Claudio Carsughi, the engineer who redefined Brazilian car testing, dies at 93

Claudio Carsughi, whose civil engineering background transformed how Brazilian magazines judged cars, has died at the age of 93. Born in Italy, he landed in Rio de Janeiro with his family after World War II on what was meant to be a one-year stay — one that instead became a lifetime based in São Paulo.

After a stint at sports magazine Placar, he took over Quatro Rodas' testing desk in 1975 and edited the section until 1990, replacing seat-of-the-pants impressions with hard measurements of suspension, engines and dynamics. His most famous scoop was the country's very first road test of the then-unreleased Volkswagen Gol, run before dawn under a secrecy operation ahead of the hatch's 1980 debut; Volkswagen brought him back in 2022 to sample the farewell Last Edition. He also evaluated the Gurgel Itaipu, Brazil's first domestically built electric car.

His technical eye carried over to Formula 1, where he read tire wear, chassis balance and team strategy rather than results alone, and it produced one of his career-defining moments: in 1994, monitoring Italian shortwave radio from home, he confirmed the news of Ayrton Senna's fatal accident and broke it live on Brazilian radio. He latercommentated for ESPN Brasil and SporTV, and in 2012 founded his own website.

Known for acid humor and unshakeable independence, the man nicknamed "Mestre Carsughi" defended manual gearboxes as automation spread, and his career was recognized with a Roquete Pinto trophy and, in 2015, the creation of the L'Auto Preferita award.