Cisitalia Grand Prix

About Cisitalia Grand Prix

The Cisitalia Grand Prix is a single-seater car for the 1.5-litre supercharged race car class, prewar called voiturette, postwar promoted to Grand Prix class (later F1), built by Italian sports car manufacturer Cisitalia and introduced in 1949. It was designed on behalf of Cisitalia by Porsche between 1946–47, and is therefore also known by its Porsche project number, Type 360. An extremely advanced design, Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout and four-wheel-drive on top of state of the art Grand Prix technology, it proved too complex to build for the small Italian firm—leading to a lengthy development and eventually to the financial downfall of the company. Between Cisitalia's 1949 liquidation and the fact that due to lack of entries, supercharged engines, and all large F1 engines, were banned for the 1952 Formula One season that was run according to F2 rules, the car never raced in Grands Prix. The Type 360 is also noticeable for using an early form of sequential manual transmission, and was one of the first race cars to do so.