Part I

We realize that the recent Motoring Blog entry on F. T. Marinetti's writings and rantings about speed, machine-gun fire, and paving over the canals of Venice might have seemed a little nuts, but as there are only a few days left to see the great Carlo Mollino show at the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, popularly known as GAM, in Turin, we now have cause to renew our reflections on velocity-mad Italian Modernists. (That's Mollino sitting there on the chassis of his "Bisiluro," above. Read more about the Bisiluro below.) Not expecting to spend time in the cradle of the Italian automobile this weekend? Let's hope some innovative curator will import the show stateside.

(All of these images, by the way, are courtesy of the good people at Mondadori Electa publishing.)

Mollino is primarily known here--when he's known at all---for a secret stash of simultaneously beautiful and seamy Polaroids of semi-nude prostitutes unearthed and lavishly published by Arena a few years ago. He's also known for some intensely eclectic modernist furniture. But what might be news even to those long familiar with Mollino's work is the genius-dilettante's dabbling in car design. In 1953 this son of an engineer got excited about a Maserati-produced OSCA 1100 that had won that year's 24 Hour Le Mans race; he started sketching aerodynamic improvements to the body right on photographs of that car.

Developing his ideas to their extreme, he soon produced an asymmetrical, catamaran like car, the Bisiluro ("twin torpedo"), with one sleek hull for the driver and one for the engine. These were connected by a wing-like structure that housed an ingenious curved radiator, flaps to aid braking and a negative-lift wing to keep the car from taking off into the sky.

The car is stunning, but it didn't do so well at Le Mans in 1955. While it averaged 89 mph, its off-kilter construction made it almost impossible to control on turns and it was eventually run off the track and into a ditch by a Jaguar D-type driven by Mike Hawthorn, who went on to win the race. (As it turned out, from Mollino's perspective that minor crash might have been for the best; a bit later in the race, a Mercedes-Benz 300SLR driven by Pierre Levegh clipped Lance Macklin's Austin Healey 100S. Levegh's car hit a wall and exploded into the grandstand, killing 77. See a video of the crash here.)

The Bisiluro remains intact after all these years, and is usually housed at the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia in Milan. But for now the car itself, numerous sketches chronicling its production, and photos of its short history (at once glorious and somewhat comical) can be found at Turin.

--OWEN PHILLIPS