This year's Lime Rock Concours and Vintage Races at the old track in Connecticut were reminders that lots of technically intriguing, visually arresting cars were built long before anybody thought of putting microchips in cars, or building them on robotic assembly lines. We'll begin with a skiff-bodied Bugatti from the 1920s...
Based upon the long wheelbase and the mid-Twenties body design, this could be a Type 38, made from 1926-'27. The engine architecture, a single overhead cam straight 8 with 3 valves per cylinder, is related to the 4-cylinder Type 23 as well as the later Type 35 GP straight 8s. In Types 30 and 38, it was just under 2 liters, and in the T43 that came after, it matched the Type 35 at 2,261 cc.
The interior is a visual feast of alloy, wood and leather. Plastic had yet to show up in cars.
Bugatti's great rival from the Twenties and Thirties, Alfa Romeo, showed up in variations spanning 3 decades, including rare 8C racers in a couple of forms. Below is an 8C 35 single seater from 1935-36; it managed to embarrass a field of much newer cars.
The Jano-designed 8 cylinder engines featured two monoblocs separated by a tower of gears for the cam drives. The 8C 35 was raced in displacements up to 3.8 liters, and Alfa's race team, Scuderia Ferrari (yes, that Ferrari) supplemented it with a 4.1 liter V12 which made 60 hp more, called the 12C-36.
The Michelotti-designed Moretti spiders from the mid-Fifties shown below still featured engines of Moretti design and manufacture, in 750c and 1,200cc sizes. This and other Morettis are featured in our post for Dec. 8, 2015, "The Etceterini Files Part 2: Golden Arrow, the Moretti That Broke the Bank."
The Siata 208S spider also featured a Michelotti body design, built by Motto*. With 70-degree, 2-liter Fiat V8, and 4-wheel independent suspension adapted from a Fiat off-road vehicle, it charmed Road & Track testers in 1955, even at $5,300...
Siata 208CS coupes like the one below were built at first by Stablimenti Farina and then by Balbo when the first firm folded. Coupes in other styles were offered by Vignale. The Siata 208 and related Fiat 8V are featured in our post for Nov. 13, 2016, "The Etceterini Files Part 10."
The period of the early-to-mid Fifties was a fertile one for Italy's body designers. The Zagato bodied Maserati A6G 2000 below aims for the same goals as the Siata above (light weight, aerodynamics), but arrives at different design solutions. Where the Siata features concealed headlights and a wraparound windshield, Zagato's Maserati stays with more conventional fender and windshield shapes, but offers curved side windows and careful attention to air intake and exhaust vents. Zagato also offered the option of the "double bubble" roof, which this car lacks.
What it has is the famous 2 liter inline six with twin overhead cams and two spark plugs per cylinder. This view shows the subtle contours and the side windows curved in section, a feature as unusual in 1954 as the Siata's pop-up headlights.
The Zagato-bodied SZ from 1960-'61 was the first Zagato-bodied Giulietta actually offered by the Alfa factory, though there had been earlier custom cars and lightweight versions of the 1900. The smooth form, tactile and rounded, relates to the Zagato Lancias and Abarths, but has Alfa-specific features, from the grille to the greenhouse and indented flanks. A red Zagato-bodied TZ (T for tubular chassis, even lighter than the SZ) sits next to the silver car, and shows the design changes wrought by 1963...
Similarly, the Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France in the foreground below shows the evolution of style at Pininfarina between that car (built 1956-'59) and the famous SWB (short wheelbase) 250GT built from 1959-'62. The Tour de France is built on the 102 inch wheelbase of the Pininfarina grand tourers, while the SWB is on the 94.5 inch wheelbase of the later GTO and Lusso. The California spider built during this period was available on both wheelbases.
The SWB in the foreground always featured open headlights owing to a short-lived 1959 Italian law that banned covered lights. TdFs built in '59, like all SWBs, had open headlights. The SWB has a glassier cabin, and was available in alloy or steel-bodied versions. No matter how many children you have, selling even one of these cars at auction will put them all through Stanford, MIT, or Harvard...
The first sports racer with the 250 Testa Rossa ("red head") version of Colombo's V12 design appeared in 1957 with the scoop-fendered design below, built by Scaglietti. There had been a previous 625 Testa Rossa, with 2.5 liter inline four, and a couple were bodied by Touring.
Most Ferrari models during this period were designated by their individual cylinder displacement, but there was nothing in the type name to tell you whether the car had 4, 6 or 12 cylinders...and Ferrari offered variations on all 3 configurations, plus running the Lancia V8 engine in Formula 1. So there was no way of telling without opening the hood that a 750 Monza, with its 4 cylinders, had the same displacement as this 250 Testa Rossa, with 12...
The Testa Rossa TRI-61 below shows Ferrari's rapid progress in body design around the time of their Championship-winning 1961 GP car and the first mid-engined cars turned out by Carlo Chiti's engineering team. All these cars initially shared Chiti's distinctive twin-nostril air intake, and a wraparound windscreen with side windows meeting a high, chopped Kamm Theory tail...
To which Ferrari engineers added the distinctive turned-up spoiler, which increased downforce and improved handling at the cost of a slight decrease in top speed. That year's new mid-engined cars, the Dino V6-powered 196 and 286 SP, as well as the Chiti designed 248 V8, were visually identical and tested in the wind tunnel. The TRI-61 featured a new space frame chassis to complement the new Fantuzzi bodywork, and the disc brakes and five-speed transmission which had shown up in the previous series. The engine, still at the front, was the reliable Colombo-designed Type 128 three-liter SOHC V12, with the dry-sump lubrication from 1960 allowing a lower hood. The Testa Rossa engine featured double-helical valve springs, another first for Ferrari. Despite the low production (2 cars), TRI-61s won Sebring twice and Le Mans once before mid-engined cars, many of them Ferraris, took over.
The 250 GTO which appeared late in 1962 was proposed by Ferrari as a version of the long-running 250 GT series. In line with that, the wheelbase matched the SWB at 94.5 inches. The chassis was designed by Giotto Bizzarrini, and Ferrari claimed this was a production GT car, despite the fact that only 36 of the FIA-required 100 examples were built.
Among the cars tested in the new wind tunnel were the visually-identical V6 Dino-engined 196 and 286 SP, as well as the Carlo Chiti-designed V8s, the 248 and 268 from 1963. Two years after the 1961 "palace revolt" when Chiti and Bizzarrini left Ferrari, the twin-nostril grilles of the early 250P and TRI 61 had been replaced by air intakes like the one below. On the V6 and V8 cars, the first two numbers refer to engine (rather than individual cylinder) displacement, and the third number refers to the number of cylinders...
Ferrari's 250 LM (below) was introduced late in 1963 as a closed "road car" version of the 250 P sports racer. Ferrari's strategy to get the car homologated as a GT car rather than a prototype was to give the impression that this mid-engined racer was a variation of the 250 series of production cars, just as the previous front-engined GTO had been...
Despite the name, all 250 LMs were produced with a 3.3 liter single overhead cam V12, so the engine was really a 275. Ferrari was unable to build 100 units of the LM, producing only 32 through 1965. The Ferrari factory declined to enter an LM in the prototype class at the '65 Le Mans, Luigi Chinetti's North American Racing Team entered one, driven by American Masten Gregory and Jochen Rindt, who thrashed the car for hours on end, feeling that they had no chance of winning anyway. To their surprise, the sturdy engine and transaxle held together, and they won the race, beating the newcomer Fords. The deep "tunnel roof" is an exaggerated version of the roof on the front-engined GTO64...
The 250 GT Lusso, built from 1962 through '64 in just over 350 copies, is a reminder of what Ferrari's real production cars were during this era. The subtle contours of the Pininfarina-designed, Scaglietti-built body provide a tasteful skin over a tubular chassis related to the competition GTO. The way the arc of the front fender fades into the door is especially fetching, and the proportions belie the 94 inch wheelbase shared with the SWB and GTO. Like the GTO, there was a simple live axle rear suspension, but also a disc brake at each wheel. Years later, East Coast distributor Luigi Chinetti commented that the Lusso was perhaps the last of the light, simple and reasonably-priced twelve cylinder Ferraris.
The Lusso was probably the first production car, and the first production Ferrari, to feature the Kamm Theory tail with subtle spoiler at the deck edge...
The Bizzarrini P538 below was designed by exiled Ferrari engineer Giotto Bizzarrini, and three of the four cars built featured a 5.3 liter, mid-mounted Chevy V8, thus the name 538...
One of the 4 cars, however, featured a Lamborghini V12, which meant that it was the only Bizzarrini to feature an engine as well as a chassis designed by its namesake. The 538 history is reviewed on our post from Feb. 27, 2019, "The Etceterini Files Part 18: Bizzarrini P538."
*Footnote: The diverse work of coach builder Rocco Motto is surveyed in our post for March 25, 2018, entitled "Unsung Genius: Rocco Motto, the Closer."
Photo Credit: All photos were taken and submitted by LT Jonathan D. Asbury, USN, with the exception of the Ferrari Lusso rear view, which was by the author.
Photo Credit: All photos were taken and submitted by LT Jonathan D. Asbury, USN, with the exception of the Ferrari Lusso rear view, which was by the author.
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