Porsche acquires Nardo proving ground

The engineering arm of sportscar maker, Porsche, has just bought Italy’s famous Nardo proving ground.

While the Porsche Engineering Group is not disclosing the purchase price, it has taken over the southern Italian proving ground with immediate effect.

Porsche is just one of the manufacturers who frequent the test facility, near Lecce in the impoverished Puglia region, and it has promised to maintain the open status of the facility for all carmakers.

With 100 employees, 16,000 square metres of workshop space and 700 hectares of land, the Nardo facility has been in financial trouble for some time. Founded by Fiat in 1975, the lion’s share of its funding had come from the Italian region of Puglia which sold it to the independent Nardo Technical Centre Prototype SpA.

Its 12km-long high-speed bowl, with four lanes and banking ranging from four to 22.5 degrees, has seen some phenomenal speeds, including the 24-hour distance and speed record of 7749.4km at an average of 322.8km/h, set by the VW W12 Nardo Prototype (pictured) in 2002.

But those speeds have been beyond the bowl for some time as Nardo’s owners struggled to find the cash to keep it at the standard required for high-speed work, even though the top lane has a zero-scrub radius at 225km/h.

Besides the bowl, it also boasts 75km of other roads and tracks, including a Bathurst-length 6.2km handling circuit that was built in 2008 and is frequented by Lamborghini, Ferrari and Porsche, amongst other clients.

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