Wifredo Pelayo Ricart Medina (15 May 1897 – 19 August 1974) was a Spanish

Spanish people

The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....

 engineer, designer and executive manager in the automotive industry, who spent his professional career in Spain and Italy.

The Barcelona "Happy Twenties"

Born in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, Ricart graduated in 1918 as an industrial engineer. His first job was in a Hispano-Suiza

Hispano-Suiza

Hispano-Suiza was a Spanish automotive and engineering firm, best known for its luxury cars and aviation engines in the pre-World War II period of the twentieth century. In 1923, its French subsidiary became a semi-autonomous partnership with the parent company and is now part of the French SAFRAN...

 dealer, but he soon moved to a new company, Motores Ricart-Perez, that successfully produced industrial engines.

At that time, in the wake of Hispano-Suiza's automotive success, Barcelona swarmed with automotive initiatives. In this technically exciting environment, Ricart became increasingly interested in automobile engineering, and in 1922 designed his first car. It featured a 4-cylinder, 16-valve 1.5 liter engine which was advanced for its time. Two of these cars ran in the Barcelona Grand Prix for voiturettes, one winning its second race, a few months later.

In 1926, Ricart founded his own company, Motores y Automóviles Ricart, and in October presented two prototypes of the new Ricart car at the Paris Motor Show, gaining a lot of attention. Nevertheless, financial difficulties compelled Ricard to merge his company with the one of industrial tycoon Felipe Batlló, to produce cars under a new brand, Ricart-España. It was for this company he designed a new model addressed to the high segment of the market, with a 2.4 liter 6cyl engine. Again this venture failed due to the general economic slump.

In 1930, Ricart became a member of the American Society of Automotive Engineers and he established himself as an independent consultant, working for different European firms.

The Italian period

In 1936 he started to work for Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of cars. Founded as A.L.F.A. on June 24, 1910, in Milan, the company has been involved in car racing since 1911, and has a reputation for building expensive sports cars...

, as Chief Engineer for Special Projects.
He remained in Alfa for eight years, the most professionally fruitful in his life, aside from his time, later on, at Pegaso

Pegaso

Pegaso was a Spanish make of trucks, omnibuses, tractors, armored vehicles, and, for a while, sports cars. The parent company, Enasa, was created in 1946 and based in the old Hispano-Suiza factory, under the direction of the renowned automotive engineer Wifredo Ricart...

.

In Alfa Romeo he designed and developed many engines, from aviation to racing cars. There he met Enzo Ferrari

Enzo Ferrari

Enzo Anselmo Ferrari Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian race car driver and entrepreneur, the founder of the Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team, and subsequently of the Ferrari car manufacturer...

, and it seems the two characters did collide somehow, for Ferrari evidently blamed Ricart for being fired from Alfa Romeo before World War Two:

There was no doubt what [Enzo] Ferrari thought when he heard [in 1951] that a Spanish lorry manufacturer was building cars fit to rival his. Ferrari had a long memory, and still smarted over his dismissal from Alfa Romeo before the war. He blamed this on a certain engineer [Wifredo Ricart], and in a famous outburst criticized this engineer's designs for an engine whose crankshaft 'revolved like a skipping rope,' and a racing car which was 'outdated, good only for scrap or a museum' (and moreover, killed its test driver). "With sleek, oiled hair and smart clothes that he wore with a somewhat levantine elegance,' Ferrari wrote afterwards, 'he affected jackets with sleeves that came far down below his wrists, and shoes with enormously thick rubber soles.' The reason for the thick soles, this engineer explained to Ferrari, was because, 'A great engineer's brain should not be jolted by the inequalities of the ground and consequently needed to be carefully sprung.' It said a good deal more for Wilfredo Ricart's sense of humour than Enzo Ferrari's that he was taken seriously. Even Vittorio Jano

Vittorio Jano

Vittorio Jano was an Italian automobile designer of Hungarian descent from the 1920s through 1960s.Jano was born Viktor János in San Giorgio Canavese, in Piedmont, to Hungarian immigrants, who arrived there several years before the birth of Jano. He began his career at the car and truck company...

 described Ricart as a man of profound intellect. It is true that some of his designs were monuments of complexity, sometimes even impractical, but the same was probably said of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

. His fatal Alfa Romeo 512 was a horizontally opposed 12 cylinder, rear-engined racing car with a centrifugal supercharger giving 335 bhp from 1.5 litres. He had already abandoned the Type 162, which was a 3 litre planned to give 560 bhp, with two carburettors, 3 stage supercharging with five compressors, 16 cylinders, and 64 valves. By 1940 he was working on a 4-bank 28 cylinder radial aero-engine, and the following year designed a unitary construction road car for postwar production with all independent suspension, a twin-cam 2 litre engine, and a gearbox integral with the final drive — a radical layout not unlike that eventually adopted for the Alfetta

Alfa Romeo Alfetta

Alfa Romeo GTV redirects here. For 916 series GTV see Alfa Romeo GTV & SpiderThe Alfa Romeo Alfetta is an Italian rear-wheel drive executive saloon car and fastback coupé produced from 1972 until 1987 by Alfa Romeo...

 Coupe of 1974.

Back to Spain. Building Pegaso

In 1945, with Italy desvastated by the II World War, Ricart returned to Barcelona, and shortly he managed to be hired by the American Studebaker

Studebaker

Studebaker Corporation was a United States wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana. Founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 under the name of the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, the company was originally a producer of wagons for farmers, miners, and the...

 corporation, but just before leaving for the USA, he was proposed to lead the creation of a new Spanish automotive group, Enasa

Enasa

ENASA was a Spanish vehicle manufacturing company, incorporated in 1946 having bought the automotive assets of the Spanish arm of Hispano-Suiza. It produced trucks, buses and military armored vehicles under the Pegaso and, for a short while, Sava brands. Enasa belonged to the state-owned INI...

, to be built over the remainings of the Spanish arm of Hispano-Suiza. He accepted, and for several years he struggled to get a modern, technically advanced, car and truck maker from an underdeveloped country, materially and morally devastated itself from a Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

.

In the early fifties, the results of Ricart's efforts were visible: In October 1951, in the Paris Motor Show a newcomer attracted all the looks; it was an incredible sophisticated sports car, the Pegaso Z-102

Pegaso Z-102

The Pegaso Z-102 was a sports car coupé produced in Spain between 1951 and 1958.-Background:Pegaso was an established company noted for its trucks and motor coaches, but also produced sports cars for seven years...

. This was above all an image coup, as the real objective of Enasa creation was the massive industrial vehicles production. But in this respect, Ricart had too every reason to feel proud: the Pegaso Diesel and Z-207

Pegaso Z-207

The Pegaso Z-207 was a truck model produced in Spain by Enasa from 1955 to 1959. It featured a splendid V6 engine and a stylishly unforgettable cab...

 trucks, the Z-403

Pegaso Z-403

The Pegaso Z-403 Monocasco, was a two-level monocoque coach, fitted with a 125-hp diesel engine asymmetrically mounted amidships, and built in Spain by Enasa between 1951 and 1957.First Z-403 body design date back to 1949...

 and Z-404 coaches or the Z-501 trolleybus, and last but not least the new from scratch Enasa plant in Barajas (Madrid) were not only technical successes, but situated Spanish automotive industry in the best starting point to cope with the impressive economic development Spain

Spanish miracle

The Spanish miracle was the name given to a broadly based economic boom in Spain from 1959 to 1974. The international oil and stagflation crises of the 1970s ended the boom.- The pre-boom situation :...

 undertook in the 60s and 70s.

The final years

Ricart resigned as Enasa CEO in 1959, criticized for paying more attention to technical innovation than to economic realities. From then on he returned to his free lance consultant activities, as he was widely recognized as one of the most skilled and experienced automotive engineers. In his last years he increased his significant collaboration with several professional bodies, like S.A.E., FISITA, and S.T.A. He served as President of FISITA

FISITA

The Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Ingénieurs des Techniques de l'Automobile is the world body linking together the national automotive engineering societies in 38 countries....

, the International Federation of Automotive Engineering Societies, from 1957 to 1959.