Adolfo Orsi

Italian industrialist who owned Maserati when Juan Manuel Fangio won world titles for the marque

Adolfo Orsi

Italian industrialist who owned Maserati when Juan Manuel Fangio won world titles for the marque

Adolfo Orsi was born into a poor family near Modena and started work very young after his father died in 1899. By the late 1920s he had built a business in scrap iron, steel and farm machinery that employed hundreds of people, and he found time for the Modena tram company and the local football club.

In 1937 he bought the struggling Maserati company, kept three of the Maserati brothers on ten year contracts, and in 1940 moved it from Bologna to Modena, close to his own plants. The 1950s were kind to it: Orsi hired Juan Manuel Fangio, who was world champion with Maserati in 1954 and again in 1957. He sold his remaining shares to Citroën in 1968. From scrap metal to world titles is quite a journey for one man's iron.

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