Carlo Abarth

Carlo Abarth, born Karl Albert Abarth in Vienna on 15 November 1908 and died on 24 October 1979, was an Italian automobile designer who later became a naturalized Italian citizen and took the name Carlo Alberto. As a teenager he designed motorbike and bicycle chassis for Castagna in Italy, then raced motorbikes and became European champion five times. In 1934 a sidecar of his design beat the Orient Express railway over the stretch from Vienna to Ostend, and he moved permanently to Italy that year. After the war he helped establish Cisitalia, and on 31 March 1949 he founded the Abarth and C. company in Bologna, which moved to Turin, made racing cars and became a major supplier of high-performance exhaust pipes. He sold the company to Fiat on 31 July 1971, continued to manage it for a period, and later moved back to Vienna, where he died.