Forgotten Classic: Serenissima----The Winged Lion Is the Rarest Beast of All

No, the red car below is not a customized Ferrari 250LM, but if that was your guess it's a pretty decent one.  It's a Serenissima Jet Competizione, and the story of how it got here forms yet another chapter echoing two of our oft-repeated themes.  The first could be called "How to Lose Money by Making Race Cars" (or any cars, really), and the second, perhaps more cheerful, theme would be entitled "People Who Made Their Own Cars After Having a Bad Ferrari Experience." The latter would include people who had trouble with Enzo himself, not just with his four-wheeled products. It's quite a list, and provides the origin stories of ATS*, Iso Rivolta*, Bizzarrini*, Lamborghini*, and our present subject.

In 1961, after spirited disagreements between Ferrari's team manager and Ferrari's wife Laura (she had invested in the enterprise and wanted a say), manager Gardini and engineers Carlo Chiti and Giotto Bizzarrini walked out, taking other engineers along with them.  Privateer racer Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata decided to finance a rival operation which would produce Formula 1 racers to challenge Ferrari on the track, and sports cars and sports racers to challenge Ferrari on the road.  This was a tall order, complicated by the fact that Volpi took on two partners who often disagreed (the Count later noted that by modern standards one of the partners might belong in jail). Still, the struggling firm released a couple of unsuccessful 1.5 liter GP cars and at least 8 of the more promising ATS GT and GTS (road racer version) coupes by 1964, when the effort ended.  

                           

Volpi, who could not buy Ferraris for his private racing team after the ATS adventure, decided to supply the Serenissima* competition squad with cars and engines of his own manufacture. When the Jet Competizione appeared in 1965, many assumed it was just a warmed-over ATS.  But Volpi claimed it was a new design, and there's evidence for that. The Chiti-designed ATS GT V8 was a 2.5 liter with a single cam per bank of cylinders. The first Serenissima V8 was a four-cam design of 3 liters featuring 2 spark plugs per cylinder, later expanded to 3.5 liters.  ATS engineer Carlo Chiti had moved to Autodelta at Alfa Romeo, and engineering for the new power plant was by Alberto Massimino, who had worked for Alfa Romeo and Maserati as well as Ferrari.  The project went from design to running prototype in a year...

Bodywork on the coupe was by Carrozzeria Gran Sport, which had also built the first Cobra Daytona coupe.  Serenissima sent the car to Le Mans for practice in 1965, but it did not race that year. The team raced it in Italy before the car disappeared, and now it has been re-engined with a scarce, spare Serenissima V8, and attends hill climbs and car shows under its original coat of paint...

There's some evidence that the first running prototype preceded the coupe featured above, and that it may have been a donor car for subsequent machines.  The tubular chassis for all these was designed by Massimino, along with the engine and gearbox, a heroic amount of work on a tight schedule.  Note that the spyder below features the concave trough for the Serenissima badge (by Nicola Bulgari).  This also appears on the later coupe shown above, but is absent on the 1966 358 Spyder #24 shown below the spyder with the bumpers and road equipment. Note also that the windshields on the spyders don't match, indicating that these photos may show the 2 different spyders which were constructed.     

The winged lion of San Marco, like the Serenissima name, relates to the Serene Republic of Venice, one of the proud city-states that preceded modern Italy by a thousand years.  The cars, however, were anything but serene.  Noisy and temperamental, they were fast when they could be kept running.  A 3-liter Serenissima V8 mounted in a McLaren chassis posted that make's first-ever point in Formula One racing in 1966.

            

The 358V Spyder Competizione that raced at Le Mans in 1966 had the 3.5 liter engine, and bodywork by Fantuzzi...

Scuderia Serenissima brought the Jet and another coupe prototype called the Jungla to Le Mans in 1966, but the only car to compete there was the 3.5 liter spyder shown above. Two Frenchmen, Jean-Claude Sauer and Jean de Mortemart, handled driving duties.  They retired the car after five hours with transmission trouble.  That was the last time it raced, and Count Volpi kept it during all the years since, in as-raced condition, dings and all...

Until the Artcurial auction during the Paris Retromobile in February of this year, when the non-running car crossed the auction block with two siblings, the 1967 Agena GT and the 1968 Ghia GT...

The overall design resembled the Ferrari competition cars of the period, with the integrated rollover bar and spoiler at the trailing edge of the engine lid.

This photo shows the twin-plug, four-cam V8 and the dust accumulated during years of storage. The photo below shows the spartan interior with the narrow seats accessed by climbing over the wide bulkheads covering the tubular chassis.  Though it was not running and had never compiled a successful race history  the Serenissima 358V Spyder was sold at roughly twice the top estimate, at 4,218,800 Euros, around $4.75 million dollars.  One hopes the new owner will be able to get it running.

In 1967 Piero Drogo designed the body for the road-going Agena GT based upon the same engine as the spyder above, but with the chassis modified to provide a bit more comfort and space. Count Volpi kept this car in his collection when testing was complete, and the car accumulated few miles over the years.  It was offered for sale in near-original condition, much fresher than its spyder sister...

Body design draws inspiration from a variety of sources, ranging from the Ford GT40-like nose to the flush sides and flat tail, recalling Giugiaro's  contemporary work on DeTomaso and Maserati. Still, the car manages to look tough and purposeful, and not like a copy of anything else.  It sold at auction for over 400,000 Euros.

Along with the Serenissima-engined McLaren GP car, there was a sports racer that Jonathan Williams tested and raced.  It featured gull-wing doors and a 3 liter V8 in a modified McLaren M1B chassis. Despite some stability issues that Williams put down to unstudied aerodynamics, he finished 2nd to Jo Siffert's Porsche 910 at Enna, Italy in 1968. Next year the team would try a different chassis design with a wedge-shaped car called the 168. The gull-wing car is shown below at Enna... 

Also in 1968, Volpi gave some attention to the idea of building a serious GT car, this time with the help of Ghia Studios, which had turned over design duties to American Tom Tjaarda after the departure of Giorgetto Giugiaro.  The resulting car reflected Giugiaro influences, especially in the sharp crease linking the wheels and the glassy cabin, but the proportions reflected more of a focus on passenger comfort than on the De Tomaso Mangusta, the car with which it is most often compared...

The rear aspect recalls the Mangusta in the shape of the flat tail panel.  The tail light units are specific to this car, though they had been lost by the time Count Volpi offered this mysterious one-off GT at this year's Paris auction.  Everything about the form and detailing shows the kind of effort that would be expected on a prototype intended for production.

The engine in the car was replaced while it was still on the auto show circuit with a completely new design with 3 valves per cylinder, still at 3.5 liters.  Design consultants were said to be Walter Hassan and Harry Mundy of Jaguar fame. During this time Alf Francis, former chief mechanic for Stirling Moss, was working with Serenissima. The presence of the English consultants later caused some to wonder if this was a rejected Jaguar prototype engine.  It was not, but it was, like the Colotti-Francis transaxle, evidence of a dedicated (and expensive) effort to engineer a mid-engined road car that might have provided a more user-friendly alternative to Lamborghini's Miura.  The expense part of the equation deterred Volpi from proceeding with production, and when the car was finished with the auto show circuit (including a trip to New York) he used it to commute to road races*.

The gray blue interior probably would better offset the metallic yellow green of the original paint. The interior with its flat, businesslike instrument panel and contoured seats echoes the layout of the De Tomaso Mangusta, but provides more foot room.

Designer Tom Tjaarda repeated this "drilled for lightness" B-pillar design (which looks like a roll bar, but here lacks a cross piece) on his Lancia Fulvia 1600 Competizione* coupe, also built by Ghia.  Like this Serenissima Ghia GT, it was suggested for production but remained one of one...

The chassis plate signifies what may be the most unique classic car of the postwar period. Alone even among the one-off creations of Italian carrozzeria*, the Ghia bodywork is home to an engine completely different in schematic and detail design from those powering its scarce siblings. Considering that its new owner paid around a tenth of the price of the non-running spyder with its Le Mans race history, it can be seen as a kind of bargain.

That it was produced by a small team of dedicated engineers and mechanics in an obscure workshop, and then hidden away for four and a half decades with two of its cousins, is one of the things that makes the world of old cars the intriguing place it is.  In the photo below, the Serenissima crew relaxes in front of a half dozen of the estimated eight (8) cars they built...  

If you tend to think that for a car maker to be considered a truly independent car builder, they need to make their own engine, then you have to concede that Serenissima Automobili qualified twice, with two different engine designs.  Count Volpi's previous partnership, ATS, had built eight road cars and at least two Formula 1 racers.  This total production makes ATS one of the rarest makes, but the scarcity of ATS cars is exceeded by Serenissima.  With no more than eight cars sent out onto the roads and race tracks of Europe, the winged lion turned out to be the rarest beast of all.

Footnotes:  In alphabetical order, photo essays on marques started by disillusioned Ferrari customers and employees appeared in our Archives as follows:

A.T.S. (Automobili Turismo e Sport):  "Forgotten Classic Revival Show: ATS" appeared on November 11, 2018.

Bizzarrini:  "The Etceterini Files Part 17:  Bizzarrini 1900GT Europa" appeared on Feb. 14, 2019, while Part 18 featured the Bizzarrini P538 on Feb. 27, 2019.

Iso Rivolta:  "Born From Refrigerators:  Iso Rivolta" was posted for Sept. 20, 2018.

Lamborghini:  The Lamborghini Miura was reviewed on July 11, 2017 in "Lamborghini Miura: Mini Cooper's 2nd Cousin".  

Finally, Tom Tjaarda's bracingly clean design for the Lancia Fulvia 1600 Competizione is pictured in "Hi-Fi: Racing Red Elephants from Lancia" from October 3, 2016, and the Serenissima Ghia GT appeared way back on September 7, 2015 in "One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars."

Photo Credits:

Top thru 5th from top:  formulapassion.it

6th: amazon.com

7th:  enwheelsage.org

8th: motorious.com

9th thru 15th:  artcurial.com

16th: pinterest.com

17th & 18th:  Ghia Studios

19th thru 25th:  artcurial.com

26th:  Automobili Serenissima