Piero Dusio and Ferdinand Porsche - Part I

If you ever thought that Porsche was one of the few great car makes that didn't have much to share with Turin, please keep on reading for one of the most amazing stories I will ever be able to tell in this blog.

Piero Dusio was born in 1899 in the the small village of Scurzolengo , just few miles outside Asti, quite a lovely drive south west from Turin. Son of a waxed fabrics salesman he managed to put his lovely attitude at work from a very early age. Hard worker, he ended up building his own industry when still very young. He then happily gave up his career as professional football player in Juventus (for a knee injury) to dedicate himself to race cars. Larger than life as he was, he just wasn't satisfied with being Italian Champion in the amateur class of 1934 and first in class at the 1937 Mille Miglia. His best result for the following years would have been first overall at the dangerous 1938 Stelvio hillclimb for Scuderia Torino but all this simply still wasn't up to his standards. The young Piero probably just wasn't aware of the fact that he was racing against some of the best drivers that would have ever lived, his friends Piero Taruffi, Achille Varzi and Tazio Nuvolari to name a few. He therefore decided he could have done better that Alfa Romeo with its 2900.

In 1944 he founded Compagnia Industriale Sportiva Italiana, better known as Cisitalia, and based it in Corso Peschiera, in his beloved Turin. He hired the likes of Dante Giacosa and Giovanni Savonuzzi to design a simple, inexpensive single-seater racing car which could get Italy racing again. Pre-war racers were slowly being taken out from war-time hideouts, but they were too expensive for a country that just woke up after the WW2 nightmare.

They used Giacosa's wartime experience to design an aeronautical spaceframe, held it up with a secret cache of chrome-molybdenum that Dusio and Savonuzzi managed to obtain and held the whole thing up with a little help from Prof. Cicala from Turin's Polytechnic. The racer fitted a Fiat engine tuned to 60hp and suspensions from the Topolino (one of Giacosa's pre war design). In 1946, just one year after the war, the D46 was born.

Cisitalia produced at least 30 of them, the most famous of all was the one Tazio Nuvolari lapped twice around the circuit of Valentino waving the steering wheel to the jubilant crowd. The quick release system broke during the race and he decided to please the crowd before being disqualified.

In 1947 Cisitalia would create one of the most beautiful cars of all time. You can find one at the MOMA in New York as example of outstanding design, "sculpture in movement". It's the 202, a tubular frame dressed by a young Pinin Farina. The car would be on and off production with different engines and coach-builds until 1952, but we'll get back to this later on, because Dusio was relying on the sales of the 202 to build his dream: a Grand Prix winner.

In order to do this he wanted the engineer whose cars never managed to beat before the war, Ferdinand Porsche.

Keep on reading for Part II.

Piero Dusio and Ferdinand Porsche - Part II

In many ways the innovative genius of Ferdinand Porsche was similar to the one of the Italian and both had to deal with the darkest powers of Europe in the century. Born in Austria in 1827, he had a knick for engineering stuff from a very early age. Must have been a shock for his parents to see him going from setting up an electric system for the house to present a revolutionary electric car in Paris' Expo of 1900. If you consider putting electric motors in the wheels hubs a very ground breaking idea these days, think again. Because 23 years old Ferdinand already thought of it in this very car, the Lohner Porsche, and it was arguably also the first 4WD car.

After leaving Lohner and working in different other makes such as Daimler, he decided to flirt with power, agreeing to work for the Austrian Emperor in building the Etrich Taube plane. But his dream was to build a car for everybody and when he heard Germany's prime minister wanted to build a car for his people he promptly applied. The brief was for a car capable of 100km/h, 7km/l and the capacity to  carry the ideal german family: two adults and three kids. All this for two thirds of the price for the cheapest car on the market. The prime minister was obviously Adolf Hitler.
Porsche promptly applied and the deal was sealed in an exceptional quick time. He eventually obtained all the independence and funds for his project in 1938, Independence and funds that didn't have before, when working on it at Zundapp and NSU. 

We all are familiar with the history and revolutionary characteristics of this car, eventually named Volkswagen "Beetle" or Type-1, so there will be no need to repeat them in this blog. Porsche was also asked to work on the Auto Union racers that with a german driver at the wheel would make the führer proud and represent the so-called arian race all over the racing world. 

We are unfortunately also familiar with what Nazism created in Europe. Quite quickly Porsche's efforts had to be converted on all kind of war machinery, most notably the light all-purpose vehicle Kubelwagen and its variations. It's way too easy for us to be judgemental about Porsche's behaviour, but many times in history we had to see great innovators and geniuses dealing with all sorts of compromises in order to see their creatures coming to life. For sure we can never forget that in some of the factories slavery labour was employed and any affiliation with the Nazist cancer can be nothing but horrendous, but this is neither the place or the time for this kind of terrible considerations.

Fact is that at the end of the war Porsche tried to escape in Austria, where the allies went to pick him up to chain him to his responsibilities. He was forced to move the Type-1 project and machinery to France as war reparations, but he was almost immediately forbidden to get back to work. With no chance to pay the huge amount of money for the war reparations anymore, his dream seemed gone forever. Porsche was stuck in the french prison of Dijon with a sentence of 20 years, eventually converted to house arrests, without even a trial.

On the other side of the Alps economy was starting to live again and Dusio's businesses were booming. He was ready to pursue his ultimate desire: a Grand Prix winner. 

He found out about Ferdinand's situation and managed to organise a meeting with his son Ferry and daughter Louise. A deal was signed for the design of two cars, one GP racer, one turbine and even a tractor. All this was to be payed in three rates delivered every three months. He also managed to get 10 promising technicians to Turin for a little extra money and accommodation. Two of these technicians alone would have been more than worth the whole deal already: Rudolph Hruska and Carlo Abarth.

Dusio used to keep on repeating "I'll go bust, but damn it... I'll make the Grand Prix". He stuck to his word and spent almost all of his money on it.

Ferry Porsche started working immediately on the task, managing to get the money and free his dad as soon as possible. Time was paramount also for Dusio that needed the prototype on the track as soon as possible. The car was almost sci-fi for the time: rear engined, space frame chassis, oversquare engine, all-round independent suspensions, double overhead camshaft, 2 compressors and on/off integral traction. The compact 1,492.58cc flat 12 was capable of an excess of 380bhp at 10.000 but was preserved at a safer 350/8.000. This was the legendary Cisitalia 360, a car that would have certainly set the world of racing on different standards.

Dusio's money ran out and he decided to run (away from creditors?) to Argentina smuggling the 360 in spares. He there managed to sign a deal with the president/dictator Juan Perón (Evita's husband) to open a new Argentinian company, effectively paying for Dusio's debts. He would come back to Italy and race in 1952 but he finally gave up in 1953 and got back to Buenos Aires for good. 

His son Carlo tried and revamp Cisitalia's dream in the end of the fifties, converting its business to coachworks in Racconigi, Turin's outskirts, but eventually gave up in 1963.

As legend goes, after closing the gates for the last time, Carlo found himself in downtown Turin and with tears striping his face threw the 360's camshaft off one of the bridges of river Po.

Marcello Gandini Story - Part 1

I still have to find a comprehensive collection of the works of Marcello Gandini, therefore I decided to open a new series of posts trying to cover all his beautiful creations. The secluded genial designer that arguably gave us the seventies - and the last car design revolution that we care to remember - has never been fit for celebration and even less for giving satisfaction to the press. When asked if between all these cars, there is one that he remembers in particular he said: “I do not have the habit to associate a drawing to the end result obtained. I am not bound to the success of a particular car, rather the memory of the persons that collaborated to the project and the circumstances under which they were created (...) If I think about the Lamborghini Marzal, I think of the night previous to the launch in Geneva; We had only few hours to end the work and at midnight we still had the car dismantled on the floor…. However, we succeeded in time and the following morning left with destination Geneva.Talking about the shockingly groundbreaking Lancia Stratos HF seven years after its presentation at Turin's motor show in 1970 he only ended up commenting: “The very first Stratos was designed as freely as the [Autobianchi] Runabout and reached the aim for which it was intended: to establish a bridge between Lancia and Bertone. Having established the bridge, Lancia asked us to come up with an idea for a new sports car that would go rallying in the world championships.” It sure is the most beautiful "bridge" ever made. But more about the HF when we'll come to it.

If you have any kind of familiarity with Turin, you would not be surprised about his attitude. It is a town that keeps things for itself, a town that hates showing off and is almost bothered by publicity. Things have changed much in the last ten years in the heart Turin, since Fiat released its pressure on any kind of development in town. In 1938 Fiat still had to sharp its claws on the town but a faulty royalty allowed fascism to cast its horrid shadow on the Italian peninsula. On the bright side Marcello Gandini was born, just 19 days after another design icon as Giorgetto Giugiaro and 7 months after Leonardo Fioravanti. Must have been something in the water.

The little Marcello was born son of an orchestra director, studied music and sculpture and ended up working as interior designer. Apparently had his automotive epiphany when he first saw a Cord 812. He was impressed by the sense of speed and dynamism that those lines still express today. When a friend crashed his Osca asked Marcello to pen a body for it. The young interior designer was asked a full scale drawing for the wooden body buck to be produced and he did so by sticking together on the wall many sheets from the biggest drawing pad he could find. Giovanni Raniero, the man appointed for the wooden structure harshly told him "I can understand nothing!". The young designer didn't know that the standard was to start with the left profile and presented the right instead.

In 1963 he tried to work for Bertone, but the chief designer at the time, Giugiaro, refused to work with him. Thankfully Giorgietto left the company to open his own two years later and Gandini was hired to replace him. He would have worked there for the next 14 years. As soon as he arrived he was asked to complete one of the most important cars of all time and in effect, the first supercar as we know it today. The Lamborghini Miura. The story of this car is one of the most covered in motorsport publications but it will nevertheless deserve a post of its own.

Click HERE for part 2 - The Miura