Angelo Villafranca

2/8/1908 - 5/3/1945

Record updated 02-Aug-06

Angelo Villafranca
He was born in Saint Fé, Granada, Spain. When he was 11 he moved with his parents to São Paulo in Brazil. He came form a racing family and he first competed in the mid 1930s. He was a member of the Volante Club de São Paulo and won a number of their races including the Rei e Rainha do Volante de San Paulo in a Bugatti.

In 1936 he entered his Stutz in the I GP Cidade de São Paulo. Unfortunately he car failed srutineering and even after making the neccessary changes he was still excluded. It was in this race that Hellé Nice, when dicing de Teffé for third position, crashed into the grandstand leaving five dead and thirty injured.

Angelo won a number of local races but rarely competed in International events. One of them however was on the 29th of May 1938, when he finished 7th overall in the I Circuito da Gávea Nacional and 4th in the Carros Adaptados class with a Stutz 5300cc. The race was won by Nascimento Junior in an Alfa Romeo P3 with Chico Landi second. Later that year in October he competed in the I GP "Commércio e Industria de São Paulo" in the Bairro do Pacaembu driving his Stutz to 3rd place in Carros Adaptados class (Carros Adaptados was a precursor to the Mecânica Nacional).

Angelo was just 37 years old when he was killed in a motorcycle accindent on the Avenue Paes de Barros in the Moóca quarter of São Paulo.



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