Ferrari 250 GTO: Bending the Rules, and the Body Panels, in Style

Eagle-eyed readers will note that the vehicle blasting down the road below is not a Ferrari 250 GTO. Instead, it's that car's immediate predecessor, a mostly-forgotten effort (if that can happen to a Ferrari) called the 250GT Sperimentale, and only five were built. To stay competitive in the production GT Class 3 of road racing, Ferrari engineers devised a lightened version of their existing 250 GT short wheelbase (SWB) coupe by Pinin Farina, which had been built in as many as 170 examples. We'll get back to the "numbers built" business later. Unlike the SWB, they fitted this revised car with the dry-sump Testa Rossa engine from 1960's all-out racers.  The new car featured more aerodynamic bodywork by PF, with nose, front fenders and roofline cribbed from their efforts on the big Superamerica touring cars.  The long, low tail created lift problems on the Mulsanne straight when this car, chassis #2643, ran on the Ferrari team at Le Mans in 1961. After trying a spoiler mounted below the rear window, Ferrari engineers decided on a more drastic approach...

That approach was to create a new car which could still be passed off to the international racing regulators, the FIA, as a version of Ferrari's well-proven (and legal) 250 GT. Giotto Bizzarrini* got the job of designing the lightened and lowered tubular chassis, which retained the live rear axle in the interest of simplicity, and the 4 wheel disc brakes of the Sperimentale.  The dry-sump SOHC engine had six Weber carburetors rather than the default 3 of the SWB, and Scaglietti's prototype bodywork, shown below, featured a lower, pointier nose, lower roofline and also lower window sills to maintain outward vision, and a blunt, unresolved tail that was sitll a work in progress.  Note that this prototype has winding windows in the doors, a feature that wouldn't be adopted on "production" versions.  Bizzarrini left Ferrari at the end of 1962, and work on the chassis and body continued under Mauro Forghieri.

The overhead view of a prototype on test in 1961 shows the tidy overall shape and hides the incomplete tail design.  Note the tiny oval air intake, much like those then appearing on Abarth GT racers, with three added intakes recessed into the alloy bodywork above it. 

The completed "production" version of the car featured the same small oval air intake, with removable covers (barely visible in the photo below) over the 3 additional intakes above it.   The word "production" is in quotations because while FIA regulations required Ferrari to produce 100 examples to homolagate it for racing, the company never managed to make more than three dozen.  Nonetheless, the name Gran Turismo Omologato, stuck, and the "GTO" moniker was ripped off soon enough by GM for a new Pontiac, where the "O"  meant…nothing.

At the tail, this "final" design had clarity and simplicity to recommend it. Sergio Scaglietti's body works had replaced the elongated lift-causing rump of the Sperimentale, and the unresolved mess of the prototype,  with a clean rearward taper and recessed flat panel containing the tail lights and license plate.  Air extractor vents retained from the prototype were tidied up and slanted to follow the wheel arches.  Altogether a nice piece of work, and if you squinted, you could almost convince yourself that it was a modified production-model SWB...

The FIA bought the idea that Ferrari had produced a hundred of these, though that never happened, and as soon as the car was homologated it began winning races.  The GTO's first track appearance was in March 1962 at the Sebring 12 Hours, where Phil Hill (World Champion for Ferrari in 1961 and disappointed at not being assigned one of the TRI prototypes) finished a surprising 2nd overall with Olivier Gendebien, right behind the TRI / 61 prototype of Jo Bonnier. Despite their second-string status to the TRI spiders, GTOs won overall victories in that year at Brands Hatch (twice), at Silverstone, and other courses. The success continued in 1963, when the cars faced E-Type Jaguar lightweights and Shelby AC Cobras.

Ferrari engineers added a distinctive turned-up spoiler at the rear of the car; this increased downforce and improved handling at the cost of a slight decrease in top speed. Most of the 33 examples of the 1962 body design for the GTO, which we'll call the Series 1, were bodied with this feature by Scaglietti...

Detail variations appeared between individual cars; note that the example above has 3 vents  behind the front wheels, while the car raced at Laguna Seca (2nd from front) has 2 vents. Sliding side windows were adopted to save weight.

Unlike the other Ferraris* in this row of racers at Laguna Seca, the GTO attempted to be a drivable road car as well as a road racer.  As soon as their racing days were over, serveral of the Series 1 cars were converted to street use; Henry Manney of Road & Track drove one for awhile.  But Enzo Ferrari knew that for 1964, his GTO would face sharper competition, so engineers worked with Scaglietti on a new body design.  When it appeared, this GTO64, or Series 2, had no panels in common with the Series 1.  It featured a more steeply angled windshield with more curvature in plan, and a wider, flatter air intake plus air scoop atop the hood, without the three recessed ones. Most strikingly, a notchback roof with an unsentimental chop and recessed, flat rear window replaced the previous fastback, all in the interest of enhanced aerodynamics.  GM Styling would later adopt this feature on the '68 Corvette.  Only 3 of the new design were built, or 7, depending upon how you count.  After initial success on the race track with the new design, 4 of the Series 1 cars returned to Scaglietti to be rebodied in the new style.  So the Ferrari team continued to bend the aluminum while it was bending the rules...

I caught up with this example of the GTO64 at the Steamboat Springs Races* back in the early 80s, when it was owned by Bob Sutherland.  He'd raced the car that day, and then displayed it on the courthouse lawn, next to an E-Type Jaguar and a Mini.  It was a pretty informal event, and there were no signs warning you not to touch the cars.  A couple years later, I checked in at Bob's garage* to support the children's symphony (always a good idea) and look at some old cars…usually a good idea, and in this case, a great one.  By then, he'd replaced the GTO with another vintage racer, a 250LM, which was a part of the Sixties design trend away from dual-purpose sports cars you could drive to the track with some hope of winning.  

Today this GTO64 might possibly buy all the buildings around that courthouse square, with some change left over. Bob Sutherland is no longer with us, and the days of racing cars on public roads are mostly gone too.  As we face new challenges, complexities and crises, we may look back with some yearning at times when things at least seemed simple...

Ferrari's GTO was, despite the Holy Grail status as a collector trophy which now may prevent us from viewing it objectively, a pretty good road racer, and for awhile, a spectacular used car value.  For the most part, though, it fought a losing battle in the trend-setting department, if not on the track.  After it, few road racing cars would resemble production road cars, or would trust simple features like live rear axles, and their manufacturers wouldn't even try to pass them off as versions of their production cars.  It's both ironic and fitting that though Ferrari's 250 GTO was the last of the "simple" dual-purpose sports cars, it's now the most valuable car produced during its era...

*Footnote:  A photo essay of other Ferrari endurance racers from the 1960s appears in "Lime Rock Concours: Alfa, Bugatti, Ferrari, Maserati & Etceterini", which was posted on September 17, 2019.  Giotto Bizzarrini's designs for his own car-building firm are reviewed in "The Etceterini Files Part 17" from Feb. 14, 2019, and "The Etceterini Files Part 18", posted Feb. 27, 2019.  A photo essay on the Steamboat Springs Races was presented as "Lost Roadside Attraction: Vintage Racing in Steamboat Springs" on Jan. 31, 2019. Other Ferrari and Bugatti cars from the Sutherland collection appear in "On a Lazy Afternoon in 1987",  posted May 18, 2019. 

Color Photo Credits:  All color photos were taken by the author except for the front and rear close-up shots of the Series 1 GTO, which were submitted by LT Jonathan D. Asbury, USN.

Monochrome Photo Credits:  

Top:  modelart111.com

2nd & 3rd:  wikimedia

4th & 5th:   ferrari.com

 

Forgotten Classic: HWM——Racing into Obscurity on Alta, Jaguar and Chevy Power

If you are a vintage racing fan (or a racing fan of a certain vintage), you may be guessing this cycle-fendered projectile rocketing past a risk-loving crowd at the 1956 Pebble Beach Road Races is some kind of Allard or Frazer Nash*. But neither guess would win you a Forgotten Classics tee shirt, because the car is an even rarer HWM, built in 1950 at Hersham and Walton Motors by George Abecassis and John Heath in their dealership and service garage in Surrey, England.  It began its life as a Formula 2 car with twin-cam four-cylinder engine built by Alta Engineering.  By the time Bill Pollack raced Number 14 at Pebble Beach, the HWM had retired from Formula 2, crashed during filming of the Hollywood movie "The Racers" and been rebuilt by Tom Carstens in Washington with the just-introduced Chevy V8, acquiring then-novel disc brakes in the process. The car, nicknamed the Stovebolt Special, led the race until the differential gave up.  It was the first Chevrolet V8-powered sports racer anywhere...

George Abecassis had raced Alta cars in the Thirties, winning the Imperial Trophy at a rainy Crystal Palace track in 1939. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross for flying secret agents into occupied Europe durng World War II, and started the garage with engineer John Heath after it. They rebodied an Alta racer with streamlined, two-seater envelope sports bodywork in 1948, and then they were literally off to the races...

For the 1950 racing season they designed a new dual-purpose two-seater which could compete in sports car events, or with fenders and lights removed, contest Formula 2.  It was light and simple, and its all-independent suspension give it competitive handling against more powerful Italian rivals. The HWM team gave Stirling Moss his start, and in 1951 they fielded a team of more streamlined single-seater cars. The light green HWM above is one of those single-seat Formula 2 cars from 1951...

A year later in 1952, Grand Prix races were run to Formula 2 rules, so the 2 liter Alta engine would be enough to get HWM into the big leagues, competing against Maseratis, Ferraris and Gordinis. The 2 liter formula lasted through the '53 season, and HWM would be outclassed by the new 2.5 liter Formula 1 cars in '54, especially the Mercedes and Lancia GP cars.  But Abecassis and Heath, running their team on a tight budget, needed cash flow and found a market for sports racing cars powered by Jaguar engines, and in one case, a Cadillac V8.  The dark green car shown above and below is a Jaguar-powered HWM from 1954.

Guests of honor at the Royal Automobile Club, the cars display their low stances and simple, purposeful lines, and their hosts at the club seem to have trusted that they'd leak no oil or other vital fluids onto that elegant carpeting.  Amazingly, there's not an oil-catching pan in sight...

Abecassis and Heath had additional motivation to concentrate on Jaguar-powered sports cars when their friend Geoff Taylor at Alta Engineering signed an exclusive contract to supply his new 2.5 liter racing engine to Connaught* for its GP cars.  This meant that HWM's old source of engines was unavailable in 1954.  Budget-conscious Abecassis noted that one advantage of switching to sports cars was that they could simply drive them to the races, rather than paying to trailer them. Improvements on each car were made over a season or two of racing. XPA 748  on a 1953 chassis shows its original, small air intake at the race meeting above, and the 3-part scheme adopted in 1954 below.

During this period both Abecassis and Heath raced the cars, and Abecassis also raced cars for Aston Martin. The partners had taken on an Aston Martin dealership in 1951, having already offered CItroens at their Walton-on-Thames location.  The lines of their body design for a 1953 HWM Jaguar, however, show more Pinin Farina than Aston influence on the silver specimen below. Flowing fender contours and details like the vents in the front fenders and just above the rear wheels resemble the Ferrari 375s from the era. The interlocking ellipses that enclose the low windscreen and the seats are a deft touch; this car looks good from any angle.  Interestingly, though Jaguar had adopted disc brakes on its race cars by this time, HWM continued to rely on Alfin drums, apparently using up stocks of Formula 2 parts.

By 1956, the contours HWM wrapped around their tubular chassis designs were tighter and lower, anticipating the later Lister Jags and even the Birdcage Maserati.  John Heath entered the Jaguar-powered example below in the 1956 Mille Miglia, but crashed and flipped the car, and died two days later at a hospital in Ravenna.  He was 42 years old...

HWM had built a second Jaguar-powered car, XPE2, for the 1956 season, but Abecassis abandoned the racing effort not long after Heath's death. HWM concentrated on selling Aston Martins, and built one more hillclimb car to special order.  Like Frazer Nash, which took on a Porsche distributorship to survive, HWM found selling and servicing road cars to be a better business than making racing cars. 

There was one more car besides that hillclimb special, though.  Abecassis decided to build a GT coupe with Jaguar power.  It was 1957, and apparently he thought that both the Aston DB2/4 and Jaguar's new XK150 were already looking a bit old-fashioned. So he sketched up something wild, and had Aston stylist Frank Feeley (author of the DB2 & DB3S) revise his sketches into something more practical and buildable.  The resulting fastback coupe with its glassy rear hatch, low roof, and one-piece clamshell hood indeed looked the part of a modern GT car, and Abecassis considered building a few for customers until he reviewed how much it had cost to hammer out his light alloy dream.  So the only HWM closed coupe remained a one -off, and it was the last of 19 cars the firm built over 9 years.  Many still exist, and the vintage racing boom has guaranteed that most of those will remain in running condition for a long while...

*Footnote: The saga of the Connaught, including the Alta-powered GP car that broke a decades-long string of British defeats in GP racing, is told in "Celtic Rainmaker: Connaught  Broke the Longest Drought in Grand Prix Racing", in our archives for July 24, 2016.  The story of the Frazer Nash, another British specialist that survived as a business enterprise but not as a maker of cars, can be found in two essays, "Chain-Drive Frazer Nash:  Not Your Grandpa's Nash", posted on January 28, 2017, and "Frazer Nash Part 2:  When a Replica Is Not a Replica", posted on February 3, 2017.

Photo Credits:  

Top:  Don Palmer on tamsoldracecarsite.net

2nd thru 5th from top: The Royal Automobile Club (UK)

6th thru 8th: bradfieldcars.com

9th & 10th: autopuzzles.com

11th & 12th:  pinterest.com

Bottom:  fiscar.org (Fifties Sports Car Racing Club, UK)

Forgotten Classic: Ligier JS1 & JS2----Powered by Cosworth, Ford & Maserati

French rugby star Guy Ligier teamed with racer Jo Schlesser in the Sixties to form Team  Inter Sport, and their experiences running Formula 2 McLarens prompted Schlesser to suggest they build their own cars. Before they could launch this effort, Schlesser suffered a fatal accident in the  French Grand Prix in July 1968, driving the Honda RA302, a car Honda driver and '64 F1 Champion John Surtees declined to drive on the grounds of its unpredictable handling.  One result of this fiery disaster was that the French GP would never return to the Rouen-Les-Essarts track.  Another was that Honda abandoned its RA302 project.  The most significant result for our story, though, was that after absorbing this personal loss, Ligier decided to proceed with his plan to build better cars...

Ligier focused his attention first on sports cars for endurance racing.  He hired Michel Tétu, an engineer who'd worked on the CD* endurance racers for Charles Deutsch*. Tétu designed a chassis based upon novel aluminum sandwich panels with polyurethane cores, with the engine mounted behind the cabin and ahead of the 5-speed Hewland transaxle.  Owing to the shortage of available racing engines from French sources, Ligier first used a 1.6 liter Cosworth FVA twin-cam four, then fitted a 1.8 liter FVC.  Body design was by Pietro Frua, and echoed the glassy cabins and low beltlines of his work on Maserati chassis.  The new car appeared at the Paris Auto Salon in autumn of 1969, and Ligier christened it "JS1", after Jo Schlesser, whose idea it had been to build a new car...

Three of the new road racers were built, and they soon appeared on road courses around France, including at Le Mans.  Ligier and Tétu steadily improved the car, and tested and raced versions with 2.4 and 2.6 liter Ford / Weslake V6 engines, eventually adapting the 5-speed transmission from the new Citroen SM.  The JS1 first raced in the Tour de France Auto in 1969; its first outright victory was at Albi in 1970; the 2nd and final win in 8 races was in the 1970 Coupes de Vitesses...

Ligier Automobiles showed a new JS2 powered by a Ford V6 at the Paris Salon in fall of 1970.

I happened to be there, attending architecture school in Versailles, and having decided that it would be a good way to spend a rainy October day.  My fellow architecture student Ron Budde snapped this photo of the new car...

Ligier's plan to offer this improved road-going GT version of the JS ran into a roadblock when Ford refused to sell him enough engines to make real production possible. Luckily, Citroen had absorbed Maserati and offered that firm's new 4-cam V6 in its new SM.  Ligier was able to obtain a steady supply of this engine, at first in 2.7 liter form and then the 3 liter version that also appeared in Maserati's mid-engine Merak. Even with its new steel sandwich panel chassis, the production JS2 that appeared at the 1971 Paris Salon weighed only 2,161 pounds.  Wheelbase was 92.5 inches, up 2" from the JS1, and Frua's body design had been lightly restyled by Pichon et Parat, with revised nose profile. When the road racing versions appeared, they retained the aluminum sandwich chassis, saving about 400 pounds.

The JS2 racers that appeared at Le Mans in 1973 featured dry-sump versions of the Maserati 3 liter V6 making around 330 hp; one of the cars was co-piloted by Guy Ligier.  The best finish that year was 19th place, but the next year a JS2 finished 8th, and in 1975 a JS2, now powered by a Cosworth V8, finished 2nd, sandwiched between two Gulf-Mirages.  And in 1974 Ligier JS2s had finished 1st and 2nd in the Tour de France Auto...

The Ligier plant at Abrest near Vichy turned out road cars to meet moderate demand until the oil crisis hit in 1974. Overall, just under 250 were produced...

The final version of the JS2 appeared for 1975,  and can be identified by its retractable headlights. The 3 liter Maserati V6 was now standard, but supplies were threatened when Maserati went into receivership in May of that year.  Citroen was forced to merge with Peugeot, and then discontinued the SM.  When Maserati's new owner discontinued the V6, Ligier was left without an engine supplier.  Only 7 of this Series 2 were built...

But Ligier's racing efforts continued.  The first Ligier Formula 1 car hit the track in 1976, powered by the well-proven (and gloriously sonorous) Matra V12.  At the 1977 Swedish Grand Prix, Jacques Laffite piloted a Ligier first across the finish line, the first F1 victory by a French car with a French engine and driver.  Ligier cars would go on to score 8 more victories and a total 50 podium finishes over a Formula 1 career spanning 2 decades; the last win was in 1996.

Long before his death at 85 in 2015, Guy Ligier expanded the business to include activities as diverse as building urban microcars, and taking over much of the market for natural fertilizers in central France.  Today, Ligier Automotive has participated in the design and testing of  a self-driving bus in response to a European Union design brief.  This is pretty remote from building Formula 3 cars, but Ligier offers those too, like the Honda-powered example below...

They're also offering a road racer called the JS2R... 

So, despite lack of commercial success in selling road cars, the Ligier saga doesn't end like so many others in our "Forgotten Classic" series.  Due to Guy Ligier's business savvy, and also his interest in the world outside sports cars (there was all that organic fertilizer, after all, and those microcars), and his luck in having heirs interested in the frontiers of technology (like that autonomous bus), Ligier Automotive somehow never managed to go out of business. You can still buy a race car from them, and they've announced a plan to issue a JS2R road car in honor of the 50th anniversary of their original JS2.  

*Footnote:   More details on the CD, Deutsch Bonnet and DB cars designed by Charles Deutsch can be found in our post for February 29, 2020 entitled "Deutsch Bonnet, DB and CD:The Path of Least Resistance."

Photo Credits:  

Top:  classiccarcatalogue.com

2nd:  Historia des Automovilismo

3rd:  www.motor24.pt

4th:  Ronald Budde

5th & 6th:  wikimedia

7th thru 9th:  lesAnciennes.com

10th:  pinterest.com

11th & Bottom:  Ligier Automotive

Forgotten Classic: Elva GT160----She Goes with BMW Power

Wandering through the pits at the Monterey Historic Races at Laguna Seca, we came across this intriguing sports racer from the Sixties, one of the mid-engined successors to the series of lightweight club racers built by Elva Cars, the firm that Englishman Frank Nichols had started in 1955.  Nichols derived the name Elva from the French "elle va", which means "she goes"...

It turned out to be a Mk. 7S from 1964, powered by a mid-mounted dry-sump version of the single overhead cam BMW inline 4 in 2 liter form, making around 185 hp. The design features a tightly contoured fiberglass body over a tubular space frame chassis with an aluminum floor pan. Unlike the drum-braked Mark 6, the first low-profile mid-engined Elva, the Mark 7 featured disc brakes behind its 13 inch cast magnesium wheels, which allowed a lower profile than the 15 inch wheels on the Mark 6.  When I first saw the car I assumed it had radiators mounted at the sides behind the cockpit, like the later Elva GT160, but I was wrong.  The twin radiators hide behind the tiny front air intakes...

Elva's Mark 7 and 7S were among the most successful of Elva's road racers, competing against the Lotus 23, and sometimes powered by the 1.6 liter Lotus Ford twin-cam fours and also by the 1.7 liter air-cooled Porsche* 4-cam; Porsche agreed to supply engines for Elva's US road racing effort as they readied their own 904 series for racing.

The Mk. 7, 7S & 8 were powered more famously*, though, by the BMW four than by Porsche. That combination seemed to hit the sweet spot for Frank Nichols and Chicago distributor Carl Haas, and it was offered again on the Mark 8, with a slightly longer wheelbase and more user-friendly weight distribution. Just under six dozen examples of the Mark 7 & 7S were completed in 1963 to '65. The combination of that chassis with the BMW engine prompted Frank Nichols and his team to plan a dual-purpose GT car based on the race car chassis, one that would offer weekend racers a car that could be used for touring as well.  In order to arrive at an eye-catching concept for the car shows, they turned to British body designer Trevor Fiore*, who worked in Italy with the small coachbuilding house Fissore...

Fiore had changed his name from Frost because he thought an Italian-sounding name might prompt one of the country's carrozzeria to take a chance on hiring him; this worked. Fiore accentuated the low-slung chassis by sketching a fastback coupe with glassy greenhouse and low window sills accented by a horizontal crease starting at the chiseled snout that bumped up over the front and rear wheels before wrapping around the rear deck. Fiore and chassis designer Keith Marsden kept the Mark 7's twin radiators, but mounted them ahead of the rear wheels, and added the refinement of allowing them to pivot outward for maximum cooling. Wheelbase was increased by 3" over the Mark 7, to 93".  Weight was under 1,300 lb.

The nose shows how Fiore retained the twin air intakes which were a trademark of mid-engined Elvas, but substituted retractable headlights for the plastic bubbles of the open racers; the shot below shows the headlights in the open position.  Overall, the GT160, as it was called, seemed a clever way to translate the radical new proportions of mid-engined racers to the form of road-going GT cars eligible for weekend club racing as well as long-distance endurance racing.  It was also a possible answer to the question of Next Car for Swinging Sixties Londoners bored with their Lotus Elans and E-Type Jags...

The plan at Elva Cars was to qualify the GT160 as a production car, and that meant making a bunch.  Starting in 1964, three prototypes were built at Fissore's workshops near Turin.  The car stunned onlookers at that year's Turin show, and customers began to queue up...

But the cost of the completed cars with Italian bodywork was around twice what Elva had planned for their market launch. Then Trojan Limited, a truck manufacturer, acquired Elva Cars, and Frank Nichols drifted away. Two cars were completed with their Nerus BMW dry-sump engines, and later a third car was finished with a Buick aluminum V8.  But by the end of 1964 Trojan Ltd. / Elva Cars announced that the GT160 program was cancelled, citing new racing regulations relating to ground clearance requirements that would require expensive redesign. Two of the cars went racing anyway, while Elva's new owners moved away from the idea of a production GT, staying with racing car design for a new client named Bruce McLaren. This eventually led to a a move away from the Elva name, and to the creation of a series of fierce, focused V8-powered McLartens for the Can Am Series in North America.  But that's a story for another day.

*Errata + Misc. Notes:  The first version of this post indicated there were more BMW-powered Elvas than Porsche-powered ones; that's only true if you count BMW-powered Mark 8 cars.  The Porsche program ended before the Mark 8, and there were 19 Porsche-engined Mark 7s, 15 BMW-powered Mark 7S cars, with 29 units of Mark 7 built, and 42 of the improved 7S.  Other engines tried in the Mark 7 & 7S included the 1.6 liter twin cam Lotus Ford, 1.3 and 1.5 liter Alfa Romeo, and at least one OSCA. Also we mentioned alloy bodywork; that only happened on the GT160; the Mark 7, 7S and 8 featured fiberglass shells and aluminum floor pans.

*Footnote:   More details on the Porsche-powered Elva Mk. VII can be found in "Porsches by Another Name, More and / or Less" in our post archive for March 25, 2017. Other designs by Trevor Fiore show up in "Rootes in Foreign Soil", posted on March 31, 2018. Another expatriate car designer in Italy, Tom Tjaarda, was the subject of a career review in "Architect-Designed Cars Part 4: Tom Tjaarda—Life Before and After the Pantera", posted on April 30, 2020.

Color Photo Credits:  
Elva-BMW Mk. 7S front views:  the author

Elva-Porsche Mk 7 rear view:  Ian Avery-DeWitt

Elva GT160 racer #42:  elva-cars.com

Monochrome Photo Credits:  
Elva GT160 design sketch:  Trevor Fiore
Elva GT160, three exterior views:  Elva Cars