Dallara - From Emilia To The Conquest Of The World (Daniele Buzzonetti)

Before he was thirty, the engineer Giampaolo Dallara designed the Lamborghini Miura, a supercar that came from another planet, and one that caused its entire global competition to age overnight. More recently, his cars have won nineteen editions of the Indianapolis 500, historically the most important race in the world. And then another surprise, the presentation of the Dallara Stradale, a fascinating 400 hp supercar produced in series in the multi-faceted factory of Varano de’ Melegari, in the province of Parma.

These three commitments alone would be sufficient for a vast book on the activity of Giampaolo Dallara, who however has never ceased to broaden his own interests, based on the passion for motor sport and the evolution of technology. In 320 pages we describe how this extraordinary character, of great technical ability and of equally remarkable human depth, has evolved from his first job in Ferrari’s racing department, to the growth that led him to become the most important manufacturer of racing cars in the world, starting from a small ‘factory’, which over the years has been transformed into a company with over 700 employees.

This miracle has come about due to the undoubted technical ability of the engineer from Varano, but also due to his personality, an exceptional mix of pragmatism and simplicity, which can be summed up in the motto of the company created in 1972: ‘The continuous search for excellence’.

A commitment that has allowed him to add to his ‘core’ business activity, the design of road and racing cars for some of the world’s top companies: Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Maserati, Audi, Toyota, Honda and KTM.

But Dallara has never ceased to amaze: in the autumn of 2018 he inaugurated the ‘Dallara Academy’: a commitment desired and financed by the engineer himself, materialized in a new, modern structure that, together with the vast ‘museum’ with all the Dallara cars ever built, includes classrooms for educational purposes for middle and high school students, up to a Master’s degree in ‘Racing Car Design’.

A great engineer, a great Italian and a perfect Emilian!