Wilfredo Ricart designs

A spanish reader would like to know more about Wilfredo P Ricart. He is remembered for the design of the advanced and fast Pegaso sportscars of the 1950s, which I reported on some months ago, before he retired in 1958. But prior to that Ricart had been responsible for some interesting racing cars when he was a young man, beginning with the 1%-litre four-cylinder twin-cam 16-valve dual-ignition Pegasos, of which two were prepared for the 1922 Penya Rhin GP.

These were followed by the Tipo 226 1%-litre six-cylinder sportscar, shown at the 1926 Paris Salon. Apart from Pegasos, Ricart was also the engineering consultant for those 3-litre straight-eight National Pescaras which ran at Shelsley Walsh in 1931, driven by Zanelli and Tort

More memorably, Ricart moved on to Alfa Romeo to design Grand Prix machinery, and in 1939 produced the Tipo 162 V16 two-stage supercharged racing engine. The beautiful Tipo 158 and 159 voiturettes, which became so immensely successful after the war, effectively used one bank of this V16. Ricart’s last pre-war GP engine was the remarkable 335bhp ‘Tipo 152 1490cc flat-12 with very high-pressure Roots boost.