I’ve never written a story before,but the editor of this magazine insists I should be the one telling this story and that no one else can quite tell it the way I can. And I guess he’s right! as I have lived in many parts of the world, I have known many interesting people intimately – and have outlived many of them. I agree I do have a story to tell...
Though I was born in 1929, in those days they didn’t keep exact records of births and deaths so I can’t quite tell you the day i was born. I just may have been born in 1928, but I was certainly around by 1929. In those days, birth was a little complicated. We were born with a heart and a frame. The body came later. So it is quite possible that my heart and frame were born in 1928, and that my body was joined to them by 1929. Also, I was born in the city of Milan, in northern Italy, famous for fashion and football.
Ah, my parentage, you want to know about that? Well, one was called Cesare Isotta and the other Vincenzo

Fraschini. Yes both were men, but for our species it was not unusual for male pairs to go forth and procreate some great families: Armstrong and Siddeley, Austin and Healey, Chenard and Walcker, Daimler and Benz (though in this case a woman called Mercedes kind of butted in), Graham and Paige, Lea and Francis, Panhard and Levassor, and of course the most famous of them all, Rolls and Royce. All aristocratic names with much gravitas; my family name too is a stylishly exotic double-barreled Isotta Fraschini. try that again – it sounds good, doesn’t it?
Well, to explain my antecedents -- Isotta and Fraschini got together (in 1900) to import, sell and repair cars. Soon after they started assembling Renaults, and followed that up by launching a 24bhp car by the name Isotta Fraschini. In 1905, Vincenzo Fraschini went racing with a 17.2- litre 100bhp racer. In 1912, engineer Giustino Cattaneo designed a straight-eight engine

that finally wentinto production in 1919.
Luxury car-buyers wanted smooth, flexible multi-cylinder engines and there was nothing that could quite match the straight- eights for smoothness, refinement and power. The heart of the Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8 was an eerily silent 5.9-litre eight with overhead valves that developed 80bhp. In 1925, the heart grew to 7370cc for the Tipo 8A and max power went up to between 110 and 120bhp. And if you young ’uns are not that impressed by the power, remember that those engines had huge torque.
So, with a big torque heart and a mighty long frame (a wheelbase of 3.68 metres!) I was born a very healthy baby. (My heart and frame had numbers, incidentally – 1156 and 1135 respectively). Soon thereafter I received my body, a magnificent Sedanca de Ville style coachwork painted in two shades