Vittorio Jano

COLOSSUS OF AN INGEGNERE

THIS TOWERING FIGURE of Italian automotive engineering seems to transcend the ages. Jano designed the pre-war Alfa Romeo straight-sixes and straight-eights, oversaw the Lancia Aurelia’s V6 (the first production engine of that configuration), designed the Lancia D50 Grand Prix car’s V8. And when Ferrari took over Lancia’s racing operation in 1955, the package included Jano as well as the D50.

Yet Jano (born 1891) and Ferrari went back much further than that. Enzo, working for Alfa Romeo, poached the Italian-born, Hungarian-descended engineer from Fiat in 1923, with the P2 Grand Prix car, the 6C 1500 and 1750, and then the 8C the successful fruits of the collaboration. Enzo set up Scuderia Ferrari to race the Tipo B/ P3 Alfas with their 8C 2900 engines, but Jano left Alfa to join Lancia in 1937. They were working together again 18 years later.

Colombo and Lampredi were the highprofile designers of Ferrari’s post-war engines while Jano was guiding Francesco de Virgilio through the Aurelia V6, but Jano’s arrival at Ferrari coincided with the plan by Enzo’s son Alfredino to create a 65º V6. As Dino lay ailing in his hospital bed with muscular dystrophy, Jano visited and incorporated some of Dino’s ideas into the engine that Dino himself would never see completed; Enzo’s son died in 1956.

Jano lost his own son in 1965, and his health deteriorated rapidly. Distraught, he committed suicide later that year.