The four Ceirano brothers — Giovanni Battista, Giovanni, Ernesto, and Matteo — collectively founded or co-founded a remarkable number of Italian automobile companies in the years around the turn of the twentieth century. In October 1898, Giovanni Battista and Matteo co-founded Ceirano GB & C and began producing the Welleyes motor car in 1899. In July 1899 the plant and patents were sold to Giovanni Agnelli, and the designs formed the basis of the first F.I.A.T. automobiles. Giovanni Battista went on to found Fratelli Ceirano & C., which became Società Torinese Automobili Rapid (S.T.A.R.) in 1903. Matteo left that enterprise to create Itala in 1904, then departed again to co-found S.P.A. (Società Piemontese Automobili) with chief designer Alberto Ballacco in 1906. That same year Giovanni founded SCAT (Società Ceirano Automobili Torino) in Turin. In 1919, Giovanni and his son Giovanni "Ernesto" co-founded Ceirano Fabbrica Automobili and in 1922 took control of Fabrica Anonima Torinese Automobili (FATA).
Ernesto's early knowledge came from working as an automotive mechanic alongside his brothers, and he developed a particular expertise in engine design. He may also have served as production manager (Capo del montaggio) at SCAT during the period of his racing activity.
Ernesto's first recorded grand-prix appearance was in the 1907 Targa Florio, driving a Rapid — the brand built by his brother Giovanni Battista's successor company. The race did not yield a notable result, but it established him as a competitive presence on the event that would define his career.
In 1908 he returned to the Targa Florio driving a four-cylinder, 7,785 cc S.P.A. 28/40 HP belonging to his brother Matteo. He finished third — his first podium in the race — on what was then one of the most demanding road races in Europe.
Three years later, in 1911, Ernesto Ceirano won the Targa Florio outright. He drove a SCAT with Alfred Momo as his riding mechanic over three laps of the Grande Circuit covering 446 kilometres, completing the race in 9 hours 32 minutes and 22 seconds at an average speed of approximately 46.8 km/h. Conditions on the Sicilian mountain roads made such averages a genuine test of endurance as much as outright pace, and Momo's presence as mechanic was integral to surviving the event.
Ernesto continued to enter the Targa Florio in subsequent years with SCAT machinery, recording retirements in 1912 and 1913. In 1914 he returned to win the race for a second time, driving a SCAT 25/35. The format of the 1914 Targa Florio differed considerably from 1911: competitors ran a single mammoth lap of 979 kilometres, and Ernesto covered it in 16 hours 51 minutes and 31 seconds at an average of approximately 58 km/h.
He continued racing into the early 1920s under the Ceirano name, contesting events in 1921 and 1922 without matching his Targa Florio performances. His last recorded start was the Gran Premio d'Autunno in October 1922. Across a career that spanned roughly fifteen years of competitive driving, he recorded two victories and three podiums.
Winning the Targa Florio twice — in 1911 and 1914 — placed Ernesto Ceirano among a small group of drivers to have taken the race more than once before the First World War. The victories came in markedly different formats of the event: the 1911 running used a multi-lap structure over the Grande Circuit, while 1914 required a single monumental lap around the full circuit of Sicily's interior mountain roads. The SCAT marque, built by the family, was the machinery in both triumphs, making the results as much a reflection of the Ceirano family's manufacturing capabilities as of Ernesto's driving.
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