Word: nuvolari
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Most men shrink from death. Tazio Nuvolari spent most of his life racing toward it. Born in the little village of Castel d'Ario, in the province of Mantua, he first challenged death at 13, jumping off his parents' roof with an umbrella for a parachute. Tazio got off with a few bruises...
Cheers for a Virtuoso. Death rode often with Nuvolari in World War I, when he drove a Red Cross ambulance. In 1924 he won his first auto race, and a legend began to grow. At first, crowds came to witness the early end of the tiny (5 ft. 4 in., 130 Ibs.) "Flying Madman." When they found that he was virtually indestructible, they cheered for a virtuoso of the wheel. Nuvolari steered his string of Bugattis, Alfa-Romeos, Cisitalias and Ferraris with profanity, main force and incredible finesse. No stylist, he seldom took a curve the same way twice...
...Road is part love song and part a dirge over what, and how, the conventional men are willing to drive. Not for Purdy the "chrome piled on chrome and tin upon tin." Lovingly he writes of Designers Ettore Bugatti, Fred Duesenberg, Frederick Henry Royce and of Driver Tazio Nuvolari. To Purdy, as to most addicts, Nuvolari is II Maestro, "indis putably the greatest driver who ever lived." Not on "dull" tracks like the Indianapolis Speedway did II Maestro show his genius, but in grueling road races run day & night. Nuvolari, now 60 and retired, was "hard on his mounts...