Italcorsa / Tarf Bisiluro ~ Twin Torpedo

Piero Taruffi was an Italian Racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1950 until 1956. During his F1 career he drove for some big teams, like Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Maserati and Alfa Romeo. During his career he won a couple big events, such as the 1952 Swiss Grand Prix and the 1957 Mille Miglia.
He also wrote a couple books about racing, but one of his biggest achievements was when he designed his own record-breaking race cars.

Taruffi’s biggest dream was to completely redesign the race car. So in 1948 he came up with the Italcorsa/Tarf I. As you could clearly see, the car didn’t look like any other car from that time. It featured two “torpedo” like compartments, the driver would take place in the “torpedo” on the left and the engine was placed in the one on the right. Because of this odd shape the car was fittingly nicknamed the “Bisiluro”, which is Italian for “Twin Torpedo”.

The Tarf was powered by a 500cc Guzzi V-Twin engine, producing just 50bhp. Due to its low weight, the car set six 500cc records in November 1948. It would hit speeds of up to 130mph / 208kmh.
Because of the car’s successes, Taruffi planned on building a 2nd car, called the “Trisiluro”. This one was going to be similar to the Bisiluro, but instead of two, the body would have been made into three “torpedos”. This car was never build though, however Taruffi did make another Bisiluro.

The Tarf II as it was called looked pretty much the same as the Tarf I, but the positioning of the driver and the engine were swapped around. Unlike the Tarf I it also had two adjustable fins on the back to compensate for wind direction. Because there was so little interior space, there was not room for a steering wheel, so instead there were two levers, one on either side of the driver used to control the vehicle.

The biggest improvement over the Tarf I was the engine though. The Tarf II had a 1.7-Litre Maserati 4-cylinder with a dual-stage supercharger producing 270bhp.

In the car’s first outing, back in March 1951. It broke two records, one for the flying mile and the other for the flying kilometre, with speeds of 185,5 and 180,5 mph respectively.
In January 1952 it would break four more records.

• Averaging 140,9 mph in the 50 kilometre
• Averaging 139,7 mph in the 100 kilometre
• Averaging 136,6 mph in the 200 kilometre
• Averaging 135,10 in the one-hour

Taruffi retired from racing in 1957, but he did say he had plans for an even faster version, this time with a 4.5-Litre Ferrari engine. He wanted to use this car in the Indianapolis 500, the car was never build though. Taruffi did say that “The importance of my car is that it embodies many new principles that will become standard in automobiles ten years from now.”
Despite its successes this design never caught on by designers.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and have a nice day :)

Marijn M.

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