Carlo Abarth

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Carlo Abarth (born November 15, 1908 in Vienna ; † October 23 or October 24, 1979 there ; actually Karl Abarth ) was a motorcycle racer and entrepreneur . He became an Italian citizen when his father opted for the Italian side of the annexation of South Tyrol in Italy.

Life

His family moved to Merano , his father's hometown , soon after the First World War . The parents' marriage ended in divorce and Karl moved back to Vienna with his mother and sister Anna. Here he competed in bicycle races and began working as a motorcycle mechanic. The Motor Thun racing team was a later employer. As a replacement for a failed driver from this team, he drove in a race for the first time and was faster than the works drivers. In 1928 he founded his first own team, in which he continued successfully.

After an accident with a knee injury, damage remained that forced him to switch to sidecar racing. An increase in performance brought a change to the exhaust, which benefited him years later.

Before the Second World War , Abarth was known for his motorcycle combination , which he had rebuilt in such a way that lean angles were possible when cornering. With this machine he won a spectacular race against the Orient Express on the 1,300 km long route between Ostend and Vienna in 1934 . After several accidents, Carlo Abarth ceased motorcycle racing activities. During the Second World War he lived and worked in Laibach . After the war, he first lived in Meran , the closer home of his ancestors. Carlo Abarth founded in 1949 along with Armando Scagliarini in Bologna the company Abarth , but moved shortly after the establishment of the headquarters to Turin . Abarth took over the racing vehicles from the insolvent company Cisitalia of the textile industrialist Piero Dusio and developed them further as "Squadra Carlo Abarth". Abarth became known both as a provider of vehicle tuning and as a manufacturer of in-house designs.

Since Abarth was born under the zodiac sign Scorpio , he chose this as the company logo. A popular model was also called "Scorpione".

In his company, many Fiat , Simca and Alfa Romeo vehicles were made race-ready in the 1950s and 1960s . He specialized in the construction of small-volume sports cars and thus defeated established racing teams. For his racing team, u. a. Johann Abt , Kurt Ahrens , Ernst Furtmayr , Hans Herrmann , Jochen Neerpasch and Hans Ortner .

By 1971, thanks to the wide range of his models, his cars had up to 600 race and class victories a year. The success of his business model declined with the increasing trend in Italy for more displacement. Ultimately, the basic vehicles were no longer produced.

In 1971 Carlo Abarth sold naming rights and manufacturing facilities to Fiat and retired to Vienna. For a few years he was still working as a consultant for the company.

Private life

After he had already been married to Anton Piëch's secretary , Abarth married Nadina Abarth-Zerjav in 1949 ; the couple separated in 1966 and divorced in 1979, previously divorce was not possible under Italian law. He met his third wife Anneliese in 1964 and married her in September 1979, one month before his death. Anneliese Abarth now lives in Vienna and founded the Carlo Abarth Foundation in honor of her husband in order to preserve his myth. In order to publish more from Carlo Abarth's private life, Anneliese Abarth wrote a book from the perspective of a racing driver's wife and in it gives insights into his life with over 140 pictures from the private archive.

Carlo Abarth is buried in Vienna at the Grinzinger Friedhof (group 6, row 2, number 8). A street in Merano is named after him.

See also

Abarth

literature

  • Gianfranco Fagiuoli, Guido Gerosa: Carlo Abarth. 1967.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gravestone of Carlo Abarth
  2. ↑ a b Dolomiten (newspaper) , No. 178 of August 4, 2008; P. 20.
  3. ^ Anneliese Abarth: Carlo Abarth: My life with the ingenious car designer . Herbig, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-7766-2631-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Abarth, Carlo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abarth, Karl (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian automobile racing driver and vehicle tuner
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1979
Place of death Vienna