In 1999, Luca Zagato, grandson of legendary coach builder Ugo, teamed with partner Shozo Fujita to build a new car in Italy. They wanted to build a modern, mid-engined GT under the OSCA name, and with no Maserati brothers around to object (or to participate) they picked Superleggera Touring, a firm revived by the son of company founder Carlo Anderloni, to produce the car, aiming at an initial series of around 300 units. Body design, however, was delegated to Ercole Spada, who had penned Zagato's 1960s masterpieces such as the Aston Martin DB-4 GTZ and the Alfa Romeo TZ.
Intriguingly, the partners chose a 2.5 liter boxer four from the Subaru Legacy to power the car, rather than the turbocharged 2.0 liter as used in that year's WRX STI, which cranked out 265 horses. The more lightly stressed engine in the Dromos made 187 hp, but it had good low-end torque and was available at lower cost. The prototype which appeared in 2001 was a sleek, tidy package, 45 inches high, 161 inches long and just under 1,720 pounds. Performance was competitive with the contemporary Lotus Elise (155 mph and 0 to 60 under 6 sec.), but price would not have been close.
It would have taken higher production numbers, or perhaps a production agreement with Subaru, to bring the price down into Lotus Elise territory. It seems a shame that didn't happen, as the Dromos was a more convincing sports car than the front-engine Subaru BRZ which appeared with its Scion FRS twin eleven years later. As with that car, there was no option of the Subaru all-wheel drive system, so the car seemed aimed more at weekend racers than rally competitors. The interior, like the rest of the car, seemed purposeful and carefully detailed...
Not surprisingly, the visual form showed a closer relationship to classic Zagato efforts than to anything from Touring. Note the subtle indent in the roof panel, echoing the twin hump Zagato Lancias and Maseratis. Also, the rounded and raised center deck form which links rear window to tail seems a modern restatement of Spada's Alfa TZ-1. Owing to economic conditions, the OSCA Dromos 2500GT never left the prototype stage. It would have seemed in retrospect a better way for Subaru, which had found great success on the world rally circuit with the WRX, to break into the sports car scene dominated by makes like Porsche. A less expensive way, certainly, than trying to launch a Formula 1 car...
It's been largely forgotten that Subaru tried to do just that about a decade earlier than their involvement in the OSCA project. In the late 1980s, they commissioned Carlo Chiti, who had designed the Alfa Type 33 V8 as well as Alfa's flat-12 GP engines, to design a boxer 12 engine for the 3.5 liter formula. Chiti's firm, Motori Moderni, built the new engine, also known as the Subaru 1235. Owing to power and weight issues, the engine was not successful when run by the Coloni team, and was withdrawn before the end of the 1990 Formula 1 season.
It seemed the 60-valve engine might be attractive to power a road-going supercar, however, For one thing, what seems heavy in F1 competition might seem less so in a 2 passenger car. Also, the boxer layout which had presented problems for the ground-effects aero layout on the GP cars was not a hindrance on a GT. In 1989, before the Subaru / Motori Moderni GP car had its abortive season, DOME Ltd. from Maihara, Japan showed its supercar prototype, the Jiotto Caspita, powered by a detuned Subaru 1235 engine. The rounded forms, bubble cockpit, and deep side intakes reflected a move away from the wedge shapes of the mid-70s to mid-80s. One Mark I Caspita was built with the flat 12.
In the early 90s, this car was joined by the similar-looking Mark II powered by a detuned Judd V10 engine, also 3.5 liters. For the same reasons that killed the later OSCA project, the two Caspita prototypes were never joined by any production cars. They remain as museum exhibits in Japan, reminders of ambitious plans made during surging economies and stranded by receding tides of funding.
*Footnote: For a survey of OSCA history beginning with the founding Maserati brothers, see our post entitled "Almost Famous" in the archives for April 20, 2016.
Photo credits:
OSCA Dromos 2500GT (all exterior views): carsfromitaly.net
OSCA Dromos interior: allsportauto.com
Subaru Motori Moderni engine: subaruidiots.com
Jiotto Caspita Mark I exterior: wikimedia
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