Giorgetto Giugiaro - automobile designer

The Volkswagen Golf Mk I was one of  Giugiaro's most
successful designs, the car selling 6.8 million units

Creative genius behind many of the world’s most popular cars

Giorgetto Giugiaro, who has been described as the most influential automotive designer of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1938 in Garessio, a village in Piedmont about 100km (62 miles) south of Turin.

In a career spanning more than half a century, Giugiaro and his companies have designed around 200 different cars, from the high-end luxury of Aston Martin, Ferrari, Maserati and DeLorean to the mass production models of Fiat, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Daewoo and SEAT.

The Volkswagen Golf and the Fiat Panda, two of the most successful popular cars of all time, were Giugiaro’s concepts.

In 1999, a jury of more than 120 journalists from around the world named Giugiaro “Designer of the Century.”

Giugiaro formed his own company.
Italdesign, just outside Turin in 1968

Giugiaro’s father and grandfather both painted in oils and Giugiaro became passionately interested in art. He enrolled at the University of Turin to study art and technical design.

He took an interest in styling automobiles only after one of his professors suggested that the motor industry would pay big money for someone of his artistic vision who could come up with elegant and practical designs.

Not surprisingly, after he had presented some sketches of cars at a student exhibition in Turin in 1955, it was Fiat - based in Turin - who became aware of his talent. The company’s technical director, Dante Giacosa, approached Giugiaro and three months later he joined Fiat’s Special Vehicle Design Study Department. He would stay with Fiat for four years, although he struggled to win approval for his designs.

From Fiat, he moved up the ladder of automotive design very quickly, lured away by Nuccio Bertone to join Gruppo Bertone, where Giugiaro delivered an amazing run of successful designs.

The stylish Alfa Romeo Brera is based on another of
Giugiaro's designs for Italdesign

Appointed chief designer at the age of just 22, his work included the Aston Martin DB4 GT, the Ferrari 250 GT Concept, Chevrolet Corvair Testudo Concept, Alfa Romeo Sprint, and the Fiat 850 Spider.

Giugiaro moved to Ghia in 1965, shortly before it was taken over by Alejandro de Tomaso, head of De Tomaso. He stayed there only two years, but it was long enough for him to make his mark with the De Tomaso Mangusta and the Maserati Ghibli, both unveiled in 1966.

Only a year later, Giugiaro moved on again, this time to form a partnership with Aldo Mantovani and a new company, based in Moncalieri, just outside Turin, which would be called Italdesign (later Italdesign Giugiaro.)

Since its founding, Giugiaro’s company has styled an estimated 200 vehicles for clients all over the world.

The Fiat Panda is another massive seller worldwide
that began life as a Giorgetto Giugiaro design

Among the best known have been the Alfa Romeo Alfasud, Lotus Esprit, Volkswagen Golf and Scirocco, Bugatti EB112, Saab 9000, Subaru SVX, and the DeLorean DMC 12. There are few major motor manufacturers around the world for whom Giugiaro or his company have not worked.

Probably the most successful of all has been the Volkswagen Golf Mark I, which was unveiled for the first time in 1974 and went on to sell 6.8 million units.

Giugiaro’s favoured styles in the early days of Italdesign tended to accentuate curves, as characterised by the DeTomaso Mangusta and the Maserati Ghibli. Later he became more concerned with straight lines, as characterised by the VW designs for the Passat and Scirocco as well as the Golf. Other designers often followed suit. A high-sided taxi he conceived for the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1978 did not enter production but became the influence for a generation of MPVs.

Like the Golf, Giugiaro’s Fiat Panda sold in huge numbers. Conceived to be minimalist, aesthetic and functional, the model continued in production for 32 years with barely an upgrade in that period.

His design talents have not stopped at cars. Giugiaro has also designed cameras for Nikon, firearms for Beretta, and motorcycles for Ducati, and Suzuki.

The castle at Moncalieri, once a royal residence for the
Savoys, now houses a Carabinieri training college

Travel tip:

Moncalieri, where Giugiaro established the Italdesign company with his partner Aldo Mantovani, has a population of almost 58,000 people. About 8km (5 miles) south of Turin within the city’s metropolitan area, it is notable for its castle, built in the 12th century and enlarged in the 15th century, which became a favourite residence of King Victor Emmanuel II and subsequently his daughter, Maria Clotilde. The castle now houses a prestigious training college for the Carabinieri, Italy’s quasi-military police force.

The village of Garessio sits in a valley in the Ligurian Alps,
close to the Langhe wine region

Travel tip:

Garessio, where Giugiaro was born, is located in the Ligurian Alps, on the border between Liguria and Piemonte provinces. In medieval times it was an important staging post for the salt trade and eventually salt brought over the Ligurian Alps from the Mediterrean Sea was re-packed and sold in Garessio for distribution to Northern Europe.  It is close to the Langhe wine region, which produces famous wines such as Barolo and Dolcetto, and is famous for the Aqua San Bernardo mineral water, which is renowned to have healing properties. At the turn of the century, Garessio built its fame as a spa town. It has a well preserved historical town centre.

More reading:

Why Giuseppe 'Nuccio' Bertone is known as the 'godfather of Italian car design'

Dante Giacosa, the engineer behind the iconic Fiat Cinquecento

How 'Pinin' Farina became a giant of the car industry

Also on this day:

1616: The death of architect Vincenzo Scamozzi 

1893: The death of opera composer Alfredo Catalani

1956: The birth of TV presenter Gerry Scotti


Home

Piero Dusio - sportsman and entrepreneur

His Cisitalia company revolutionised automobile design

The Cisitalia 202 set new standards in sports car design
that changed the way automobiles looked

The footballer, racing driver and businessman Piero Dusio was born on this day in 1899 in Scurzolengo, a village in the hills above Asti, in Piedmont.

Dusio made his fortune in textiles but it is for his postwar venture into car production that he is most remembered. Dusio’s Cisitalia firm survived for less than 20 years before going bankrupt in the mid-1960s but in its short life produced a revolutionary car - the Cisitalia 202 - that was a gamechanger for the whole automobile industry.

Dusio played football for the Turin club Juventus, joining the club at 17 years old, and was there for seven years before a knee injury forced him to retire at the age of only 24, having made 15 appearances for the senior team, four of them in Serie A matches.

Piero Dusio was a former footballer
who made his fortune in textiles

He kept his connection with the club and from 1942 to 1948 was Juventus president. In the short term, though, he was forced to find a new career. He took a job with a Swiss-backed textile firm in Turin as a salesman. He took to the job immediately and made an instant impression on his new employers, selling more fabric in his first week than his predecessor had in a year.  Within a short time he had been placed in charge of sales for the whole of Italy.

In 1926, at the age of 27, Dusio opened his own textile company, producing Italy's first oil cloth.

By the 1930s he had a portfolio of business interests that included banking, tennis racket manufacture and racing bicycles. In the textile business he branched out into uniforms and casual clothing. He made his fortune after landing a contract with Mussolini to supply military uniforms for the Italian army. Demand for his waterproof canvas products also soared.

His personal wealth enabled him to indulge his passion for motor racing. He bought himself a Maserati and regularly raced. He finished sixth in the Italian Grand Prix of 1937 and won his class in the Mille Miglia in 1937 driving a 500cc SIATA Sport.

In 1938 he finished third overall in the Mille Miglia and won the Stelvio hillclimb. War then intervened but once it had finished Dusio was eager to resume his career in the cockpit.

The Cisitalia D46 was the first car to be produced
by Piero Dusio's new company

Yet Italy’s economy was on the floor at that stage with most of its industry destroyed. Dusio realised that it might be unrealistic to expect the expensive sport of motor racing to pick up exactly where it left off.

With that in mind, he created his new company - the Consorzio Industriale Sportivo Italia, Cisitalia for short - with a plan to produce a single-seater racing car cheap enough to tempt the amateur.  He commissioned the Fiat engineer, Dante Giacosa, famous for the Fiat 500 Topolino to design it and soon the Cisitalia D46 was born.

Dusio's dream of a one-model series featuring only the D46 came to nothing, but the car scored multiple successes, particularly in the hands of drivers as talented as the brilliant Tazio Nuvolari, winner of 24 Grands Prix in the pre-Formula One era.

He overstretched himself somewhat with his next project, paying a fortune to extract the legendary German engineer Ferdinando Porsche - a Nazi party member - from a French prison. Porsche’s innovative but complex mid-engined Cisitalia 360 was a triumph of engineering but ultimately proved too expensive for Dusio to support.

Battista 'Pinin' Farina is said to have made
his reputation with his work on the 202

Yet Dusio was not done.  In 1945, he took on another Fiat man, their young head of aviation, Giovanni Savonuzzi, with the idea of building a two-seater commercial coupé based on the D46.  Their project was taken up by Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina, who came up with the Cisitalia 202 Coupé.

The car was not a commercial success. It was priced higher than rival cars from Jaguar and Porsche that offered better performance. In the end, fewer than 200 were built.

Yet its design - the one that made Farina’s reputation, although it closely followed Savonuzzi’s preliminary sketches - is credited with changing the way cars look, setting an entirely new standard - a template for the way sports cars look even today.

Whereas road cars traditionally had been a collection of elements - cabin, hood, grill, fenders, headlights etc - with no real thought for aerodynamics, at least until the late 1930s, the Cisitalia 202 was a single unit. The headlights and the grill were perfectly aligned elements of the hood, the wheels were entirely inside the body, removing the need for separate fenders, and the cabin tapered in a smooth line to the rear.

Savonuzzi had applied to his sketches all he had learned about airflow in his aviation work and Farina had put his ideas into practice. The result was a beautiful design that was likened to a sculpture.  When the Museum of Modern Art in New York became the first museum to exhibit automobiles as examples of functional design, the 202 was the first vehicle to enter their collection.

For all that, Dusio could not sell enough cars to rescue his ailing company and the only way he could continue his career was to accept an offer of support from the government of Argentina to set up in car production in Buenos Aires, where he would remain until his death in 1975 at the age of 76.

Cisitalia continued to be run by his son, Carlo Dusio, but was made bankrupt in 1965.

The cathedral in Asti dates back to the 11th century

Travel tip:

The village of Scurzolengo is just over 15km (9 miles) northeast of Asti, a city of just over 75,000 inhabitants about 55 km (34 miles) east of Turin. The city enjoyed many years of prosperity in the 13th century when it occupied a strategic position on trade routes between Turin, Milan, and Genoa. The area between the centre and the cathedral is rich in medieval palaces and merchants’ houses, the owners of which would often compete with their neighbours to build the tallest towers. Asti was once known as the City of 100 Towers, although in fact there were 120, of which a number remain, including the Torre Comentina, the octagonal Torre de Regibus and Torre Troyana.

The strikingly modern Museo Nazionale dell' Automobile
is a major tourist attraction in Turin

Travel tip:

With a long history in motor vehicle design and manufacturing - Fiat, Lancia, Iveco, Pininfarina, Bertone, Giugiaro, Ghia and Cisitalia were all founded in the city - it is hardly surprising that Turin is home to Italy’s most important automobile museum, the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile (also known as MAUTO).  Opened in 1960 and dedicated to Giovanni Agnelli, founder of FIAT, the museum’s building and permanent exhibition were completely renovated in 2011. The MAUTO, in  Corso Unità d'Italia, is today one of Turin’s most popular tourist attractions.

More reading:

Was Tazio Nuvolari the greatest driver of them all?

The 'smallest brother' who became a giant of the car industry

The brilliance of engineer Vittorio Jano

Also on this day:

54AD: The suspicious death of the emperor Claudius

1815: The execution of Napoleon's military strategist Joachim Murat


Home

Pietro Frua - car designer

Built business from a bombed-out factory

Pietro Frua became one of Italy's leading
car designers in the 1960s

The car designer and coachbuilder Pietro Frua, who built some of Italy’s most beautiful cars without achieving the fame of the likes of Giovanni Bertone or Battista “Pinin” Farina, was born on this day in 1913 in Turin.

He is particularly remembered for his work with Maserati, for whom he designed the A6G and the Mistral among other models.

The son of a Fiat employee, Carlo Frua, Pietro was an apprentice draftsman with Fiat and from the age of 17 worked alongside Battista Farina for his brother, Giovanni Farina, who had a coachbuilding business in Turin. He became director of styling for Stabilimenti Farina at the age of just 22.

After being obliged to diversify during the war, when he designed electric ovens and children’s model cars among other things, Frua bought a bombed-out factory building in 1944, restored it to serviceable order and hired 15 workers to help him launch his own business.

The first car he designed in his own studio was the soft-top Fiat 1100C sports car in 1946.  Subsequent work for Peugeot and Renault came his way and in 1955 he was approached by Maserati for the first time, to work on the design of the two-litre A6G coupe.

Pietro Frua's Mistral, the sports car that helped propel
Maserati into the forefront of the luxury market

In 1957, he sold his company to Carrozzeria Ghia, another Turin coachbuilder, whose name would become synonymous with sporty excellence across the motor industry. The Ghia director Luigi Segre made Frua head of design. His big success there was the Renault Floride, of which more than 117,000 were sold.

They fell out, however, when Segre tried to take credit for the model’s success, leading Frua to open his own studio again.  An influence on Pelle Petterson’s design for the iconic Volvo P1800, he also designed several cars for Ghia-Aigle, the former Swiss subsidiary of Ghia, and for Italsuisse.

By the 1960s, Frua was one of Italy’s leading car designers in Italy, with a reputation for elegant, tasteful lines, a perfectionist who would often deliver his cars to motor shows around Europe himself, having treated the journey as a test drive.

In 1963, Frua designed a range of cars for Glas, Germany’s smallest car-maker, which included the Glas GT Coupé and Cabriolet as well as the V8-engined 2600, which was nicknames the "Glaserati" for its likeness with Frua's Maserati-designs.

The car became the BMW GT, after BMW had rescued Glas from financial difficulties with a 1966 buy-out.

Frua's Maserati A6G had a design that exuded power

Also in 1963, Frua returned to Maserati to build the four-door Quattroporte which, following on from the 3500GT and the 5000GT, saw him firmly back in the Maserati stable.

His Mistral, developed in 1965, propelled Maserati into the forefront of the luxury sports car market, the car finding a substantial following for its powerful, understated image.

In 1965, he began a successful association with the British-based AC car company, for whom his AC Frua Spyder drew on the Mistral’s shape.

In the 1970s Frua began to scale back his work, concentrating on small projects and one-offs, styling exclusive versions of a Chevrolet Camaro, a BMW 2000 TI, an Opel Diplomat, a BMW 2800, a Porsche 914/6 and a five-litre Maserati.

Hew worked with French racing driver Guy Ligier to create the Ligier JSI. Moving his workshop to Moncalieri, a town just south of Turin, he accepted commissions from wealthy individuals such as the Shah of Persia and the Aga Khan.

One of the last cars to enter series production based on Frua’s designs was the two-door GT Maserati Kyalami, which made its debut at the 1976 Geneva Motor Show.

In 1982, Frua underwent treatment for cancer but died in 1983, a short time after his 70th birthday.

Fiat's extraordinary factory in the Lingotto district of Turin
was once the largest car manufacturing plant in the world

Travel tip:

Frua’s apprenticeship for Fiat would have seen him become familiar with Fiat’s enormous, iconic factory in the Lingotto district of Turin, famous for a production line that progressed upwards through its five floors, with completed cars emerging on to a then-unique steeply banked test track at rooftop level. Opened in 1923, it was the largest car factory in the world, built to a starkly linear design by the Futurist architect Giacomo Matte Trucco. The factory was closed in 1982 but the building was preserved out of respect for the huge part it played in Italy’s industrial heritage. Redesigned by the award-winning contemporary architect Renzo Piano, it now houses concert halls, a theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and a hotel, as well as the Automotive Engineering faculty of the Polytechnic University of Turin.  The rooftop track, which featured in the Michael Caine movie, The Italian Job, has been preserved and can still be visited today.

The handsome castle at Moncalieri now houses
a training college for the Carabinieri

Travel tip:

Moncalieri, where Frua moved his studio in the 1970s, has a population of almost 58,000 people. About 8km (5 miles) south of Turin within the city’s metropolitan area, it is notable for its castle, built in the 12th century and enlarged in the 15th century, which became a favourite residence of King Victor Emmanuel II and subsequently his daughter, Maria Clotilde. The castle now houses a prestigious training college for the Carabinieri, Italy’s quasi-military police force.



More reading:

How little Battista Farina became a giant of car design

The insult that inspired Ferruccio Lamborghini

Dante Giacosa, father of the Cinquecento

Also on this day:

1660: The birth of composer Alessandro Scarlatti

1930: The birth of radical politician and campaigner Marco Pannella


Home

Maria Teresa de Filippis – racing driver

Pioneer for women behind the wheel

Maria Teresa de Filippis in 1958

The racing driver Maria Teresa de Filippis, who was the first woman to compete in a Formula One world championship event and remains one of only two to make it on to the starting grid in the history of the competition, died on this day in 2016 in Gavarno, a village near Bergamo in Lombardy.

De Filippis, a contemporary of the early greats of F1, the Italians Giuseppe Farina and Alberto Ascari and the Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio, qualified for the Belgian Grand Prix in June 1958 and finished 10^th.

She made the grid for the Portuguese and Italian Grands Prix later in the year but had to retire from both due to engine problems. 

She managed only six laps in the former but was unlucky not to finish in the latter event at Monza, where she completed 57 of the 70 laps. Although she was at the back of the field, 13 other cars had retired earlier in the race and she would therefore have finished eighth.

These were her only F1 races. The following year she turned her back on the sport following the death of her close friend, the French driver Jean Behra, in a crash in Germany. Only a year earlier, her former fiancé, the Italian driver Luigi Musso, had also been killed.

De Filippis prepares to take the wheel outside the Maserati
garage during the 1958 season

De Filippis came from a wealthy background, born in Naples in 1926 and brought up in the 16^th century Palazzo Marigliano. Her family, with aristocratic roots, also owned the Palazzo Bianco in Caserta.

A keen horsewoman, she also loved skiing and tennis as a teenager but took up car racing in order to prove a point to her two older brothers, Antonio and Giuseppe, who had teased her about her prowess at the wheel.

Determined to prove them wrong, at 22 she entered her first race, a hill climb between the port of Salerno and the town of Cava di Tirreni, 10km (6 miles) inland, and won.

Finding, to her surprise, that she had no fear behind the wheel she quickly progressed to sports car events, finishing second in the 1954 Italian sports car championship.

It was at the sports car race that accompanied the 1956 Naples Grand Prix that De Filippis caught the eye.  Driving a works-entered Maserati 200S on a circuit that followed the walled streets and tree-lined boulevards of Posillipo, an upmarket residential area of her home city, she started at the back of the grid after missing practice but worked her way through the field to finish second.

Maria Teresa de Filippis pictured at the age of 88

The invitation to compete in Formula One soon followed and it was in the Maserati 250F, the same car that took Fangio to his fifth world title the previous year, that she made her historic debut at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

Although a woman in motorsport was not a new phenomenon – the French driver and aviator Camille du Gast had taken part in the 1901 Paris to Berlin rally – Formula One was a wholly male-dominated world and there were considerable barriers to overcome.

Stirling Moss, the British driver she considered a friend, doubted whether a woman had the strength to handle an F1 car at speed, while the director of the French Grand Prix at Reims that followed the Belgian race allegedly barred her from taking part, telling her – in her words – that “the only helmet a woman should wear is the one at the hairdressers.”

It was at the French Grand Prix that Luigi Musso died. Although they had broken off their engagement and he had a new girlfriend, his death hit De Filippis hard nonetheless and made her think about whether she wanted to continue.

As the only female driver, she was never short of attention, but one of the fans to whom she was introduced at her Monza appearance in 1958, an Austrian textile chemist by the name of Theodor Huschek, made a bigger impression than others.

The iconic Maserati 250F

She bumped into him again in Istanbul the following year and after meeting for a third time on a skiing trip they became engaged and married. After living in Austria and Switzerland they moved to Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Dolomites, then to Rome and next Capri, the idyllic island in the Bay of Naples.

They had a daughter, Carola, and settled in Bergamo area when Theodor began working for the Legler textile firm in Ponte San Pietro, to the northwest of the city. They settled in Gavarno, a village between Scanzorosciate and Nembro.

Despite De Filippis having broken new ground for women in motor racing, the only other female driver to participate in a Formula One race is Lella Lombardi, her fellow Italian, who started 12 times between 1974 and 1976.

In later life, De Filippis was vice-president of the International Club of Former F1 Grand Prix Drivers.

The facade of the Palazzo Marigliano

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Marigliano, built in the early 16^th century, is the former home of Andrea de Capua, the fourth Count of Altavill and the chief legal executive for the Kingdom of Naples. It was refurbished in the 1750s with frescoes by Francesco de Mura and paintings by Giovanni Battista Maffei. It can be found right in the heart of the city in Via San Biagio dei Librai, which forms part of the historic Spaccanapoli, the narrow, straight thoroughfare that runs in a 2km (1.25 miles) diagonal across the city. Today the beautiful inner courtyard hosts artisan workshops and part of the palace is given over to apartments.

Gavarno is situated in a wooded valley near Bergamo

Travel tip:

Gavarno is a village of some 1,200 residents a few kilometres to the northeast of Bergamo overlooking the stream of the same name that joins the Serio river at nearby Nembro. Built largely on a gentle hillside, it is in an area popular with walkers, offering pleasant woodland paths. Between Gavarno and Nembro there is a interesting modern church, consecrated only in 2000, dedicated to Pope Giovanni XXIII, who hailed from Sotto il Monte in Bergamo province.

Home

Giuseppe ‘Nino’ Farina – racing driver

The first Formula One world champion

Giuseppe 'Nino' Farina had family roots
in the automotive industry

Emilio Giuseppe Farina, driving an Alfa Romeo, became the first Formula One world champion on this day in 1950.

The 43-year-old driver from Turin - usually known as Giuseppe or 'Nino' - clinched the title on home territory by winning the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

He was only third in the seven-race inaugural championship going into the final event at the Lombardy circuit, trailing Alfa teammates Juan Manuel Fangio, of Argentina, by four points and his Italian compatriot, Luigi Fagioli, by two.

Under the competition’s complicated points scoring system, Fangio was hot favourite, with the title guaranteed if he was first or second, and likely to be his if he merely finished in the first five, provided Farina did not win.  He could have been crowned champion simply by picking up a bonus point for the fastest lap in the race, provided Farina was no higher than third.

Fagioli could take the title only by winning the race with the fastest lap, provided Farina was third or lower and Fangio failed to register a point.

Farina could win the title only by winning the race, recording the fastest lap and hoping Fangio finished no better than third place.  A top-three finish with the fastest lap bonus would do if Fangio did not score at all.

Farina on the cover of the Argentine motor
racing magazine El Gráfico in 1953

In the event, Farina won and Fangio had a bad day, retiring twice – first in his own car, on which the greabox failed, and then in team-mate Piero Taruffi’s Alfa. He scored one point for the fastest lap, but that on its own was not enough.

It was a third victory of the season for Farina, who had also triumphed in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten.

Born in Turin in 1906, Farina’s roots were in the car business.  He was the son of automotive coachbuilder Giovanni Carlo Farina and the nephew of the brilliant car designer Battista “Pinin” Farina.

Giuseppe excelled at skiing, football and athletics but was always likely to opt for motor sport.  He bought his first competition car while still at university and abandoned a potential career as an officer in the Italian Army in order to fulfil his ambitions on the track.

He made his competitive debut in 1933 and by 1936 was driving Alfas for Enzo Ferrari’s Scuderia Ferrari team. In 1937 he won his first Grand Prix in Naples and by the end of the season was Italian champion, a title he retained in 1938 and 1939, driving for Alfa Corse, then the official Alfa Romeo team.

The Second World War almost certainly robbed him of his best years. In the immediate years following, he fell out with Alfa Corse, but had some successes in a privately-entered Maserati before returning to Scuderia Ferrari. 

Farina in practice at Monza in 1955

In 1950, however, he rejoined Alfa and enjoyed his best season, going back to Ferrari in 1954 only because Alberto Ascari – world champion in 1952 and 1953 - had left Ferrari and switched to Lancia, creating a vacancy for team leader.

Farina retired in 1955, after which he became involved in Alfa Romeo and Jaguar distributorships and later assisted at the Pininfarina factory.  He died in June 1966 at the age of 59 en route to the French Grand Prix, when he lost control of his Lotus in the Savoy Alps, near Aiguebelle, hit a telegraph pole and was killed instantly.

Travel tip:

Apart from the motor racing circuit, Monza is notable for its 13th century Basilica of San Giovanni Battista, often known as Monza Cathedral, which contains the famous Corona Ferrea or Iron Crown, bearing precious stones.  According to tradition, the crown was found on Jesus's Cross.  Look out also for Villa Reale, built in the neoclassical style by Piermarini at the end of the 18th Century, which has a sumptuous interior and a court theatre.

The church of Santa Giulia in Borgo Vanchiglia

Travel tip:

Giuseppe Farina’s father established his coachbuilding business in the historic Borgo Vanchiglia district of Turin, near the confluence of the Dora Riparia river and the Po. The neo-Gothic church of Santa Giulia, on Piazzetta Santa Guilia, is at the heart of the neighbourhood, which is renowned for buildings of unusual design.

Home

Bruno Ruffo - motorcycle racer

Italy's first world champion on two wheels

Bruno Ruffo in action on the track

Motorcycle racer Bruno Ruffo, winner of the inaugural 250cc World Champion- ship in 1949, was born on this day in 1920 in Colognola ai Colli, a village in the province of Verona.

He shares with Nello Pagani the distinction of being Italy's first world champion motorcyclist, Pagani having won the first world title in the 125cc class in the same year.

Ruffo wanted to race from the age of eight, having become fascinated with the motorcycles and cars that his rather repaired in his workshop.

He was able to drive a car at the age of 10 and was given his first motorcycle by his father as a 16th birthday present.  He entered a race for the first time the following year at Montagnana near Padua and won. The minimum age for participants was 18 and it later transpired he had falsified his identity papers to take part.

The Second World War interrupted his progress.  Drafted into the Italian Army, Ruffo served for 20 months on the Russian front.

After the war, he bought a Moto Guzzi 250, which he raced privately, enjoying considerable success in 1946, when he won nine of the 11 races he entered in the cadet class.

He was Italian champion in the senior 250cc class in both 1947 and 1948, his victory in the Grand Prix of Nations at Faenza in the second of those years earning an invitation to join Moto Guzzi's official team when the Grand Prix World Championship was launched in 1949.

Giacomo Agostini

Ruffo won the very first race in the 250cc category in Switzerland.  A second place in the Ulster GP and fourth in the GP of Nations at Monza gave him enough points from the six eligible events to finish top of the points classification.

Moto Guzzi dropped out of the 1950 championship in the 250cc class but gave Ruffo permission to race for Mondial in the 125cc class, in which he claimed his second world title.

Victories in the French and Ulster GPs in a championship expanded to eight races in 1951 enabled him to clinch his second 250cc world title and he was hot favourite to land a third in 1952 only for a crash in Stuttgart in July to rule him out of the last three events.

Injuries sustained in another crash in 1953 persuaded him to retire from racing on two wheels but he continued his career in motorsport, switching to cars.  Driving for Alfa Romeo and Maserati, he had several podium finishes.

He quit racing for good in 1958 after a miraculous escape when his Maserati overturned at 200kph in an uphill time trial. He had to be cut from the wreckage but recovered from his injuries and decided not to push his luck any further.

Cars remained central to his life after his racing career ended with the establishment of a successful vehicle rental business in Verona.

The bronze monument to Bruno Ruffo in Verona

Already honoured in 1955 when he was made a Knight of Merit of the Italian Republic, in 2003 the title of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic was conferred upon him by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

The award put him in the company of Giacomo Agostini, Pier Paolo Bianchi, Eugenio Lazzarini and Carlo Ubbiali as recipients of the award for their success in motorcycle racing.

Ruffo died in 2007, aged 86.  His life is commemorated in Verona with a monument in bronze depicting a human figure crouched over a speeding motorcycle, and in Colognola ai Colli with a sports hall named in his honour.

Travel tip:

The monument to Bruno Ruffo, created by the artist Marco da Ronco, can be found a short distance from Verona's central Piazza Bra, in a small garden at the junction of Via Roma and Via Morette.  Piazza Bra adjoins the Arena di Verona, the Roman amphitheatre nowadays used as a venue for music concerts and in particular opera, for which it is among the most famous outdoor settings in the world.

Montagnana's medieval city walls are still intact

Travel tip:

Montagnana, where Ruffo won his first race on a dirt track, is best known for having one of the best preserved medieval city walls in Europe, as well as two castles, the Rocca degli Alberi and the Castle of San Zeno.  Andrea Palladio's Villa Pisani is another nearby tourist attraction.

More reading:

Giacomo Agostini, Italy's 15 times World Motorcycling Champion

Enrico Piaggio - creator of Italy's iconic Vespa scooter

Luigi Fagioli - Formula One's oldest winning driver

Also on this day:

1920: The birth of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the minister who took Italy into the Euro

(Picture credits: Montagana walls by Zavijavah; Giacomo Agostini by Gede; both via Wikimedia Commons)



Home