Piero Dusio & the Cisitalia

The name Cisitalia was once the automotive equivalent of a household word. By the mid-1950s it had even crossed the border into mainstream cultural consciousness, thanks to a special exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Forty years later, it's known only to Italian car buffs and Porsche aficionados familiar with Ferdinand's life story. All but forgotten is the name Piero Dusio, the man behind the Compagnia Industriale Sportiva Italia. Dusio's story contains the ardor of early auto racing, the fire of post-war economic recovery, and even involves those enduring international icons Juan and Evita Peron. It's a story of riches to rags, obsession and excess. It's a story worth telling.Cisitalia formally expired in 1965 after ending its second incarnation, and in several post-mortems, Piero Dusio was summarily dismissed as "a flamboyant crazy...a caricature Italian playboy who couldn't resist swinging from his heels." This spendthrift aristocrat supposedly frittered away the company's resources in self-aggrandizing pursuits. The real story is much more complex.

A Charmed Youth
There's no doubt that Dusio qualified as a playboy. By the time he reached his twenties, Piero was already a star--he was playing for Juventus, Turin's professional soccer team. A handsome natural athlete, he was the 1920s equivalent of Michael Jordan. When a knee injury sidelined him, he had no cause for worry; wealthy team supporters found him work with a Swiss-backed textile company. In his first week, Dusio sold more fabric than his predecessor had sold in a year. This uncanny performance earned him a big promotion and a tremendous salary for the time--250,000 lire per month. By 1926, at age 27, Dusio opened his own textile company, producing Italy's first oil cloth.

Oil cloth is a practical fabric, and Dusio was a practical young man. He soon diversified into banking, sporting goods such as tennis rackets, bicycle manufacturing (the Beltrame brand) and expanded his textile firm into apparel. The name Cisitalia was coined at this time. He'd always been lucky, and perhaps his luckiest strike came with the decision to make uniforms. They were hot property in those few years of uneasy peace between world wars, and Dusio had a contract with Mussolini for military uniforms by 1932. He'd arranged for German sales as well, but his timing here was less fortunate--the first trainload set out for Germany just as the Wermacht collapsed. Dusio, acting quickly, intercepted the shipment at Verona and turned it around. That loss avoided, he doubled his efforts for Mussolini's home boys, winning an exclusive contract that kept the Fascists clothed throughout the war.

Backing up to 1929, when Dusio was 30, he purchased his first Maserati and joined the ranks of "gentleman drivers." He raced often over the next six years, finally gaining recognition when he placed sixth in the Italian Grand Prix and first in class in the 1937 Mille Miglia. For that event he drove a 500cc SIATA Sport. In 1938 he created his own racing team, "Scuderia Torino," for his SIATA, Maserati 1500s and 3000s and assorted Alfa Romeos and Fiats.

These were the days of the unbeatable Auto Unions and Mercedes-Benz silver arrows. The invincible Germans made a strong impression on Dusio. Only Alfa Romeo, with Tazio Nuvolari behind the wheel, made any dent against the united Teutonic front. Dusio's personal best was reached in an Alfa 8C 2300--third overall in the 1938 Mille Miglia. Immediately after that event he changed the gear ratios and used the same car to tackle the Stelvio hillclimb, beating the man who had bested him at Brescia.

The disparity between marques irked Dusio. He envisioned a single-marque race, where every car would be identical so only true driving skills could win. And he wanted that marque to be one of his own making.

Long Nights
Dusio's financial security couldn't stop the war, and bombs fell on Turin almost daily in 1944. When his villa on Corso Galileo Ferraris was damaged by incendiary bombs, he moved his family out to the country. His dream of building a race car wasn't dampened by the destruction, however, and Dusio actively sought someone who could make the dream a reality. He chose one of Fiat's chief engineers, Dante Giacosa. At 39, Giacosa was well known for designing Fiat's seminal Topolino. Bombs had driven Giacosa from his house in 1942, so he'd been staying with friends around Turin. Giacosa describes Dusio's seduction in his book "Forty Years of Design with Fiat."

"He plied me with arguments to demonstrate the merits of his project, putting them across with the irresistible charge of enthusiasm that was so typical of the man: smiling, likeable, full of drive, always going straight to the point. To clinch matters he threw in an invitation to make use of parts of his villa. This villa was extremely beautiful and had a magnificent air raid shelter deep down underneath it...Dusio offered me a pleasant bedroom on the top floor with a bathroom and two other rooms for the drawing boards. A palace, no less, even though the heating was provided by a cast iron stove that burnt wood."

Every evening after work at Fiat, Giacosa sketched in Dusio's rooms. He designed a single-seat racer on a Fiat 500 chassis powered by a modified Fiat 1100 engine. The car took on a new level of sophistication when Giacosa, wandering through Cisitalia's bicycle factory, found stacks of chrome-molybdenum tubing. The result was to become the first tubular space-frame race car.

Publicity for the Debut
Thrilled with Giacosa's design, Dusio began construction immediately. The arrangement couldn't last, of course. Once the war ended, Fiat's demands on Giacosa made moonlighting impossible. Dante recommended Giovanni Savonuzzi as his replacement. Savonuzzi, then head of Fiat's experimental aircraft division, had wanted a change but was expecting to move within Fiat. In his usual inimitable style, Dusio persuaded him to take the role of chief engineer at Cisitalia by offering ten times the salary Fiat paid and a company car as well. Savonuzzi accepted in August 1945 and immediately set up a state-of-the-art tool room, test room and prototype shop.

By spring of 1946, the single-seater D46 prototype was ready, and by August seven race-ready cars were complete. Respected racer Piero Taruffi, hired in the spring, became race manager and test-driver, and by September, all seven cars were lined up at the start of the Coppa Brezzi, the first postwar road race in Italy. Nineteen other cars, including Maseratis, Simca-Gordinis and Ferrari's first (the Auto Avio) joined the seven Cisitalia D46s on the streets of Turin's Valentino Park.

Dusio had slipped photos of his new cars to one of Italy's sport newspapers before the race. The move generated its own press as the competing papers protested the act as favoritism. In addition, Dusio made sure he had a team full of champions: The Mantuan hero, Nuvolari, was accompanied by Taruffi, Clemente Biondetti, Franco Cortese, Raymond Sommer and Louis Chiron. Dusio himself drove the seventh (and, as it turned out, the winning) car. To top it off, Nuvolari made racing history--and the international papers--when the steering wheel (a hinged affair designed to make ingress and egress in the tight auto easier) snapped off in his hand. "Nivola," famous for his unstoppability, kept on racing, holding the steering wheel aloft, driving with one hand on the stub of the steering column.

Dreams of Greater Things
Dusio's win, both at Brezzi and in the press, generated hundreds of orders for the single-seater as well as for the two-seater under production, based on drawings left by Giacosa. Dusio told Savonuzzi, "I want a car that's wide like my Buick, low like a Grand Prix, comfortable like a Rolls-Royce, and light like our D46." The first two-seater of Savonuzzi's design was built by carrozziere Rocco Motto, and other than a strange boxy treatment for the rear window, was fairly conventional. Savonuzzi, schooled in aeronautics, wanted a more aerodynamic automobile.

By the end of September 1946, Savonuzzi himself had modeled a new coupe out of plasticine. The wooden model made from this form was taken to the Turin Polytechnic's laboratories for testing. Tests were favorable, predicting a theoretical top speed of 250 kph. Alfredo Vignale built the body, which wore the distinctively high rear fins that presaged the extreme style of the BAT cars. Despite the small 1100cc engine, the car reached speeds of 200 kph on the long straightaway between Turin and Milan. Vignale then built a second "Aerodinamica" for a more powerful 1200cc engine. Roadster versions followed, but no more Aerodinamicas. About 20 years later, one of the three "Aerodinamica Savonuzzi" Cisitalias was tested in Pininfarina's wind tunnel, where the Cd proved to be an amazingly low 0.29.

Two-seater Berlinette (Sport Coupes) followed. Savonuzzi supplied Pinin Farina with simplified drawings based on the Aerodinamica--no fins, larger windows and a more compact rear.

The result, completed in September 1947, was the beautiful 202 Sport Coupe. Today, this car is considered Cisitalia's greatest achievement, as this is the car that caused an international stir when, four years later, it was chosen for the New York Museum of Modern Art's display of "Eight Automobiles." The Pinin Farina design was considered to be the first truly modern sports car, the foundation of the "Italian Style" that wowed the world for the following two decades.

Strangely, the 202 was the least of Dusio's concerns. While he never discouraged its production, he never made any effort to encourage it. Instead, his heart was already set on a new dream--the creation of the perfect Grand Prix car. But when he went to Savonuzzi, the engineer didn't like the idea. "I refused for three reasons: Firstly, the Cisitalia offices had neither the technical ability nor the manpower, not to mention the necessary laboratory and workshop equipment. Secondly, it was the time of the Alfa Romeo 158, a perfectly tuned car that was having its way on every racetrack. 'Grand prix cars,' I said, 'have a big drawback: Either they come out first or they are a complete failure.' The third reason was that it would have upset production of the 202 cars to be sold, which was already full of organizational difficulties." According to author Nino Balestra, "These unenthusiastic reflections, which should have given food for thought, brought an icy atmosphere to the room. All of a sudden Piero Dusio stood up and, looking Savonuzzi in the eye, said 'Savonuzzi, it will be the ruin of me, but I'm going to make the Grand Prix!'"

Get Me the Germans!
Faced with his implacable commendatore, Savonuzzi defended himself. "To make a competitive Grand Price racer nowadays," he declared, "apart from the necessary equipment, you would need to get your hands on the Mercedes or Auto Union engineers, the very ones who designed the formidable German cars in the years before the war." Dusio relayed this opinion to his good friend, journalist Corrado Millanta. Millanta had recently met, through his friend Nuvolari, two engineers who'd worked with Ferdinand Porsche, Rudolph Hruska and Carlo Abarth. The two men claimed Porsche had a Grand Prix design waiting to be produced. Millanta, Taruffi and Dusio met the two men at Count Giovanni Lurani's Milan villa late on an October evening in 1946. By 2 a.m., the men had signed a preliminary agreement.

The next day, Dusio burst into Savonuzzi's office, shouting, "I've found the Germans!" On Feb. 3, 1947, Cisitalia and Ferry Porsche signed formal contracts. Dusio agreed to fork over a million Francs for the release of Ferdinand Porsche from the French war-crimes prison. The money not only bailed out Papa Porsche, it funded the Porsche studio's move back to its prewar digs in Stuttgart. Porsche's Karl Rabe took charge of the new Cisitalia project; Hruska worked as Porsche's representative; Carlo Abarth became race manager; and Dr. Robert Eberan Eberhorst, the man responsible for the supercharged 3-liter 12-cylinder Auto Union, became technical consultant.

The Germans didn't exactly have a ready-to-build racer. The ambitious drawings for a horizontally opposed 1500cc 12-cylinder powerplant had yet to be completed, and original estimates specified 20 million lire would be needed to build the car. The Germans, though obviously talented engineers, were accustomed to the unlimited government-backed resources of Auto Union, particularly Eberhorst, who proceeded to spend millions amassing sophisticated machine tools, robbing resources from the struggling 202 production line. In October, only eight months later, Savonuzzi called an emergency meeting. Over 100 million lire would be necessary, he explained, just to get one Grand Prix car to the starting line. There was no way Cisitalia's current sales would support it.

Whether Savonuzzi's voice of reason was drowned in the chorus of cheering Germans, or Dusio simply refused to hear, the warning was ignored. Savonuzzi resigned, and Hruska took his position as chief engineer.

A Sea of Red Ink, An Eye to the South
By early 1948, the already disorganized production lines at the House of the Ibex (Dusio's family crest, now emblazoned on his automobiles) were in complete disarray. Accounts of this year, the "days of chaos," are sketchy. It's known that at one point the workers took over the factory--perhaps in protest for lack of pay, as suppliers attached every lire that hadn't already been spent on the Grand Prix. Dusio, while haggling with the bankruptcy courts, had already turned his hopes southwest, to Argentina. In February 1948, he'd submitted two plans, to General Juan Domingo Peron, for production of Cisitalias and a new Argentine automobile. A month later, he sent Hruska to check out the place. By September, the Argentine newspapers announced the imminent opening of Auto Argentina, a state-supported auto manufacturer, under Dusio's tutelage.

In March 1949 the Italian magistrate granted Cisitalia permission to continue production of the Grand Prix. By then, all the main parts had been assembled, but now even Hruska tried to persuade Dusio to give up on the costly Grand Prix in favor of a Porsche-designed V6, a car that would've been similar to modern Porsches. Dusio refused.

Instead, Piero loaded up several Coupes and shipped them to Buenos Aires. One month later, Dusio personally presented the cars to Juan and Evita on the steps of the Casa Rosada. One author described Evita that day as "more diaphanous than ever with her blond hair caught up at the neck, a very full skirt and a faint smile on her bloodless lips, ready to be consigned to the descamisados as a legend."

While Dusio could count on generous government funding for the Argentine auto, he was warned that it wouldn't be easy. Even Savonuzzi was compelled to visit the country and provide his assessment. He told Dusio honestly that there were no sources for grommets, bushings, rubber, all the incidentals one took for granted in an industrial capital like Turin. Savonuzzi predicted that the only way to build any cars would be to have a supply agreement with a current manufacturer, preferably American. Savonuzzi declined the offer of managing the new enterprise and returned to Turin.

There, Cisitalia, despite Piero's absence, struggled to complete the Grand Prix. The first engine was essentially destroyed by the extensive tests (at one point it pegged 511 bhp, though with no usable torque). So two more engines and two chassis were prepared. Coupe and roadster racing continued, but the company team now wore "Squadra Carlo Abarth" where "Squadro Piero Dusio" had been.

Another Carlo, Piero's son, was now in charge, and Carlo Dusio chose the 1950 Turin Motor Show as the stage for his last-ditch effort to save the Grand Prix. The beautiful 202 Coupe stood a few yards from the yellow and blue-painted Grand Prix body, its innovative engine beside it on a stand. Milking the press for all he was worth in an attempt to raise the last 50 million still needed, Carlo invited Nuvolari (in full race wear) and bigwigs including the U.S. ambassador to a publicity shoot. The press was favorable, declaring the Grand Prix car to be a "great project which would bring prestige to Italian motoring." Letters were sent to the Italian Olympic Games Committee, the Automobile Club Italia and many politicians, and Nuvolari himself made the rounds pleading their case. But the millions did not turn up. In Jan. 1951, the Grand Prix sailed for Argentina.

Which was just as well. In less than a year, the formula for which the car had been designed (1500cc) was set to expire. The new World Championship required 2000cc without supercharger. The Cisitalia Grand Prix was obsolete.

Autoar and Proyecto Willys Overland
Had Piero Dusio's good luck finally run out? Not quite. One last lucky strike made his Argentine enterprise possible. Adamant, along with Peron, that the Autoar (Automotores Argentinos SA) should not be dependent on an American automaker, Dusio stumbled upon a stash of 3,000 Willys Jeeps traded to Argentina by the U.S. military in exchange for meat. The never-used Jeeps were purchased for a modest sum and converted into heavy, practical, six and seven-seater automobiles. In October 1949, while his son struggled in Turin, Piero road-tested the first P.W.O-Rural on the streets of Buenos Aires.

The Grand Prix was all but forgotten. Three years later, journalist Gianni Rogliatti spotted the racer under a canvas in a corner of the Autoar factory. With Autoar now managed by Giovanni Piacentini d'Andrea, and a second Argentine firm, Cisitalia Argentina SA, set up to import machine tools, Dusio returned to Italy to assist his son with a reorganized Cisitalia SpA. In May 1952, father and son drove their new 202D BPM (a single-seater body with a Botta & Puricelli-Milano 2-liter marine motor) in the 1952 Mille Miglia. The car arrived in Vicenza with the leaders but dropped out due to clutch problems. Four months later, Piero again joined his son at the open trials for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

The Grand Prix's Debut
All these Italian races renewed Piero's lust for the Grand Prix. Upon his return to Argentina, a burst of activity at Autoar resulted in the race car's first brush with asphalt. The motor that had arrived with the car in Argentina was the second, incomplete one, so it had to be built almost from scratch.

After several misstarts, Dusio's engineers recorded 187 bhp at 7500 rpm with a load of 25 kilos on Jan. 28, 1953. When the car finally ran on the long straight avenida leading to the San Isidro race track, it reached 200 kph for a short stretch (still nowhere near the projected 367 kph possible), but with only the rear-wheel drive engaged. Once the engineers engaged the front-wheel drive, the wheels locked and the car went into a series of crazed spins. With difficulty, the spinning car was stopped. It turned out that the Porsche Studio's experimental four-wheel drive caused the front wheels to turn twice whenever the rear wheels turned three times.

Working all day and night, Dusio's engineers succeeded in repairing the car barely in time for its debut at the Buenos Aires Autodrome. On Feb. 1, 1953, Felice Bonetto, flown in from Italy specially for the day, drove the car before the grandstands at the Grand Premio Cuidad de Buenos Aires. He covered two laps at moderate speed with a great trail of smoke caused by the car's many oil leaks.

Several months more work resulted in a few more trials, but the Grand Prix soon died, with two perforated pistons, on June 18, 1953, never to run again. A Buenos Aires service station owner bought it for 140,000 pesos in 1958, planning to stuff in an American motor. Huschke von Hanstein, Porsche's racing manager at the time, rescued the car by shipping it to Porsche's new museum. The second car ended up at the Donington Grand Prix Museum in England.

Denouement
Over the next few years, Piero busied himself in Argentina, often finding work for his fellow Italians. One such deal brought SIATA to Argentina on a contract to assemble Italian-made parts into Argentine automobiles. The venture would have enjoyed generous government funding from Piero's good friend Peron, if the September 1955 coup hadn't nixed the deal. Dusio survived the political turmoil but left Autoar the next year. He stayed with his second firm, Cisitalia Argentina SA, importing Italian machine tools and building trucks and agricultural equipment.

In May 1960 Dusio brought Fiat and Borgo Pistons into a conglomerate called Cisitalia Argentina Industrial y Comercial SA. Plans were made to build the new Cisitalia 750 (the same car then being produced by his son Carlo in Italy) and an Abarth 850. By 1965, however, both father and son conceded defeat--Carlo in Racconigi near Turin, Piero in the province of Buenos Aires. Piero lived for another 10 years, then was buried in his adopted country.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "There is no history; only biography," and most of us, like Dusio, are blind to the history we create. If he'd kept his eye on posterity, Piero would've sunk his fortune into the beautiful 202 instead of his accursed Grand Prix car. Still, the D46s, 202s, Aerodinamicas and handful of other Cisitalias created by the House of the Ibex are now cherished collector cars. That's not a bad legacy for a "flamboyant crazy" to leave behind.

Sources
"Cisitalia Catalogue Raisonne 1945-1965" by Nino Balestra & Cesare de Agostini, Automobilia 1991
"Modern Classics," Rich Taylor, Scribner, 1978
"Cisitalia," by Stanley Nowak, Automobile Quarterly, Vol 8 No. 2
"Forty Years of Design with Fiat,' by Dante Giacosa, Automobilia, 1979
"Abarth Catalogue Raisonne 1949-1986" edited by Carlo Felice Zampini Salazar, Automobilia 1994