Aldo Farinelli

A lawyer and technical journalist born in Turin on 23 May 1898, Aldo Farinelli can be credited with having initially set Ducati on the motorcycling path.

Farinelli’s passion for cars and motorcycles developed at a young age after spending time with an uncle who was a motoring enthusiast. He was soon working as both a lawyer and publicist, collaborating with various automotive magazines in Milan.

From 1943 to 1946, Farinelli held managerial positions at SIATA in Turin, a company specializing in the sports modification of production cars, where he was able to show off his inventiveness and technical skills.

During this period, he developed and patented a four-stroke auxiliary engine, the “Cucciolo” (Italian for puppy). This was the first engine in Italy to motorize the common bicycle and the most widespread in the immediate post-war period.

Farinelli had recognized the need for a small, simple, and reliable means of transportation that could meet mobility needs in the post-war years. The construction license belonged to SIATA but was later transferred to Ducati in Borgo Panigale, marking the company’s first foray into the motorcycling world in which it would be so successful.

As of 1960, he was president of the Automobile Club’s Legal Commission and a member of its board of directors, as well as a speaker at the annual traffic conferences in Stresa.

His sensitivity to problems relating to traffic circulation and his passion for the four-wheeled world led to a lasting collaboration with Turin-based newspaper, La Stampa.

In 1968, and in recognition of a long and successful forensic career that had taken him all the way to the Court of Appeal, he received the gold medal for fifty years of services to law. Farinelli passed away on 13 October 1978 and rests in the family tomb in Belgirate, on Lake Maggiore.