Carlo Abarth | |
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| Born | Karl Albert Abarth (1908-11-15)15 November 1908 |
| Died | 24 October 1979(1979-10-24) (aged 70) Vienna,Austria |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Occupation | Automobile designer |
| Years active | 1925–1971 |
Carlo Abarth (15 November 1908 – 24 October 1979), bornKarl Albert Abarth, was an Italian automobile designer.
Abarth was born in Austria, but later was naturalized as an Italian citizen; and at this time his first name Karl Albert was changed to its Italian equivalent of Carlo Alberto.[1]
Abarth was born inVienna, during the time of theAustro-Hungarian Empire. As a teenager, he worked forCastagna inItaly (1925–27), designingmotorbike andbicycle chassis.[2] Back in Austria, he worked forMotor Thun andJoseph Opawsky (1927–34), andracedmotorbikes,[3] winning his first race on aJames Cycle inSalzburg on 29 July 1928.[4] He would be European champion five times, along with continuing his engineering. After a serious accident inLinz he abandoned motorbike racing, and designed asidecar (1933) with which he managed to beat theOrient Express railway on the 1,300-kilometre (810 mi) stretch from Vienna toOstend (1934).[5]
He moved permanently to Italy in 1934, where he metFerdinand Porsche's son-in-lawAnton Piëch, and married his secretary.[6] In 1939 Abarth was long hospitalized and had his racing career end, due to a racing accident inLjubljana, Slovenia.[7] Other than visits to Austria and Italy, he remained in Slovenia until the war was over. During this time he worked at Ignaz Vok's factory.[8]
Following this, he moved toMerano, from where his ancestors originated.[9] Abarth got to know bothTazio Nuvolari and the family-friendFerry Porsche, and, together with engineerRudolf Hruska andPiero Dusio, he established theCompagnia Industriale Sportiva Italia (CIS Italia, later becomingCisitalia), having the ItalianPorsche Konstruktionen agency (1943–48). The first automobile outcome of this cooperation was the rather unsuccessfulTipo 360F1 prototype (see alsoPorsche 360). TheCIS Italia project ended when Dusio moved toArgentina (1949).
Abarth then founded theAbarth & C. company with Cisitalia racing driverGuido Scagliarini inBologna (31 March 1949),[10] using his astrological sign, thescorpion, as the company logo. The same year, Abarth & Co moved to Turin. Financed by Scagliarini's fatherArmando Scagliarini, the company made racing cars, and became a major supplier of high-performanceexhaust pipes, that still are in production as Abarth. On 20 October 1965 Abarth personally set various speed records at theAutodromo Nazionale Monza.[11]
He sold the company on 31 July 1971 toFiat, although he continued to manage it as a CEO for a period.[12] Later he moved back to Vienna, Austria, where he died in 1979.[13]
Carlo Abarth was married three times. His first wife was the secretary of Volkswagen's headAnton Piëch in Vienna.
He married his second wife,Nadina Abarth-Žerjav from Ljubljana, in 1949. She was the daughter of the Slovenian politicianGregor Žerjav. They lived together in northern Italy until 1966, and they divorced in 1979.
The same year, about six weeks before his death, Abarth married his third wife, Anneliese Abarth; she continues to head the Carlo Abarth Foundation[14] and wrote one of his biographies in 2010.
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