Ing. Giotto Bizzarrini

Born in 1926 to a wealthy landowner, reportedly Bizzarrini was captured during WWII and served in a British- run motor pool where he not only fixed broken trucks but modified vehicles. After the war, he built a prototype small car out of war surplus parts.He graduated from the University of Pisa in 1953 and even taught there at one time or another. He worked for Alfa Romeo in the late '50s , a perfect place for him to do some innovative engineering. Then he went to Ferrari in '57 first as a test driver, but shortly got into engineering and development. He developed the short wheelbase 250GT from the Tour de France 250GT and later the Comp version of the swb 250GT. and then it was just a hop skip and jump to the immortal 250GTO which he reportedly developed on a mule with his own panel builders changing the nose shape night after night after midnight autostrada high speed runs, bypassing the whole system where Ferrari used Scaglietti or Pininfarina, thereby proving that an engineer who knows what he is doing can dispense with the stylists.
But then, even before the GTO was introduced, he was swept out in the palace revolt during the infamous "night of the long knives" in the company of the engineers who were revolting against a lot of things, such as Mrs. Ferrari's meddling. Some went off to start a rival firm ATS which was ill-starred and flopped at everything they did, including keeping their investors. He then went to Iso, engineered the Rivolta, then Grifo and left there to build the Iso Grifo A3C and A3L under his own name back in his native region of Livorno. His company lasted only a few years and collapsed due to poor management and under capitalization. He also was a consultant to Lamborghini, for whom he designed their V12. After that he just kept busy doing hius own projects but in the decades since has made periodic re-appearances on behalf of new designers trying to get another Bizzarrini-badged car into production at least for racing.