Nardi 750 Nardi-Danese History

When Enrico Nardi returned to Turin in 1947 after leaving Ferrari's employ, his first project with partner Renato Danese was a ruthlessly practical racing special: a Fiat 500 chassis carrying a 746 cc BMW R75 motorcycle flat-twin engine, sourced cheaply from postwar military surplus. Tuned by Nardi, the little machine produced around 50 bhp and weighed next to nothing.

The 750ND dominated hillclimb and circuit events in Italy's sub-750 cc class in the late 1940s. Nardi himself won the Coppa d'Oro delle Dolomiti hillclimb in both 1947 and 1948 in the monoposto. The design was refined across several iterations through the early 1950s and remained competitive well into 1953 — at the Susa-Moncenisio climb that year a 750ND finished eighth overall, just two percent behind André Simon's Ferrari.

A handful of the cars were built and raced by private entrants beyond Nardi himself, cementing the model's reputation in Italian club motorsport. The 750ND was the commercial and competitive foundation on which Nardi-Danese's reputation rested before the firm turned to more ambitious prototypes.