Fiat 600 Multipla, original brochure

I just came across this fantastic original brochure for the Fiat 600 Multipla.
The quality of these drawings would deserve to be framed.

Gilles Villeneuve, 30 Years Later

30 years ago today a distressed Gilles Villeneuve was getting ready to get on a race car for the last time. He came from a race that extremely disappointed him and that possibly made him loose faith in his team and one of his friends. Some say he felt lonely, some say he already had a contract for Williams burning in his pocket. There's a lot of speculations about those days the reasons for what seems an unnecessary crash.

The only fact that remains is that Gilles left us forever that day, while the whole world was still patiently waiting to celebrate him as world champion. Thing that will never happen.

Salut Gilles.

1961 250GT SWB s/n 2819 GT, the Breadvan

We could call it "la camionette", "il furgone", "revan",  a pimp's machine or even evidence, but we definitely should not call it a Ferrari, because it was born to beat Ferraris and definitely not to be one of them.

It is yet one of the amazing cars made as a reaction to Enzo's bad temper and diplomacy. 

When in October 1961 Ferrari fired his sales manager Girolamo Gardini (allegedly because he dared pointing out that Enzo's wife Laura was too nosy) quite a big number of engineers and mechanics decided to step up in defence of Gardini. The result was what it would be know as "the Purge" and saw Enzo firing the whole lot of revolters. Between these were Giotto Bizzarrini, chief of the experimental sports car development, and Carlo Chiti, chief engineer. They were both working on the much awaited final race version of the 250, the GTO, and the whole program seemed at risk.

Chiti and Bizzarrini would go on and found Automobili Turismo e Sport (ATS) and saw in one of Enzo's most affluent clients, the Count Volpi of Misurata a good investor. Enzo didn't appreciate Volpi accepting the offer and quite clearly told the Count that he would not have received the firat two GTO, as promised. Bizzarrini's answer to a worried Volpi was "where's the problem? we'll make you one".

Starting from one of Scuderia Serenissima's competition 250 SWB, Bizzarrini moved the engine even further back and lowered it, the coach building was left in the hand of a team borrowed from Neri & Bonacini (and not Drogo) and the lines developed little by little under their experience and Bizzarrini's guidelines. Apart from the lower nose and the fundamental new windscreen line, it was also decided to try and push aerodynamic as far as possible and the introduction of the extreme Kamm Tail design. This the birth of our beloved Breadvan and its unmistakeable outline. The only detail not equalled or improved from the GTO project was the transmission, since Ferrari would have never given away one of the new 5-speed units. This will prove not to be a big problem for the car was 100kg lighter and sporting a much better aerodynamic. The whole car car built in pretty much 14 days, just in time for 1962 Le Mans.

The car proved outright faster than the GTO and the prestigious 24h endurance seemed within reach but the organisers were not sure what to do with this weird animal, possibly because of some subliminal pressures from Maranello. The mechanics of Scuderia Serenissima would have to add a new layer of paint "on location" and add a rear windshield wiper (apparently stolen from a Fiat Topolino in the visitor's parking). They would eventually get homologation and take part in the race but not in the same class as the GTOs. The breadvan would be homologated in the higher "prototype" class, probably in an attempt to avoid the car being able to win the class. The Breadvan was comfortably keeping up with the prototypes for the first four hours, leavign all the GTO in the dust until the drive shaft broke. 

The car became the GTO's nightmare for the rest of the year, to the extreme of Ferrari retiring his cars when he saw the Breadvan lining up for the Ollon-Villars hillclimb race.

 It was quite common in the early sixties for drivers and team owners to use racing GTs as personal cars and 2819 GT was no exception, being often seen glamourously parked (still badly painted and completely dirty) in Montecarlo, Rome or Milan often in the span of a single weekend of parties and mundane events. 

After one of these events in Montecarlo legend goes that Count Volpi gave the keys to Fiat's heir Giovanni Agnelli, who was apparently bored, tipsy and just wanted to go back to his villa in Torino. He arrived home late that night and still in the fumes of alcohol asked his butler to paint the car black, because it was a great car… but it looked like a hearse to him. The butler immediately started painting diligently the car, but realised he would have ran out of paint. He therefore decided to paint some stripes on the nose of the car and the "T" of Torino in place of race numbers. This the genesis of one of the most striking and iconic paint jobs ever. It would eventually be repainted red.

As a glamorous legend goes the Breadvan would eventually be stopped by french police while thundering playboy Gunther Sachs and Princess Soraya in the south of France before being sporadically raced in hillclimbs and small events around Rome.

In the end of the sixties the car would jump the ocean for the first time, changing hands quite a few times and eventually becoming the furious ride of a Hollywood club owner who constantly hammered it in California's desert roads in late night runs, scaring to death the occasional girl picked up in the club.

What a sight it must have been.

2819 GT would then come back to England to take part in the first steps of "vintage races" where it would have endless battles with a more modern Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada, effectively its younger sister. Apparently only the Bizzarrini's disc brakes would keep the races on balance, being the older Breadvan much more nimble and precise. In one of these races its beautiful nose was badly flattened in the car's worst crash to date. It will be fixed without too much attention to detail and its beautiful ugly nose would have to wait more than a decade before being reshaped properly.

The car would then be part of a dodgy money movement that took it back to the U.S. before being finally sold to its actual home in Germany but not before a little trip to Holland to be finally restored to today's standards. We shall all be thankful to the Max Werner, the current owner, for racing the car whenever the chance arises, typically Goodwood and at the Le Mans Classics. It is a gift to all the fans of the Breadvan and a sign of the respect to the car's spirit and virtue.

To discover all the little details of this fantastic story, to find out who and why wrote "Revan" on it, the unsolved mistery of an engine swap and many other details please do buy "Rebel Rebel, Breadvan - The Most Recognizable Ferrari in the World" from M. Sonnery and K. Bluemel. A fantastic book mostly made by interviews with all the people that were involved in the life of the car. 

This is the on board video of the victory at the Mugello Historic Festival 2008. 

Enjoy the mighty sound and a brave attempt of a Shelby Cobra.

CCT back to business!!

Unfortunately some unfortunate events in my personal life kept me away from this blog for a couple of months but this time gave me a chance to collect a lot of material for future posts. Let's get back to business by taking a look at a couple of interesting cars capable of being "future regrets".

My first choice would be an old passion of mine and in my opinion one of the cars that still awaits the respect it fully deserves, especially here in the UK. This Lancia Beta Montecarlo  is advertised also on ebay for £1200 and no reserve. It sure needs some works to get back on the road, but it seems quite solid in the pictures and it would definitely be worth a trip. If you are not familiar with the gifted and troubled mid engined Beta Montecarlo take a look at this website.

The second eye catcher on ebay lately has been this Berkeley T60. I've asked my dear friend Ray Bell (from the Berkeley's Club) for a quick description and evaluation. "Berkeley produced about 4200 cars altogether, from 1956 until 1961, when the company went out of business.

The T60, launched in August 1959 sold more than any of the other models - altogether around 1800 were made. The design was derived from the earlier 4 wheeled 'Sports 328', using the same 328cc Excelsior twin 2 stroke engine, with a 4 speed gearbox driving the front wheels. Much of its popularity was due to the fact that a three wheeler could be driven on a motorcycle licence provided that the reverse gear was blanked off. 

Increasingly these ground-breaking cars are seen as classics worthy of restoration, and this T60, fitted with a comparatively rare hardtop, looks like a good specimen of a standard T60.

Typically a well restored T60 will fetch £3,000 - £3,500. "

At the moment 17 bids are fetching £2,800 but are not crossing the reserve price yet. My bet is that the car  will get closer to £4.000 than £3.500 but I have a feeling it will not be enough for the reserve. 

I will definitely keep an eye on this auction, the ingredients are the ones for a complete oddball. The seller doesn't know how to spell and anyway doesn't seem to know the correct name of it. It is in fact a Jensen GT (as it says on the bumper) and not a Jenson Healy or a Jensen Healey, the connection with Healey ended in 1975. The description and pictures would keep me away from it but 15 bids certainly show a lot of interest for this attractive shooting brake. Only 473 were ever made and under the bonnet there should be a 1.973cc Lotus twin-cam,  but with perfect examples being evaluated around £6.000 I would say that this is a far cry from a wise investment. 15 bids, £460 so far, 4 days and no reserve make for an interesting auction to keep an eye on, thou.

Sunday stroll in the P1800s

While I'm working on "Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 - Part II" please enjoy some shots I took yesterday while out on a stroll with my brother's Volvo P1800s. The car found its element in Battersea Park, South London. Those lines never stop amazing me. If you think Turin had nothing to do with this car designed and built in Sweden... think again! 

Piero Dusio and Ferdinand Porsche - Part I

If you ever thought that Porsche was one of the few great car makes that didn't have much to share with Turin, please keep on reading for one of the most amazing stories I will ever be able to tell in this blog.

Piero Dusio was born in 1899 in the the small village of Scurzolengo , just few miles outside Asti, quite a lovely drive south west from Turin. Son of a waxed fabrics salesman he managed to put his lovely attitude at work from a very early age. Hard worker, he ended up building his own industry when still very young. He then happily gave up his career as professional football player in Juventus (for a knee injury) to dedicate himself to race cars. Larger than life as he was, he just wasn't satisfied with being Italian Champion in the amateur class of 1934 and first in class at the 1937 Mille Miglia. His best result for the following years would have been first overall at the dangerous 1938 Stelvio hillclimb for Scuderia Torino but all this simply still wasn't up to his standards. The young Piero probably just wasn't aware of the fact that he was racing against some of the best drivers that would have ever lived, his friends Piero Taruffi, Achille Varzi and Tazio Nuvolari to name a few. He therefore decided he could have done better that Alfa Romeo with its 2900.

In 1944 he founded Compagnia Industriale Sportiva Italiana, better known as Cisitalia, and based it in Corso Peschiera, in his beloved Turin. He hired the likes of Dante Giacosa and Giovanni Savonuzzi to design a simple, inexpensive single-seater racing car which could get Italy racing again. Pre-war racers were slowly being taken out from war-time hideouts, but they were too expensive for a country that just woke up after the WW2 nightmare.

They used Giacosa's wartime experience to design an aeronautical spaceframe, held it up with a secret cache of chrome-molybdenum that Dusio and Savonuzzi managed to obtain and held the whole thing up with a little help from Prof. Cicala from Turin's Polytechnic. The racer fitted a Fiat engine tuned to 60hp and suspensions from the Topolino (one of Giacosa's pre war design). In 1946, just one year after the war, the D46 was born.

Cisitalia produced at least 30 of them, the most famous of all was the one Tazio Nuvolari lapped twice around the circuit of Valentino waving the steering wheel to the jubilant crowd. The quick release system broke during the race and he decided to please the crowd before being disqualified.

In 1947 Cisitalia would create one of the most beautiful cars of all time. You can find one at the MOMA in New York as example of outstanding design, "sculpture in movement". It's the 202, a tubular frame dressed by a young Pinin Farina. The car would be on and off production with different engines and coach-builds until 1952, but we'll get back to this later on, because Dusio was relying on the sales of the 202 to build his dream: a Grand Prix winner.

In order to do this he wanted the engineer whose cars never managed to beat before the war, Ferdinand Porsche.

Keep on reading for Part II.

Piero Dusio and Ferdinand Porsche - Part II

In many ways the innovative genius of Ferdinand Porsche was similar to the one of the Italian and both had to deal with the darkest powers of Europe in the century. Born in Austria in 1827, he had a knick for engineering stuff from a very early age. Must have been a shock for his parents to see him going from setting up an electric system for the house to present a revolutionary electric car in Paris' Expo of 1900. If you consider putting electric motors in the wheels hubs a very ground breaking idea these days, think again. Because 23 years old Ferdinand already thought of it in this very car, the Lohner Porsche, and it was arguably also the first 4WD car.

After leaving Lohner and working in different other makes such as Daimler, he decided to flirt with power, agreeing to work for the Austrian Emperor in building the Etrich Taube plane. But his dream was to build a car for everybody and when he heard Germany's prime minister wanted to build a car for his people he promptly applied. The brief was for a car capable of 100km/h, 7km/l and the capacity to  carry the ideal german family: two adults and three kids. All this for two thirds of the price for the cheapest car on the market. The prime minister was obviously Adolf Hitler.
Porsche promptly applied and the deal was sealed in an exceptional quick time. He eventually obtained all the independence and funds for his project in 1938, Independence and funds that didn't have before, when working on it at Zundapp and NSU. 

We all are familiar with the history and revolutionary characteristics of this car, eventually named Volkswagen "Beetle" or Type-1, so there will be no need to repeat them in this blog. Porsche was also asked to work on the Auto Union racers that with a german driver at the wheel would make the führer proud and represent the so-called arian race all over the racing world. 

We are unfortunately also familiar with what Nazism created in Europe. Quite quickly Porsche's efforts had to be converted on all kind of war machinery, most notably the light all-purpose vehicle Kubelwagen and its variations. It's way too easy for us to be judgemental about Porsche's behaviour, but many times in history we had to see great innovators and geniuses dealing with all sorts of compromises in order to see their creatures coming to life. For sure we can never forget that in some of the factories slavery labour was employed and any affiliation with the Nazist cancer can be nothing but horrendous, but this is neither the place or the time for this kind of terrible considerations.

Fact is that at the end of the war Porsche tried to escape in Austria, where the allies went to pick him up to chain him to his responsibilities. He was forced to move the Type-1 project and machinery to France as war reparations, but he was almost immediately forbidden to get back to work. With no chance to pay the huge amount of money for the war reparations anymore, his dream seemed gone forever. Porsche was stuck in the french prison of Dijon with a sentence of 20 years, eventually converted to house arrests, without even a trial.

On the other side of the Alps economy was starting to live again and Dusio's businesses were booming. He was ready to pursue his ultimate desire: a Grand Prix winner. 

He found out about Ferdinand's situation and managed to organise a meeting with his son Ferry and daughter Louise. A deal was signed for the design of two cars, one GP racer, one turbine and even a tractor. All this was to be payed in three rates delivered every three months. He also managed to get 10 promising technicians to Turin for a little extra money and accommodation. Two of these technicians alone would have been more than worth the whole deal already: Rudolph Hruska and Carlo Abarth.

Dusio used to keep on repeating "I'll go bust, but damn it... I'll make the Grand Prix". He stuck to his word and spent almost all of his money on it.

Ferry Porsche started working immediately on the task, managing to get the money and free his dad as soon as possible. Time was paramount also for Dusio that needed the prototype on the track as soon as possible. The car was almost sci-fi for the time: rear engined, space frame chassis, oversquare engine, all-round independent suspensions, double overhead camshaft, 2 compressors and on/off integral traction. The compact 1,492.58cc flat 12 was capable of an excess of 380bhp at 10.000 but was preserved at a safer 350/8.000. This was the legendary Cisitalia 360, a car that would have certainly set the world of racing on different standards.

Dusio's money ran out and he decided to run (away from creditors?) to Argentina smuggling the 360 in spares. He there managed to sign a deal with the president/dictator Juan Perón (Evita's husband) to open a new Argentinian company, effectively paying for Dusio's debts. He would come back to Italy and race in 1952 but he finally gave up in 1953 and got back to Buenos Aires for good. 

His son Carlo tried and revamp Cisitalia's dream in the end of the fifties, converting its business to coachworks in Racconigi, Turin's outskirts, but eventually gave up in 1963.

As legend goes, after closing the gates for the last time, Carlo found himself in downtown Turin and with tears striping his face threw the 360's camshaft off one of the bridges of river Po.