Piero Dusio

Piero Dusio
Piero Taruffi (l.), Piero Dusio (m.) And Giovanni Savonuzzi (r.), 1946
Personnel
birthday	October 13, 1899
place of birth	Scurzolengo d'Asti ,  Italy
date of death	7th November 1975
Place of death	Buenos Aires ,  Argentina
position	midfield
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1919-1922	Juventus Turin	3 (0)
1 Only league games are given.

Piero Dusio next to the Cisitalia 202 Aerodinamica CMM by Piero Taruffi and his co-driver Buzzi at the Mille Miglia 1947

Piero Dusio (born October 13, 1899 in Scurzolengo d'Asti , Italy ; † November 7, 1975 in Buenos Aires , Argentina ) was an Italian football player , official, racing car driver and businessman .

Career

Soccer

Piero Dusio came from Scurzolengo d'Asti in northern Italy . In his youth he was a football player and played three championship games for Juventus Turin between 1919 and 1922 , where he played with Carlo Bigatto and Giampiero Combi , among others . A knee injury put Dusio's football career to an early end, whereupon he found a job with a Swiss textile company. In 1926, he started his own company making synthetic clothing for athletic and military purposes. In the following years Dusio expanded this company. The company expanded into the banking sector , manufactured tennis rackets and bicycles (Beltrame) and in 1932 received an order from Benito Mussolini to supply the Italian army with uniforms .

Motorsport

The wealth thus gained allowed Piero Dusio to live out his passion for automobile sport. In 1929 he bought his first Maserati . In the 1930s he took part in numerous national races. In 1936 Dusio was sixth in the Italian Grand Prix in Monza . In the following year ( 1934 he had become the Mille seventh) he took on a 500 cc - SIATA a class victory in the Mille Miglia , in 1938 he finished the race in third place overall, which won hill climbs on the Stelvio and founded his own Racing team, the Scuderia Torino .

From 1941 until his replacement by Giovanni Agnelli in 1947, Piero Dusio served as President of Juventus Turin . During the Second World War , his home in Turin was destroyed in a bomb attack, after which he and his family moved to the countryside. In 1944, it was foreseeable as an end to the war in Italy, the Italians created the company Cisitalia ( C onsorzio I ndustriale S portive Italia na ) and instructed the Fiat - engineer Dante Giacosa thus, a single-seater to design racing cars, which for amateur drivers should be affordable. Giacosa, who was still employed full-time at Fiat, designed a racing car with a tubular space frame , powered by a modified 1100 cc Fiat engine. After the end of the war, Dante Giacosa was no longer able to work for Dusio due to his obligations at Fiat. Instead, he was recommended as a replacement by the Turin car maker Giovanni Savonuzzi , who worked in Fiat's aircraft division. Savonuzzi accepted the offer and from 1945 acted as chief engineer at Cisitalia.

Cisitalia D46

In the spring of 1946, the first prototype of the Cisitalia D46 -Monoposto was completed, and by August there were already seven race-ready cars. Dusio hired Piero Taruffi to further refine Giacosa's design and in September 1946 all seven cars took to the start in the Coppa Brezzi , the first race in post-war Italy, which was held in Parco del Valentino in Turin. Dusio, who hired some of the best racing drivers of the time with Piero Taruffi, Tazio Nuvolari , Clemente Biondetti , Franco Cortese , Raymond Sommer and Louis Chiron , drove the seventh car himself and won the race.

During this time, the men around Ferry Porsche , who were involved in the construction of the Auto Union racing cars before the Second World War , offered Dusio to work for his company if he would provide security for the bail of Ferdinand Porsche, who was imprisoned in France . The Italian accepted, after which Carlo Abarth acted as Technical Director and Race Director at Cisitalia. Porsche designed together with Robert Eberan of Eberhorst and Rudolf Hruska the Cisitalia Tipo 360 , a mid-engine - Formula 1 -Monoposto with switchable all-wheel drive .

The production of the D46 and the construction of the Tipo 360 brought Dusio and Cisitalia into financial difficulties. In 1948 he therefore signed a contract with the Argentine dictator Juan Perón , which included the establishment of a company for the production of sports cars based on Porsche designs in Argentina. However, Auto Motores Argentinos or Autoar did not bring immediate financial success, whereupon Perón offered him in 1949 to pay off all his debts if Dusio relocated all his activities from Italy to Argentina. Dusio handed over the management of Cisitalia, which went bankrupt , to his son Carlo and the Porsche Grand Prix car was brought to Argentina at the beginning of 1950, but was never used in Formula 1.

A little later he and his son revived Cisitalia as a now debt-free company. In 1952 , at the age of 52, Piero Dusio took part in the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Italy on one of the old D46s , but failed to qualify due to engine problems.

Until 1965 Dusio continued to work in various companies of his own in Argentina, where he died in 1975 at the age of 76 and was buried in Buenos Aires .

Web links

Commons : Piero Dusio  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Piero Dusio. www.motorsportmemorial.org, accessed on July 23, 2019 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Dusio Piero. I giocatori della Juventus. www.juworld.net, accessed October 19, 2010 (Italian). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Piero Dusio. (No longer available online.) Www.historicracing.com, formerly in the original ; accessed on October 19, 2010 (English).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
3. ^ Tutti i presidenti della Juventus. www.juworld.net, accessed October 19, 2010 (Italian). 
4. ^ I Coppa Bezzi. www.racing-database.com, archived from the original on July 15, 2011 ; accessed on October 19, 2010 (English). 
5. ↑ Robert Eberan von Eberhorst. (No longer available online.) Www.historicracing.com, formerly in the original ; accessed on October 19, 2010 (English).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
6. ^ Carlo Abarth. (No longer available online.) Www.historicracing.com, formerly in the original ; accessed on October 19, 2010 (English).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
7. ↑ Cisitalia 360 / Autoar. www.forix.com, accessed October 19, 2010 (English). 
8. ↑ Cisitalia (Italy) 1946-1965. www.vea.qc.ca, accessed on October 19, 2010 (English).