Sunday 15th November 1908

Born on this day, Karl (Carlo) Abarth, an Italian-Austrian automobile designer who in 1949 founded the Abarth & C. company with Cisitalia racing driver Guido Scagliarini in Bologna,using his astrological sign, the Scorpio, as the company logo.The same year, Abarth & Co moved to Turin. Financed by Scagliarini’s father Armando Scagliarini, the company made racing cars, and became a major supplier of high-performance exhaust pipes, that still are in production as Abarth. He sold the company on 31 July 1971 to Fiat, although he continued to manage it as a CEO for a period. Later then moved back to Vienna, Austria, where he died in 1979.