Recently, a reader named A.J. commented on our old post focused on the 1967 OSI Silver Fox*, the roadgoing catamaran in the photo at left above. While we'd connected OSI's twin-hulled road racing concept to Nardi's Bisiluro, at right above, from a dozen years earlier, A.J. suspected we'd missed another influence, that of Italian driver Piero Taruffi, who had first built a twin-torpedo speed record car in 1948...
…powered by a 500cc, 50 hp motorcycle engine and called the TARF. He'd noted, too, that Taruffi's nickname, the Silver Fox, might be connected to his influence on OSI's namesake car. As with the later Nardi and OSI cars, the TARF housed its engine in one pod, and placed the driver in the opposite one. Only one rear wheel was driven by a chain from the engine. The engine pod featured air intakes at the nose and also above the engine. The car was tested without fins and with at least two fin configurations. With the TARF-Gilera in its final form, Taruffi set 6 records, including the flying kilometer at just under 130 mph.
Perhaps the choice of a 500cc motorcycle engine for power was rooted in Taruffi's racing experience; he'd won the European 500cc Championship for motorcycles on a Norton in 1932. The photos below capture a TARF test run in an earlier configuration. The air intakes have not been added, and the fins lack the aileron-like additions shown above. The TARF lacked a steering wheel because of tight space in the cockpit, so steering was provided by a lever on each side. The ailerons, or rudders, allowed the driver to compensate for side winds.
One TARF feature repeated on the later Silver Fox (but not on Nardi's Bisiluro) was an adjustable airfoil connecting the twin pods. This marked a very early appearance of movable airfoils, and predicted their use on race cars with more conventional body configurations...
Taruffi produced a second record car in 1951, known as TARF II, or as the Italcorsa. This car moved the driver to the right pod, with the engine, a 2-stage supercharged 1,720 cc Maserati inline 4, in the left pod. Taruffi drove TARF II, below, to set a pair of records in March 1951, for the flying mile at 185.49 mph and the flying kilometer at 180.55 mph. In January 1952, he set a new 50-mile record at 144 mph, and in April of that year set 4 more records, including a one-hour mark of 135.10 mph. Apparently encouraged by these results, Taruffi obtained a patent in August of 1952 for a triple-torpedo racer with a central driver pod, and separate engines on left and right. No prototype of this car appears to have been built, however.
Taruffi went on to prove his talent for driving cars went beyond setting speed records. He won the Swiss GP in 1952 and finished 3rd in that year's World Championship standings. After winning the last running ot the Mille Miglia in 1957, the Silver Fox retired at age 50. In November of that year, he published an article in the Saturday Evening Post reflecting his experience in the deadly '55 Le Mans and '57 MM, and calling for more attention to safety in racing. In 1959 Taruffi authored The Technique of Motor Racing, which became a standard reference on the sport, and was later celebrated in a Piero Taruffi Museum in Bagnoregio. It has not been reported what the Silver Fox thought of the namesake car built by OSI in 1967. Piero Taruffi died in Rome at age 81, in 1988. TARF 2 wound up in Australia for awhile, was fitted with a Dino 246 V6 after losing its Maserati engine, and with bodywork restored, was auctioned to a private collector in Monaco a dozen years ago for just under 90,000 Euros.
*Footnote: For a detailed look at that last, radical OSI-designed and built concept car, see "The Etceterini Files Part 23—OSI Silver Fox: And Now for Something Completely Different", posted here on Feb. 9, 2021. For photos and discussion of the 1955 Nardi 750 Bisuluro, see our blog archives for "Architect-Designed Cars: Part 1", from May 7, 2017. The Bisiluro is pictured with other Nardi cars in "The Etceterini Files Part 14—The Cars of Enrico Nardi: Present at the Creation," from February 26, 2018.
Photo Credits:
Top left: Officine Stampaggi Industriali (OSI)
Top right: museoscienza.org
3rd & 4th: Fondazione Pirelli
3rd & 4th: Fondazione Pirelli
5th thru 7th: British Pathé on youtube.com
8th & bottom: diseno-art.com
Another great piece, very interesting!
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed this one, Lewis.
ReplyDelete