1947 Cisitalia 202 Gran Sport. Click image to enlarge

Story and photo by Bill Vance

Some car marques are built in the millions, but leave little in the way of a legacy. Others made only in small numbers, often by companies struggling for survival, leave their mark forever on the automotive landscape. One of these is the Italian Cisitalia (cheese-ee-tal-ee-ah) 202 Gran Sport.

The Cisitalia 202GS was a design so beautifully proportioned, so pure and timeless in its execution, that it was chosen for permanent display by New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

The 202’s roots traced back to the 1930s. Compagnia Industriale Sportivo Italia, or Cisitalia, was a pre-Second World War sporting goods company owned by former soccer star Piero Dusio. He had done some motor racing prior to the war, and had even built a prototype sports car before hostilities ended that endeavour.

In 1946 he returned to his motoring love by launching a small, single-seat racer called the Cisitalia D46 (Dusio 1946). It was based, as so many such projects were, on Fiat components, which were cheap, sturdy and readily available.

Dusio had a good eye for talent, and hired some of the best people in Italy, including Piero Taruffi as test driver/racing engineer, brilliant driver Tazio Nuvolari, and gifted engineer Giovanni Savonuzzi. Although he was with Cisitalia for only two years, Savonuzzi would make the greatest impact on its products.

Cisitalia soon entered two-seater, sports racing competition with the Cisitalia 202 CMM (Coupe Mille Miglia). Cisitalia’s single seaters and sports racers enjoyed considerable success, especially in the hands of Nuvolari who placed his 202 second overall in the 1947 Mille Miglia (1,000 mile) race, beaten only by a much larger Alfa Romeo. This legendary drive proved the tenacious road holding of Savonuzzi’s design, and sealed the aging Nuvolari’s reputation as one of the greatest racing drivers of all time.

The competition success of Dusio’s Cisitalias tempted him to enter competition’s top echelon. He commissioned Dr. Ferdinand Porsche to design a full blown Grand Prix car, a fearsome thing with a supercharged, flat 12-cylinder engine behind the driver. Designated the T360, its reputed 300 horsepower went through a five-speed gearbox to the rear wheels, or to all four if the driver desired. Alas it was never successfully raced, and was so disastrously expensive that it contributed to the company’s ultimate financial failure.

The road going 202GS was introduced in 1947, and used Fiat mechanicals. Its technical specifications were influenced by the D46, with a light tubular frame and independent front suspension with A-arms and lateral leaf springs.

Dusio engaged Italian stylist Pinin Farina (now Pininfarina) to design his new car, and based on Savonuzzi’s detailed drawings they produced a beautifully proportioned little fastback coupe with a 2,400 mm (94.5 in.) wheelbase and a 3,744 mm (147.4 in.) overall length.

The lines were elegantly simple. The envelope body had fully integrated front fenders that blended into the smooth, flat, flanks. The hood line was below the fender tops, a styling breakthrough, and its 23-bar grille was convex in both its vertical and horizontal planes. Although The GS’s width was only 1,412 mm (55.6 in.), it appeared wider. The flat, two-piece windshield sloped at just the right angle, both laterally and longitudinally, and the roof line ran down between the rear fenders, then dropped off vertically in a small Kamm-type tail. The taut aluminum shape appeared to fit over the space frame like a well tailored suit.

The engine was from the Fiat 1100, a 1,089 cc overhead valve four-cylinder modified for more performance. Dual carburetors and higher compression were some of the changes that brought output up to about twice the original Fiat’s 32. Dry sump lubrication eliminated the deep oil pan, facilitating the low hood line.

The performance of the 202 was adequate, although not outstanding. The modified Fiat four could push the aerodynamic little coupe to a top speed of approximately 161 km/h (100 mph).

In spite of its beauty, few Cisitalia 202s found buyers, largely, no doubt, because it was priced very high. At close to $7,000, the little coupe was well over the price of the fabulous new Jaguar XK120, which offered much higher performance, and much more than the Porsche 356, which offered equal or better performance.

By 1950 the resources of the Cisitalia company were drained, and in an attempt at revival the operation was moved to Argentina on the hope of obtaining government assistance. That move resulted in the loss of their innovative chief mechanic Carlo Abarth, who would move on to produce specialty cars under his own name.

Cisitalia came back to Italy in 1952 where it managed to produce some revived versions of the 202. By the time production ended in 1952, 170 GSs had been built, mostly coupes, although there were some convertibles.

Full financial recovery never came, and Cisitalia’s last products, offered in the early ’60s, were modified versions of the Fiat 750 coupe, which competed against Abarth’s more successful offerings. The company was wound up in 1965, but its legacy lives on in the beautiful Cisitalia 202GS on display in the New York Museum of Modern Art.