Name: Giovanni PARRILLA
Nationality: Italian
Date of birth: 21October 1911 – Corigliano, Italy
Year of death: 1976
In 1959, Karting has still not yet really arrived in Europe. However, there is a man who knows that it will not be long before these small motor vehicles which have fascinated the Americans for two years invade the «Old Continent». This man is called Giovanni Parrilla. He has been a motorcycle manufacturer since 1946 and was informed of the fever spreading over the United States by his local motorcycle importer. He therefore thinks of anticipating the future and, with his engineer Cesare Bossaglia, he conceives the first engine specifically designed for Karting. The Americans have indeed still recourse only to industrial engines, mass-produced and borrowed either from chainsaws or from lawnmowers. The project of the Parrilla-Bossaglia pair bears the code name «PB7» (see photo). It is an air-cooled magnesium engine which has a cylinder capacity of 125cc, with rotary valve inlet. The only element from existing Moto Parilla motorcycles is the cylinderhead. Two prototypes are built but this engine will never be produced. Probably influenced by their motorcycle culture, Parrilla and Bossaglia have coupled a three-ratio gearbox to their engine. But in the United States, and later in most Western European countries, Karting manufacturers resolve to use direct drive engines without gearboxes.
Giovanni Parilla was right. The «Karting» flood over Europe that he had foreseen actually takes place. He quickly realises that there is a better course to take than using industrial engines such as the Mc Culloch, Clinton, JLO or Stihl ones, and in 1961, he designs the Parilla V11 (see photo), a «lying» direct drive 100cc engine with rotary valve inlet and fitted with a turbine aimed at optimising the cooling. This Parilla V11, commercialised outside Italyunder the name of Saetta, is closer to the realities of the market than the PB7 and it becomes the first engine exclusively designed for Karting to be mass-produced. It also marks the beginning of a long domination, not to say a quasi-monopoly, of Italian manufacturers in the field of competition kart engines. In the next two years, the lying position of the V11 will rapidly be superseded by the vertical versions of the Saetta V12, Komet K12 and Parilla S13.
Info & Photo CIK