Few have led as full a life as the Italian entrepreneur Tartarini. His is the story of a flourishing career as a motorcycle racer cut short by an injury which led to the founding of on of Italy’s most prestigious names – Italjet. Mr. Tartarini is the founder and head of Italjet.

Mr. Tartarini started out as a passionate riding enthusiast who participated in and won several motorcycling races and been acknowledged as one of Ducati’s leading racers of all time. Tartarini's passion for riding was not limited to the races. His most remarkable motorcycling achievement was when he decided to drive his Ducati 175 around the world. Accompanied by his friend Giorgio Monetti, the duo travelled around the world, sixty thousand kms in all, in one year. They travelled through 42 countries including India, Australia, New Zealand, South America, North Africa and through Europe; encountering numerous adventures along the way: a fight over women in a bar in Singapore, being mugged in the desert on the way from Iran to Iraq, and so on. As a reminder of his long distance feat, Tartarini today smokes the same brand of tobacco he first enjoyed in Chile during that very trip, and still owns the bike he did it on.

Mr. Tartarini is a highly acclaimed automobile designer who has received important global recognition and designed for world’s most prestigious brands including Ducati, Gilera, Piaggio, Yamaha and others. ‘Ducati in those days was mainly an engine manufacturer,’ he explains, ‘so it had no design studio and limited production-line capacity for complete motorcycles, because it was busy building diesels and suchlike for automotive and industrial use. Italjet was called upon to design almost all the early Ducati V-twin bikes, and chassis layout. Later, we not only designed the frame as well as the styling for the range of Ducati parallel twins, but actually manufactured the bikes ourselves here in the Italjet factory. But then I was fortunate to foresee the impact of the scooter boom in Italy, which is why we withdrew from our collaboration with Ducati even before the Cagiva take-over and concentrated on the activity for which we are best known today. “

Mr. Tartarini’s creations form part of the permanent exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and also have been included and awarded at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. He is the founder of one of Italy’s most prestigious names Italjet and has designed Kinetic’s Italiano range of scooters of which Blaze forms a part.