Roadside Attraction----Sarasota Classic Car Museum: Lots of Iso Rivoltas, and a Little of Everything Else

Florida's Sarasota Classic Car Museum offers a collection which is less focused on pre-war classics and post WWII racers than the Revs Institute in Naples, but it has an eclectic collection of significant cars starting with the dawn of the horseless carriage era.  This 1905 Schacht, built in Cincinnati, produced all of 10 hp from 100 cubic inch displacement of a water-cooled flat twin.

The Schacht gives a new meaning to the term "half-restored", as one half of the car, as seen in the photo above, has indeed been restored.  The other half looks like this...

Unlike other "half-restored" cars, the Schacht doesn't appear to have been the victim of a budget cut, but instead appears to have been restored only from its right side to its centerline, as a sort of 3D "before and after" snapshot.  This approach will provide insight to museum visitors, but is unlikely to enhance driving enjoyment.

The museum has a couple of Rolls Silver Ghosts, both formerly belonging to John and Mable Ringling  of the circus dynasty.  The one above was assembled in the Springfield, Massachusetts, factory that Rolls Royce operated in the Roaring Twenties, and dates from 1922.  The interior shot is from the Ringling's 1924 model. 

Delahaye is represented by a seldom-seen Type 134, the four cylinder kid sister to the famous Type 135 six.  This charmer from 1934 is a reminder that Delahaye produced trucks and middle class road cars in the years before WWII.  They might've turned into the Volvo of France, if not for Peugeot's bigger production capacity and better postwar luck, which involved the French government assigning them to middle-class, mainstream cars, while Delahaye was restricted to the heavily-taxed stratosphere.

A similar Type 134 is shown in rear view below.  Bodies were by Autobineau, the series production arm of custom coachbuilder Letrouneur & Marchand.  Facel would provide a similar service after WWII, providing bodies for a variety of Panhards, French Fords and Simcas as well as making their own cars.

The one make of car represented out of all proportion to its frequency on the world's highways, though, is Iso Rivolta*.  The Sarasota museum displays one of nearly every kind of vehicle Iso built from the beginning in the 1950s until the end in 1974, including the handsome, Giugiaro-designed, 327 Chevy-powered 1967 Grifo shown below.

This phenomenon is due to the happy fact that Piero Rivolta, the son of Iso founder Renzo Rivolta, happens to live in Sarasota. The Rivolta family has lent part of their comprehensive collection to the display, including the Iso motorcycle that nestles next to the sleek, shiny flanks of the Grifo.

There's even a rare example of the Iso S4 (also called Fidia) 4-door sedan, which is parked next to an Isetta, the egg-shaped microcar that was Iso's first car design.  Iso later licensed the Isetta design to BMW, and it contributed to BMW's survival at a time when the German firm was losing money on its big, slow-selling V8s.

Iso Rivolta, on the other hand, did pretty well with V8s until the OPEC oil embargo that followed the Arab-Israeli war in 1973.  The impact on fuel costs suddenly made the American V8s in Isos (sourced from GM until 1972, and Ford afterward) unfashionable even for those who could afford them.  The last completely new model Iso Rivolta proposed was the mid-engined Varedo shown below, powered by a 351 Cleveland mounted in the 8th chassis Giotto Bizzarrini had produced for his stillborn AMX3* project for American Motors. That chassis, in turn, had its roots in Bizzarrini's P538* sports racer…

The fiberglass body on the lone Varedo prototype was designed by Ercole Spada at Zagato. Unlike many prototype cars, the final product looks a lot like the concept sketch.  In the case of the Varedo, that's not an advantage.  The finished body preserves the abrupt transitions and lack of detail resolution shown in the sketch.  The side window glazing, which is present both above and below the car's belt line, echoes a theme stated more convincingly by Giorgetto Giugiaro in his design for the Maserati Boomerang*. 

Mazda's long-playing adventure with the Wankel rotary engine is commemorated by the Series I Cosmo.  The two-seater was produced from 1967 to 1972, and this early version featured a couple of inches less wheelbase than the Series II.  Both versions are smaller than their somewhat American-influenced bodywork would indicate, with careful proportions and low roof height concealing the size of the 1,700 pound coupe.

Engines were twin-rotor designs produced in 1.1 liter (racing), 1.2 liter and 1.3 liter displacements from designs licensed from NSU in Germany. The cars were fixed roof coupes, with under 400 Series I models produced, and over 800 of the Series II.  The rear-end styling has hints of Chrysler Turbine Car, while the frontal treatment seems derived from Pininfarina's Ferrari Superfast coupes, with glass-covered headlights and the formed steel "speed lines" framing the slanted vents behind the front wheels.

Sarasota's Cosmo is right-hand drive, as were most of the production Cosmo two-seaters.

The Ford Prodigy concept car from 2000 is a largely-forgotten artifact of a program called Partnership for a New Era of Vehicles which involved the US Government and the Big Three. The idea was to foster US leadership in high-efficiency, low-emissions vehicles. Ford took the diesel-electric hybrid approach with the Prodigy, and their test car yielded 72 mpg. Styling reflected Ford's cautiousness after their experience with pubic resistance to their ovoid, "no-straight lines" 3rd generation 1996 Taurus*.

By the time Ford got around to producing a hybrid car, it was a gasoline / electric hybrid more closely related to Toyota Prius technology.  The Prodigy in Sarasota is a non-running "roller" built for display at auto shows.

*Footnote:  For a more complete commentary on Iso Rivolta history, you might search our archives for "Born from Refrigerators: Iso Rivolta", posted on Sept. 20, 2018.  The AMX3 saga is recounted in "Italian Jobs from the Heartland Part 2: AMX Vignale and AMX3 Bizzarrini" from Nov. 29, 2016.  The Bizzarrini P538 which preceded led to the AMX3 and finally to the Iso Varedo is reviewed in "The Etceterini Files Part 18: Bizzarrini P538" from Feb. 27, 2019.  The Maserati Boomerang is pictured in "One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars", in these posts for Sept. 7, 2015.  And the 3rd generation Ford Taurus design is given some context in "Nineties Concept Cars Part 2: Lost in Translation" from Dec. 31, 2018.

Photo Credits:  All photos are by frequent contributor Paul Anderson, except for the rear view of a Delahaye 134 from Wikimedia Commons, and the last photo showing the Ford Prodigy, which is from RM Sotheby's, which auctioned the non-running display car.  The design sketch of the Iso Varedo is from the Zagato Design Studio.