Taruffi’s Tarf I Twin in Motion

Over a decade ago, Ryan wrote a great story and later shared video of famous racer Piero Taruffi’s Maserati four-cylinder powered, twin-boom racer called the Tarf II, which he ran in the early 1950s to set a 2 liter engine class speed record. I recently read up more on his creation and it turns out Taruffi’s first built it back in 1948 as the Tarf I Bisiluro or “twin torpedo” with smaller rear fins, and using a 50hp 500cc Guzzi V-twin motorcycle engine mounted in the right-hand pod, setting six 500cc records in November that year, and eclipsing 130 mph. I recently found this Italian news clip on the original Tarf and it’s fascinating to see the features of this aluminum-bodied racer up close and in action, most notably the sliding driver’s canopy and the adjustable center wing stabilizer, which I’m guessing helped slow the car from high speeds, or was it to add downforce? Keep in mind this racer was completely hand-built in Italy only two years after the War, with a scarcity of raw materials and fragile infrastructures still in place. Also of note that this was also a year before the twin-tank Howard’s Cams Special was built for Bonneville over in the States..