{"id":52681,"date":"2018-09-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/fondazione-pirelli\/piero-taruffi-the-record-breaking-engineer-driver\/"},"modified":"2024-10-21T15:12:24","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T14:12:24","slug":"piero-taruffi-the-record-breaking-engineer-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/activities\/stories-from-world-of-pirelli\/piero-taruffi-the-record-breaking-engineer-driver\/","title":{"rendered":"Piero Taruffi, the Record-Breaking Engineer-Driver"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><\/h2>\n<p>An <strong>engineer<\/strong>, designer, inventor, record-breaker, and<strong> motorcycle rider<\/strong> and <strong>motorcar driver<\/strong>. <strong>Piero Taruffi<\/strong> was all this and maybe even more, but one need only read the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/archivio-storico\/bookreader\/pubblicazioni-e-riviste\/RivistaPirelli\/1962_1.html?q=La%20cinquecento%20miglia&amp;start=59&amp;lang=en#page\/58\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Five Hundred Miles<\/a>\u201d that he wrote for <strong>Pirelli magazine<\/strong> in <strong>1962<\/strong> to understand what a distillation of know-how his life became: three pages to read all in one go.<\/p>\n<p>Born in Albano Laziale in <strong>1906<\/strong>, Taruffi raced in order verify his innovative technical insights, and as he raced, he chased after yet more insights, and then tested them again on the track. It was almost inevitable that his keen focus on every aspect of the machine would bring him into contact with Pirelli. The <strong>Historical Archive of the Pirelli Foundation<\/strong> contains documents dated between June and October <strong>1937<\/strong> that give the <strong>results of tests carried out in the laboratory on Pirelli Moto-Cord tyres<\/strong>, which were \u201cspecial tyres for motorcycle records\u201d. It was these \u201c<strong>ultralight ribbed S<\/strong>\u201d tyres that Taruffi used that year on the <strong>Bergamo-Brescia motorway<\/strong> to set an unparalleled series of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/archivio-storico\/fotografie\/detail\/IT-PIRELLI-FT0001-0000000518\/record-taruffi-sull-autostrada-brescia-bergamo-nel-1937.html?jsonVal={%22jsonVal%22:{%22query%22:%22Gilera%22,%22startDate%22:%22%22,%22endDate%22:%22%22,%22fieldDate%22:%22dataNormal%22,%22_perPage%22:20,%22archiveName_string%22:%22pirellixDamsPhoto001%22}}&amp;attachmentMisc=undefined&amp;lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>speed records with the Gilera 500 Rondine<\/strong><\/a>, for which he himself had created the fairing in order to improve the aerodynamics. Meanwhile, his passion for fast driving led him to race and win everywhere, on both two and four wheels: in cars with <strong>Alfa Romeo, Maserati, and Cisitalia<\/strong>, and on motorcycles with a <strong>Norton 500<\/strong> and \u201chis\u201d Gilera Rondine.<\/p>\n<p>The record-breaking Taruffi was certainly no man to accept limitations, which is why, in <strong>1948<\/strong>, he went back to the Pirelli test laboratories to fit out his new challenger: the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/archivio-storico\/fotografie\/detail\/IT-PIRELLI-FT0001-0000007063\/record-taruffi-sul-circuito-montlhery-nel-1953.html?jsonVal={%22jsonVal%22:{%22query%22:%22bisiluro%22,%22startDate%22:%22%22,%22endDate%22:%22%22,%22fieldDate%22:%22dataNormal%22,%22_perPage%22:20}}&amp;attachmentMisc=undefined&amp;lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong> TARF bisiluro<\/strong><\/a>, or \u201ctwin torpedo\u201d. Just as the pre-war Rondine had been a record-breaking motorcycle, so two Rondini placed side by side would become a record-breaking car: simple, right? Fitted once again with ultra-light Pirelli motorcycle tyres, the TARF consisted of two cylindrical bodies joined together to form a sort of double motorcycle with fairings: one torpedo for the rider, the other for a <strong>Guzzi 500 engine<\/strong>. With the TARF \u2013 and later with the <strong>Maserati-powered TARF 2<\/strong> \u2013 Taruffi notched up speed record after speed record between <strong>1948<\/strong> and <strong>1954<\/strong>, flashing by at <strong>300 km\/h<\/strong> on the tried-and-tested Bergamo-Brescia motorway, and later on the SS 7 trunk road, the so-called Fettuccia di Terracina, and then on the French circuit at Monthl\u00e9ry. His bisiluro became the stuff of motor-racing legend.<\/p>\n<p>The engineer-driver certainly never abandoned car racing, for he was in<strong> Formula 1<\/strong> with Ferrari, Maserati, and Vanwall between 1950 and 1956, in the Targa Florio with Lancia, and in the Susa-Moncenisio with Cisitalia. And again \u2013 once again with Ferrari \u2013 in the Carrera Panamericana, which earned him the nickname \u201cSilver Fox\u201d. However, the Mille Miglia was missing from his prize list, but he said to his wife Isabella: \u201cWhen I win, I\u2019ll stop racing\u201d. He left Brescia on <strong>11 May 1957<\/strong> at the wheel of a Ferrari 4000 on the <strong>24th Mille Miglia<\/strong>. And he won it, at last. This was the last-ever Mille Miglia: the race was cancelled after the tragic accident of the Spaniard Alfonso De Portago in Guidizzolo, in the Alto Mantovano. But Taruffi had won the race \u2013 his last Mille Miglia. And, just as he had promised, it was his last triumph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An engineer, designer, inventor, record-breaker, and motorcycle rider and motorcar driver. Piero Taruffi was all this and maybe even more, but one need only read the \u201cThe Five Hundred Miles\u201d that he wrote for Pirelli magazine in 1962 to understand what a distillation of know-how his life became: three pages to read all in one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[248,356,183],"class_list":["post-52681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-from-world-of-pirelli","tag-racing","tag-rubrica-en","tag-sport-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Piero Taruffi, the Record-Breaking Engineer-Driver - Fondazione Pirelli<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discover the thrilling journey of Piero Taruffi, from races to record-breaking achievements, and the legendary Bisiluro.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/activities\/stories-from-world-of-pirelli\/piero-taruffi-the-record-breaking-engineer-driver\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Piero Taruffi, the Record-Breaking Engineer-Driver - 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