Hillsborough Concours Part 1: Abarth, Alfa, Ferrari, Lancia, Siata, and Vallelunga…(and what?)

This was the year for Buick and Lamborghini at Hillsborough, and in Part 2 we'll have a look at a flotilla of Buicks, as well as a Packard and Pierce-Arrow. The $38 entry fee was well worth it for anyone who likes old cars, as there was an eclectic mix of rarities, oddities and masterpieces on the lawn at the Crystal Springs Golf Course. 

                             

The rarities included this Alfa Romeo 6C-2500SS, bodied in 1949 by Pinin Farina (still two names back then). When I was a kid we lived for a year in Whittier, CA, and the people across the street had two similar PF-bodied Alfa 6C cabriolets, along with a 3-cylinder DKW*, a pillarless hardtop with smooth teardrop styling. I wondered at the contrast between the popcorn popper noise of the DKW compared with the silky thrum of those Alfas.  And of course, I had no idea the 6C-2500 was a such rare car, even in car-crazy LA in 1958. These were upper-crust tourers, especially this high performance SS version, in a price class with Delahayes* and Talbot-Lagos*, and like those cars and Lancias, they still favored right-hand drive.

The Alfa's inline 6, with cast-iron block and aluminum heads, offered the only series-produced engine featuring dual overhead cams when production resumed after WWII. Within 3 years of Alfa's postwar revival, a lower-cost competitor would show up in the form of the Jaguar XK-120; we'll have a look at those in Part 2.  Bodywork was generally supplied by the specialists like Pinin Farina, Superleggera Touring, and the Swiss coach builder Graber.* These cars were long ignored by all but the most fanatic Alfa fans in favor of the sports racers, both pre-war and post-war, but today they are seen as the last hand-built descendants of the 8C-2900 of the 1930s.

The word "concours" is followed by "d'elegance" at traditional shows, and this 1958 Lancia Aurelia B24 convertible, another 2.5 liter car bodied by Pinin Farina, seems to sum up elegant understatement.   

By 1956 Lancia was finally offering lefthand drive, and Max Hoffman had taken on distributing the cars on the East Coast. The Aurelia, introduced in 1951, expanded and refined Lancia's reputation for innovative engineering.  The 60-degree V6 with alloy block and heads was the first V6 in a production car, and followed a long series of Lancia V4s and V8s. Also new on the first Aurelia was a rear-mounted transmission (transaxle) linked to independent rear suspension (a De Dion on this B24). The famous sliding-pillar independent front suspension remained.  Sadly, two years before this car was built, Gianni Lancia had turned control of the company to the Pesenti family, his successful but expensive racing program having bankrupted the company.*

One advantage of a relatively egalitarian show like Hillsborough is that visitors get to see more than just what aristocrats and amateur racers were driving decades ago; they also get a good look at family and economy cars from faraway times and places.  This 1960 Lancia Appia is a small, middle class sedan with eccentric engineering typifying that make: a V4 engine, and doors which when opened would reveal no center pillar…  

In 1959 the shield-shaped Lancia grille on the 1st and 2nd Series Appia gave way to a more generic oblong with shield motif in the middle for the 3rd Series. Other charms remained, including the unitized body construction, which Lancia had pioneered even before Citroen, our next mass-produced work of art…

The long-running Traction Avant, introduced in 1934 by Andre Citroen and his engineer Andre Lefebvre and Maurice Sainturat, successfully combined unitized body construction with front-wheel drive for the first time in a mass-produced car.  It followed Citroen's clever strategy of creating a car combining enough real advances that tooling costs could be amortized over decades of production. After some teething troubles, the car proved itself so suited to its function that it overlapped the production of the next big Citroen to reflect this philosophy, the DS.  When it finally went out of production after 1957, it had become the car most favored by the gendarmerie as well as the gangsters they chased. Those gangsters would have had better luck eluding the police in the red car below…

This is a Siata 208S*, a 2 liter spider powered by the Fiat 8V* (Otto Vu) engine, a V8 by any other name.  It's from 1952, the first year for Fiat's limited-production sports car as well as Siata's usually more competition-focused variant. This one was bodied by Bertone, in a style that bridges the gap between cycle-fendered road racers (which were outlawed around this time) and the envelope bodies that offered better aerodynamics.

This pristine specimen was the personal vehicle of Nuccio Bertone for some time.  As with the Fiat 8V, it offered 4-wheel independent suspension derived from a Fiat 4-wheel drive military utility vehicle.  Clever engineering on a shoestring...

This 1958 Fiat Abarth* 750GT is also Fiat powered, but its 4-cylinder engine is mounted at the rear. Zagato's alloy body design, with the signature 'double bubble" roof, features nearly perfect proportions that mask the car's tiny size. Zagato was an early adopter of curved side glass; the twin hump roof was allegedly conceived to minimize air resistance and still allow a bit more headroom than the first "low roof" models. It appears that the owner-driver has decided to take a nap behind the car after the exhausting effort of getting it ready for the show.  Somehow I like that...

Ferrari's 275GTB4 was the first of road cars to feature the four-cam revision of Colombo's original 2-cam aluminum-block V12 design, and was the first Ferrari berlinetta to feature a 5-speed transaxle along with its 4-wheel disc brakes. You probably missed that entire introduction because your mind is occupied by a single thought: "gorgeous"…

Along with the forward-looking drivetrain and chassis, the GTB incorporated styling themes which had appeared on the Tour de France coupes built in the previous decade.  These included covered headlights, vent slots behind the front wheels and side windows, and a fastback roofline.  When it appeared in 1964, the integrated rear spoiler taken from Ferrari's race cars was a novelty on a production car.  Counting all forms, including 80 alloy-bodied cars, 3 and 6 carburetor options, the long-nose versions which appeared in 1965 and 4- cams in 1966, and the ten NART Spyders built for dealer Luigi Chinetti*, around 970 of these cars were built before production stopped in 1968. By Ferrari standards of the day, that made it a popular car.

Unlike the owner of the Fiat Abarth, this Ferrari's owners did not elect to take a nap behind their car. If the keys to this car were mine, however, I'd probably sleep in the garage every night. Appearing at around the same time as the original 275 GTB, the De Tomaso Vallelunga (named after a race track) pictured below represented an effort to transfer the handling advantages of mid-engine chassis design from racing cars to a road car. The engine chosen was the 4-cylinder English Ford Kent unit, in this case without the Cosworth-designed twin-cam heads featured on the competing Lotus Elan...

Design was handled by the underrated Carrozzeria Fissore, which was also responsible for the similarly glassy Elva BMW GT160, another mid-engined 1.6 liter that appeared in the same year. After the prototypes were built, production was handled by Ghia.  This may be one reason less than five dozen cars were completed, including 50 "production" cars, the prototypes and a handful of alloy-bodied road racers. Unlike Pininfarina or Bertone, Ghia had small production facilities, which is why the VW Ghias were built by Karmann, and Fiat 2300 Ghias from the era of this De Tomaso were mostly built by OSI.

As with the later Mangusta, De Tomaso attempted to explore weight-saving structural concepts without the advantages of computer-aided design.  And like the Mangusta, which used an enlarged version of the same chassis design, there were problems with torsional stiffness. But neither car ever had any trouble attracting attention...

This is a very red car. It's so throbbingly red that it looks like it's been Photoshopped.  Details like the Ghia badge, the shut line around the door and even the shine on the immaculate paint job get blotted out. You'll need to take my word for that those details were there...

…as here, just aft of the immense glass hatch that covers the secondary engine lid, where a chromed identification finally appears between the vent grilles and certifies authenticity to the puzzled bystanders who have been never seen one of these, and may not see another. Most sources claim 58 Vallelungas were built, including 3 prototypes, 5 alloy-bodied road racers, and 50 "production" cars. Encountering a car like this is another reason to visit a show like Hillsborough.  We'll ponder some of the other reasons in Part 2.

*Footnotes:   Cars highlighted with an asterisk have been featured in previous postings and can be found in the archives...
Graber-bodied Alfa Romeo 6C 2500:  6/30/17
DKW:  8/29/17
Delahaye:  6/30/18, 5/30/17 & 11/22/15
Talbot-Lago:  7/3/16
Lancia D-Series racing cars:  10/8/16
Fiat 8V and Siata 208S:  11/13/16
Luigi Chinetti Motors:  5/6/18
Fiat Abarth:  1/15/18


Photo credits:  All photos are by the author.