - statesman and diplomat

Dismissal gave public servant time to write about his ruthless ideas

Statesman and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, whose name has become synonymous with the words "cunning" and "duplicity", was dismissed from office in Florence on this day in 1512 by a written decree issued by the Medici rulers.  Machiavelli was forced to withdraw from public life and retired to his home in the Chianti region of Tuscany, where he wrote his most famous work, The Prince, which was to give the world the political idea of ‘the ends justify the means’.  Had the Medici not distrusted him, Machiavelli might have continued to serve in Florence as a diplomat and military leader.  He may never have passed on to mankind the ideas he had learnt from his work during the turbulent period in Italian history when popes and other European countries were battling against Italy’s city states for power.  Read more…

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Luigi Riva - an Azzurri great

Italy's record goalscorer and hero of Cagliari

Luigi 'Gigi' Riva, who was born on this day in 1944, is widely regarded as one of the finest strikers in the history of Italian football.  Despite playing in an era when football in Italy was notoriously defensive, he scored more than 200 goals in a 16-year club career, 156 of them in Serie A for Cagliari, with whom he won the scudetto (shield) as Italian League champions in 1970.  Nicknamed "Rombo di tuono" - thunderclap - by the football writer Gianni Brera, Riva is also the all-time leading goalscorer for the Italian national team with 35 goals, his record having stood since 1974.  After his playing career, Riva spent 23 years as part of the management team for the Azzurri and was a key member of the backroom staff when Italy won the World Cup for a fourth time in 2006.  Born in Lombardy, not far from Lake Maggiore, Riva spent virtually his whole football career with Cagliari and made his home in Sardinia.  Read more…

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Gaspare Tagliacozzi - surgeon

Professor invented rhinoplasty procedure

Pioneering plastic surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi died on this day in 1599 in Bologna.  During his career, Tagliacozzi had developed what became known as ‘the Italian method’ for nasal reconstruction.  He improved on the procedure that had been carried out by the 15th century Sicilian surgeons, Gustavo Branca, and his son, Antonio.  Tagliacozzi wrote a book, De Curtorum Chirugia per Insitionem - On the Surgery of Mutilation by Grafting - which described in great detail the procedures carried out in the past to repair noses amputated during battle.  Surgeons who came after him credit him with single-handedly revolutionising the procedure and inventing what is today referred to as a rhinoplasty procedure.  Tagliacozzi was born in Bologna in 1545. He studied medicine, natural sciences and anatomy at the University of Bologna.  Read more…

Antonella Bellutti - cycling champion

Versatile athlete who excelled in several sports

Olympic cycling champion Antonella Bellutti, one of Italy’s most versatile and pioneering athletes, was born on this day in 1968 in Bolzano, the principal city of Trentino-Alto Adige, also known as Südtirol.  At the peak of her track cycling career, Bellutti won Olympic gold medals in the individual pursuit at the Atlanta Games of 1996 and in the points race at the Sydney Games four years later.  She was also a medallist in pursuit at the 1996 and 1995 world championships and won gold in the omnium at the 1998 European championships in Berlin.  Yet her cycling career may well not have happened but for a knee injury that curtailed her career as a track and field athlete. As a teenager, she had excelled as a hurdler and in combined events such as heptathlon, winning seven youth titles and setting the Italian junior record at 100m hurdles.  Read more… 

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Feast day of Ercolano – patron saint of Perugia

Bishop was martyred after trying to save city

Today sees the Umbrian city of Perugia celebrate one of the two annual feast days of its patron saint, Ercolano, who according to legend was martyred on this day in 549 at the hands of the Ostrogoths, who ruled much of Italy at that time and had placed the city under siege.  Herculanus, as he is also known, was the Bishop of Perugia and as such was charged with trying to bring comfort to his flock in the face of inevitable capture by the Ostrogoths, the tribe, thought to have originated in Scandinavia, which had swept into Italy at the beginning of the sixth century.  They had a large, well-equipped army – more powerful than the army Perugia possessed, although it had enough soldiers to deter an advance – and the Ostrogoth leader, Totila, was prepared to wait outside the walls of the city for as long as it would take to starve the population into surrender.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli. Translated by Tim Parks

As a diplomat in turbulent 15th-century Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli knew how quickly political fortunes could rise and fall. The Prince, his tough-minded, pragmatic handbook on how power really works, made his name notorious and has remained controversial ever since. How can a leader be strong and decisive, yet still inspire loyalty in his followers? When is it necessary to break the rules? Is it better to be feared than loved? Examining regimes and their rulers the world over and throughout history, from Roman Emperors to renaissance Popes, from Hannibal to Cesare di Borgia, Machiavelli answers all these questions in a work of realpolitik that still has shrewd political lessons for today.  Tim Parks's acclaimed contemporary translation renders Machiavelli's no-nonsense original as alarming and enlightening as when it was first written. His introduction discusses Machiavelli's life and reputation, and explores the historical background to the work.

Niccolò Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. Tim Parks is a British writer, novelist and translator who has lived in Italy since 1981. 

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6 November

Cesare Lombroso – criminologist

Professor who first encouraged study of criminal mind

Cesare Lombroso, a university professor often referred to as ‘the father of criminology’ was born on this day in 1835 in Verona.  Although many of his views are no longer held to be correct, he was the first to establish the validity of scientific study of the criminal mind, paving the way for a generation of psychiatrists and psychologists to create a greater understanding of criminal behaviour.  In broad terms, Lombroso's theory was that criminals could be distinguished from law-abiding people by multiple physical characteristics, which he contended were throwbacks to primitive, even subhuman ancestors, which brought with them throwbacks to primitive behaviour that went against the rules and expectations of modern civilised society.  Read more…

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Antonio Landieri - Camorra victim

Family fought for 12 years to establish son’s innocence

A 12-year-fight to clear the name of an innocent victim of a Camorra clan war began on this day in 2004 when 25-year-old Antonio Landieri, a disabled resident of the notorious Vele di Scampia housing complex in Naples, was shot dead outside a recreation club where he had been playing table football with some friends.   Antonio and his friends were leaving the club, at the side of a square known to be frequented by drug dealers, when a car pulled up a short distance away from them in Via Labriola. A group of armed men emerged from the car and began shooting at them.  His friends instinctively ran away but Antonio, who could walk but only with severely restricted mobility - the consequence of complications at birth that left him partially paralysed - could not keep up and was hit several times in the back. He died in the arms of his mother. Read more…

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Giovanni Buitoni - entrepreneur

Turned family business into multinational company

Giovanni Buitoni, the entrepreneur who turned Buitoni pasta and Perugina chocolates into the international brands they are today, was born on this day in 1891 in Perugia.  The Buitoni family had been making pasta since 1827, when Giovanni’s great grandmother, Giulia, opened a small shop in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, in order to support the family after her husband, Giovan Battista Buitoni, had become ill.  She had her own recipe for pasta that used only high quality durum wheat.  Giulia had pawned her wedding jewellery in order to set up the shop but the business did so well that in 1856 two of the couple’s nine children, Giuseppe and Giovanni, opened a factory in Città di Castello, just over the border in northern Umbria, to manufacture pasta using a hard durum wheat they sourced in Puglia.  Giovanni’s sons, Antonio and Francesco, continued the company’s expansion. Read more…

Enzo Biagi - author and journalist

Much respected presenter taken off air by Berlusconi

Enzo Biagi, the distinguished print and television journalist and author of more than 80 books, died in Milan on this day in 2007, at the age of 87.  A staunch defender of the freedom of the press, Biagi himself was the victim of censorship from the highest level of the Italian government in 2002 when prime minister Silvio Berlusconi effectively sacked him from the public broadcaster RAI for what he called "criminal use" of the network.  In what became known as il Editto bulgaro - the Bulgarian Edict - because he made the pronouncement during a state visit to Sofia, Berlusconi named another journalist, Michele Santoro, and the satirical comedian, Daniele Luttazzi, as guilty of similar conduct and said it was his duty to "not to allow this to happen".  It meant that the last years of Biagi's life were marred somewhat by an absence from the screen that lasted five years.  Read more…

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Vino Novello

Raise a glass to autumn in Italy

Italy’s new wine from this year’s harvest - Vino Novello - goes on sale in the shops and will be served in bars and restaurants from around today.  The light, fruity, red wine, produced throughout Italy from different grape varieties, is enjoyable to drink and a bargain buy to take home with you.  Vino Novello is often similar in taste, body and colour to the French wine, Beaujolais Nouveau, which is exported to a number of other countries after its release in the third week of November.  Like Beaujolais Nouveau, Vino Novello has a low alcohol content and is meant to be drunk while it is still young. The wine should be consumed quickly after the bottle is opened and unopened bottles should be kept for only a few months. In some parts of Italy there is a tradition that the last days to drink it are i giorni della merla (the days of the blackbird), which are traditionally the coldest days at the end of January.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Criminal Man, by Cesare Lombroso. Translated by Mary Gibson and Nicole Hahn Rafter

Cesare Lombroso is widely considered the founder of criminology. His theory of the “born” criminal dominated European and American thinking about the causes of criminal behaviour during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  This volume offers English-language readers the first critical, scholarly translation of Lombroso’s Criminal Man, one of the most famous criminological treatises ever written. The text laid the groundwork for subsequent biological theories of crime, including contemporary genetic explanations.  Originally published in 1876, Criminal Man went through five editions during Lombroso’s lifetime. In each edition Lombroso expanded on his ideas about innate criminality and refined his method for categorising criminal behaviour. In this new translation, Mary Gibson and Nicole Hahn Rafter bring together for the first time excerpts from all five editions in order to represent the development of Lombroso’s thought and his positivistic approach to understanding criminal behaviour.

Cesare Lombroso was a physician and criminologist who wrote extensively about jurisprudence and the causes of crime. Mary Gibson is professor emerita of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The late Nicole Hahn Rafter was senior research fellow at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

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5 November

Alessandro Malaspina - explorer

Mapped Pacific on four-year epic journey

Alessandro Malaspina, an explorer not so well known as his compatriots, Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Colombus, but whose contribution to mankind’s knowledge of the globe was no less important, was born on this day in 1754 in Mulazzo, a village now in the province of Massa-Carrara, about 120km (75 miles) northwest of Florence.  Like Vespucci and Columbus, Malaspina sailed under the flag of Spain, whose king, Charles III, was an enthusiastic supporter of scientific research and exploration.  He spent much of his life as an officer in the Spanish navy. It was after completing an 18-month circumnavigation of the world on behalf of the Royal Philippines Company that he proposed to the Spanish government that he make an expedition to the Pacific similar to those undertaken by the British explorer James Cook and the Frenchman Comte de la Pèrouse.  Read more…

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Attilio Ariosti – composer

Musical friar was once a rival of Handel

Baroque composer Attilio Malachia Ariosti, who in later life became a rival of Handel in London musical circles, was born on this day in 1666 in Bologna.  He became a Servite Friar, known as Frate Ottavio, when he was 22, but he quickly obtained permission to leave the order and become a composer at the court of the Duke of Mantua and Monferrato.  During his life, Ariosti composed more than 30 operas and oratorios as well as many cantatas and instrumental works.  Ariosti became a Deacon in 1692 and then obtained the post of organist at the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna.  His first opera, Tirsi, was performed in Venice in 1697 and that same year he was invited to travel to Berlin by Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, the Queen of Prussia. She was a great-granddaughter of James I of England and the daughter of the Electress Sophia of Hanover. Read more…

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Giovanni Battista Belzoni – archaeologist

The Great Belzoni’s powerful physique helped him remove Egyptian treasures

Explorer and pioneer archaeologist of Egyptian antiquities, Giovanni Battista Belzoni, was born on this day in 1778 in Padua, which was then part of the Republic of Venice.  He became famous for his height and strength and his discovery and removal to England of the seven-ton bust of Ramesses II. Belzoni was born into a poor family. At the age of 16 he went to find work in Rome and studied hydraulics. He was planning to take monastic vows but in 1798 French troops occupied the city and he moved to the Batavian Republic, now the Netherlands, where he earned his living as a barber.  He moved to England in 1803, allegedly to escape going to prison. He was six feet seven inches tall and had a powerful physique. For a while he earned his living as a circus strongman under the name, The Great Belzoni.  Read more…

Francesco Chiarello - survivor of two World Wars

Calabrian veteran lived to be 109 years old

Francesco Domenico Chiarello, who would live to be one of the world's longest surviving veterans to serve in both World Wars, was born on this day in 1898.  Chiarello was 109 years old when he died in June 2008.  Of soldiers anywhere on the planet who were active in the 1914-18 conflict and were called up again after 1939, only the Frenchman Fernand Goux outlived him.  Goux, from the Loiret department of central northern France, died just five months later, aged 108.  Chiarello also died as one of the last two surviving Italian soldiers from the First World War, outlived only by Delfino Borroni, from just outside Pavia in Lombardy, who was a tram driver during the Second World War.  Borroni recovered from serious injuries sustained in an Allied bombing raid to be 110 years old when he died four months after Chiarello.  Read more...

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Filippo Taglioni - dancer and choreographer

Father of star ballerina was pioneer of Romantic ballet

The dancer and choreographer Filippo Taglioni, who choreographed the original version of the ballet classic La Sylphide for his ballerina daughter Marie Taglioni, was born on this day in 1777 in Milan.  La Sylphide was one of the earliest works to represent a new ballet genre, which became known as Romantic ballet, that gained popularity in the 19th century as an alternative to traditional classical ballet.  Romantic ballet was different in that the characters were recognisable as real people rather than the gods and goddesses and strange creatures from Roman and Greek mythology that populated classical ballet.  The work, which premiered at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra in 1832, cemented Marie Taglioni’s status as the prima ballerina of the Romantic movement, although the only version to survive was choreographed by the Danish master August Bournonville. Read more…

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Pietro Longhi - painter

Painter who allowed us to see inside 18th century Venice

The painter Pietro Longhi, who was renowned for his accurate scenes of everyday life in Venice in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1702.  Longhi was originally called Pietro Falca and was the son of a silversmith in Venice, but he changed his name after he began painting.  He started with historical and religious scenes but his work evolved after a stay in Bologna where he encountered Giuseppe Maria Crespi, who was considered one of the greatest Italian painters at the time.  Longhi’s son Alessandro later wrote that his father had a ‘brilliant and bizarre spirit’, which led him to accurately paint people in conversation and show us the love and jealousy going on in the background.  His paintings vividly depict Venetian life and show wonderful details of the clothes and possessions of the upper and middle classes.  Read more…

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Book of the Day:  Alejandro Malaspina: Portrait of a Visionary, by John Kendrick

The thirst for knowledge and adventure have always been at the forefront of human imagination. In this engrossing tale, John Kendrick takes us on a voyage across the Pacific via the Philippines, New Zealand, the infant British colony at Sydney Cove, and the Tonga Islands, chronicling the life of Alejandro Malaspina, an 18th-century Italian navigator in the service of Spain.  Malaspina arrived in Spain with a scientific background and an ardent interest in the philosophy of the Enlightenment. A skilled navigator, his 1789 Pacific voyage was the last and most important of his career - a five-year scientific and political examination of the Spanish colonies in the Americas and the Philippines. His appraisal of the British colonies at Sydney Cove and Tonga allowed him to compare life in a place almost untouched by European contact with the situation in the colonies. Malaspina eventually returned to Spain, where he was received by King Charles IV and commissioned to produce a work covering all aspects of his studies that would establish Spain's reputation as a modern enlightened state. After his time in jail was ended by Napoleon’s intervention, Malaspina was exiled to Italy, where he died in 1810.  Using Malaspina's writings, including the journal of his great voyage and his personal letters, John Kendrick's Alejandro Malaspina: Portrait of a Visionary makes the life of this extraordinary man available for the first time in English.

John Kendrick is a historian from Vancouver who specialises in the history of exploration. His other works include The Men With Wooden Feet: The Spanish Exploration of the Pacific Northwest, and The Voyage of Sutil and Mexicana: The Last Spanish Exploration of the Northwest Coast of America.

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