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(Above) Torello Fortunato Tacchi (right) and his wife, Page, on a Moto Guzzi motorcycle in the early 1970s. Photo by Al DeBat. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

His life’s work encompassed running the family motorcycle business, Tacchi Auto Works in Old Town and later, Midwest Motorcycle Imports, building custom road racer motorcycles, and competing against professional factory racing teams at tracks in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Daytona Beach.

22-Aug-20 – Road warrior Torello Fortunato Tacchi, a master mechanic, professional motorcycle racer, movie stuntman, airplane builder, and licensed pilot, lived an adventuresome life.

Among Tacchi’s many accolades, motorcycle historians say he should be remembered for his late 1960s restoration of the Traub, one of the rarest antique bikes on earth. Legend says the classic Traub was built in 1916 and walled up in a secret room after its inventor joined the United States Army to fight and die in World War I.

Photo provided by Don DeBat

The Traub (left) was rediscovered in 1967 and traded to motorcycle dealer Tacchi for a brand new $700 Suzuki.

Tacchi restored the Traub – with its orange and butterscotch brown paint, whitewall tires, and four-horsepower antique engine – to perfect condition and put it on display in the Midwest Motorcycle Imports dealership in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood.

A few years later, Bud Elkins, the stuntman for movie star Steve McQueen, was in Chicago filming for The Blues Brothers. He purchased the Traub from Tacchi and later sold the priceless machine to California motorcycle collector Richard Morris.

Tacchi passed away July 15, 2020, in Jacksonville, Florida, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. He was 80 years old. Born on January 15, 1940, in Tunis, Tunisia, to the late Marie and Albert Tacchi, Torello and his family immigrated to Chicago in 1949.

His life’s work encompassed running the family motorcycle business, building custom road racer motorcycles, and competing against professional factory racing teams at tracks in the Chicago area, Indianapolis, and Daytona Beach.

“Torello held the motorcycle lap speed record at Meadowdale International Raceway in Carpentersville, Illinois, for many years and he also won races at the Daytona International Speedway and other tracks,” said Page Pitts Tacchi, his wife of 52 years. “He held lap speed records at tracks in Indianola, Indiana; Laconia, New Hampshire; and Wentzville, Missouri.”

A third-generation rider, Tacchi followed in the tracks of his father and grandfather, who raced in Europe and Africa. Tacchi started road racing in 1964.

Photo provided by Don DeBat

Tacchi also had a brief fling as a stuntman in the motion picture industry. In the early 1960s, he reportedly jumped the Michigan Avenue Bridge near the Wrigley Building while the bridge tender began to raise the mammoth concrete and steel span across the Chicago River.

Tacchi’s abundant collection of motorcycle racing competition trophies was displayed in his airplane hangar and expansive estate and workshop in rural Jacksonville. He was a lifetime member of the American Motorcycle Association.

A true renaissance man and mechanical wizard, Tacchi also was a licensed pilot who built and flew his own airplane, and a man who survived at least one plane crash and a half-dozen high-speed motorcycle racing accidents.

He also was an inventor who created a patented labeling system for Budweiser while employed as a mechanic at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Jacksonville.

Don Garbarino

“Torello Tacchi had a deep, sophisticated, professional knowledge of mechanics,” recalled close friend Don Garbarino (left), former Wright College News editor. “Tacchi was asked to write an article for a national aircraft magazine explaining how automobile and aircraft engines differ. I was amazed at how extensive his understanding was on how engines worked.”

Tacchi was known for his ability to size up a repair project quickly and then complete the job “with no more difficulty than constructing tinker toys,” Garbarino said.

A bright child, Tacchi spoke Italian at home, French in elementary school in Tunis, and quickly learned English. Albert, his mechanic father who was a natural-born U.S. citizen, opened Tacchi Auto Works in the 1500 block of North Halsted Street in the early 1950s, when the blue collar Old Town neighborhood was a stone’s throw from the gritty Cabrini Green public housing project.

“Tacchi, my paesano, was a tough kid – aptly named, because Torello means ‘Little Bull’ in Italian – and that he was,” recalled Pilsen real estate investor Lionel Bottari, his Wright Junior College newspaper friend.

When other boys were playing baseball and other sports, Torello worked long hours in his father’s shop, repairing automobiles and learning to service exotic sports cars and rare European motorcycles.

In the mid-1950s, Tacchi attended Lane Technical High School, where he excelled in the advanced Smith & Hughes auto shop classes. By age 16, Torello was such a skilled mechanic that he completed all auto shop class assignments in the first few weeks of the semester, earning a superior grade. The perplexed auto shop teacher then assigned Torello the task of working on a worn-out 1940 Ford V8 motor that had not been running in a decade. According to classmates, he had the engine purring like a kitten in a week.

Tacchi was graduated from Lane Tech in January 1959 and in 1961 attended Wright Junior College, joining the Wright College News staff, mentored by legendary journalism professor Thomas Glazer. There he learned to write newspaper copy and met and put out the paper with several future professional journalists.

The WCN staff included Chuck Baker, Las Vegas Review Journal; Michael Drexler, WCFL News; James Dwyer, Associated Press; Larry Graff, Chicago Sun-Times; Paul McGrath, Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune; and this writer, who worked for Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times for 27 years.

The Wright College News staff also brought their cars to Tacchi Auto Works for affordable repairs. Baker recalled driving his beat-up 1949 Plymouth to the shop, even though it was a $10 car with no floorboards.

(Right) Tacchi during his professional motorcycle racing years.

Photo provided by Don DeBat

“I fixed the floorboards and Torello repaired the engine, connected the headlights, and hooked up the horn and AM radio,” Baker said. “It took him about ten minutes. I drove it for about a year, and when I got drafted into the U.S. Army, I sold it to the used car lot down on Halsted Street for about $50.”

In 1963, after Tacchi graduated from Wright College with an Associates Arts degree, majoring in journalism, his family launched Midwest Motorcycle Imports on Halsted Street. The showroom featured a collection of antique motorcycles, including Merkle, Indians, and of course, the rare, museum-quality Traub.

Another attraction was a 1930s Moto Guzzi that Albert Tacchi, Torello’s father, dismantled and hid in a barn hayloft in Tunis during World War II and later shipped to America in the 1950s. The vintage bike was restored and Torello added a sidecar and rode it in the Wright Junior College homecoming parade in 1962.

Tacchi would put in a full day selling and repairing exotic Italian, English, and Japanese motorcycles such as Ducati, Moto Guzzi, Norton, BSA, BMW, and Suzuki. On weekends he would generously help his college buddies renovate their homes.

In 1968, Torello Tacchi met Page Pitts through mutual friends and took her out on a blind date. Four months later on September 28, 1968, Torello married Page, and they bought a three-flat with a coach house in Chicago’s Roscoe Village neighborhood and started a family. Daughter Elizabeth Page Tacchi was born in 1974, and son Torello Orazio Tacchi in 1978.

In 1980 the family moved to Jacksonville, where Torello took a machinist/mechanics job at Anheuser-Busch.

Over the past three decades, Torello developed a passion for flying, earned his pilot’s license, and built his own airplane. He flew for Angel Flight, a charitable organization that provides free flights for ill patients. In 2011, Tacchi survived a crash of his Van’s Aircraft RV-10 in rural southeastern Georgia.

“Torello told me he made a ‘dead stick’ landing between two trees that tore the wings off the plane, but he survived with only minor cuts,” Bottari said.

Torello Fortunato Tacchi

Tacchi is survived by his wife; daughter Elizabeth Bailey; his son, Torello; his sisters, Mirella Minnich and Rita Payne; his grandson, James Bailey; granddaughter Ari Bailey; and numerous nieces and nephews.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a Chicago memorial service will be delayed until next spring.