Giro de Sicilia 2024: This One's for Cars Instead of Bicycles

May's Giro de Sicilia shared the name of a bike race, but instead honored the tradition of the Targa Florio, the road race last held in 1973 in the mountains near the capital city of Palermo, in an event covering 5 days full of dramatic countryside, townscapes, and food.  Lancias showed up in what would count as big numbers here in the US. Though the company was famous for unit construction after pioneering it with the Lambda in 1922, they also offered bare chassis as the basis for custom coachwork by the likes of Pinin Farina on the V8 Astura, and by Viotti on the small V4 Augusta and bigger V4 Artena, including trasformabile sedans in the late 30s with full-length fabric sunroofs.  Lacking the entry list, we couldn't be sure who built the streamlined body of the sunroof sedan above.

In shots above and below, the cars gather in the civic space fronting the Palermo Opera House.  Below is another Lancia, this time a sedan with elegant aerodynamic bodywork.  By the late Thirties, Pinin Farina was offering similar streamlined contours on the V8 Astura chassis and these also replaced the traditional Lancia radiators with streamlined prows.

Here another Lancia, a Pininfarina-bodied Flavia coupe introduced in 1962, rests next to an Alfa Romeo Duetto introduced 4 years later, also a PF design. The boxer four was new in 1959, and a departure from the narrow-angle V configurations of previous Lancias.  Front-wheel drive was also new to Lancia. The first coupes were 1.5 liters, and 1.8 liter engines followed in '63, with a fuel injection option in '65.  Typical of Lancia engineering eccentricity, the car featured twin cams, but not the overhead type...

Our photography* crew's modern (late 20th century) Lancia Delta parks behind their Alfa Romeo Giulia sedan, a design first appearing in 1962, in a charming seaside town east of Palermo: San Stefano de Camastra. 

Above, the Giulia at the starting line near the Palermo Opera House. Below, a Fiat-based etceterini from the early Fifties, with forward-leaning grille perhaps inspired by Michelotti's Ferrari designs for Vignale.  Engine type is unlisted, but a Fiat 1100 would be a good guess.  Neighbors include a Jaguar XK120 and an Alfa 1900 sedan from the early Fifties, Alfa Romeo's first mass-produced car...

A Vignale-bodied Maserati Sebring Series 1, built from 1962-'65 on a shortened 3500GT chassis, was the most popular of the Sebring line, with 348 built. The Series 2, built in '65 and '66, featured quad headlights in two oval mountings and more pronounced fender vents, with the last run of 98 built featuring the 4.0 liter twin-cam, twin-plug alloy inline six.  Early Series 1 cars came with the 3.5 liter engine, while later ones were fitted with the 3.7.  Because Sebrings are scarce compared to other production Maseratis, body and trim parts can be a problem...

Below the low-mounted Sebring Series 1 fender vents are shown; Series 2 positioned the vents higher.  The 964 Series Porsche behind it (1989-'95) is a reminder that more modern cars were invited to participate in the Giro de Sicilia...

What appears to be a Mercedes 170S cabriolet from the 1949-'55 period joins a 21st century Porsche... 

That Giulia again, this time parked at the nicely restored, still operational headquarters of the Civil Guard (the famous carabinieri) in Siracusa...  

This 1927 Fiat photographed in Ortigia endured to cover the whole event, while none of the other pre-war (or inter-war) cars managed to go the distance.  

The first BMW 3 Series appeared in summer of 1975 (whew, almost 5 decades ago) and continued in production into December 1983.  The graphic pattern on the flanks may mean this is an Alpina version...

A Lancia Delta Integrale Evo reminds us of Lancia's 15 World Rally Championships, the most of any make.  These began with the front-drive Fulvia HF in 1972, continued with the mid-engined Stratos in '74 through '76, and built an aura of invincibility with Championships won by the Integrale, an AWD derivative of the front-drive Delta, every WRC from 1987 through 1992.

The Selinunte Archaeological Park, located between two rivers, the Modione-Selino and the Cottone, preserves the ruins of several temples built starting around 628 BC.  It's known today as the Acropolis of Sicily...

The Lamborghini Urraco S below was a bit more recent, designed for Bertone by Marcello Gandini with transverse mid-mounted lightweight V8 chassis by Gianpaolo Dallara, with perhaps an even more harmonious form than the Ferrari Dino 308GT4 from the same era, also by Bertone.  The public bought more of the GT4, though, and only 791 Urracos found homes from 1972-'79.  Here the Lambo is flanked by a Vignale-bodied Lancia Flavia cabriolet on the left, and an early version of the Fiat 1100 sedan (1953-'69) on the right, parked in front of that carabinieri HQ in Siracusa.

Below, a parting shot of that famous mountainous countryside, for anyone mulling participation in next year's event...

Photo Credits:  All photos were generously provided by LCDR Jonathan D. Asbury, USN, shown below with artistic consultant and wife Laura.

  

Lost Roadside Attraction Sequel: 1970 Salon de l'Auto at the Parc des Expos

  

Three years ago we posted a nostalgic review* of the spontaneous car show we saw every day on the streets as college students in France, along with photos my housemate took of the Paris Auto Salon we saw in  October 1970, not long after the semester began.  An automotive writer contacted me about publishing the photos, but I had to explain they weren't mine.  When I finally got in touch with my college friend, he mentioned that there were more photos and emailed them.  I decided there were enough to justify a post of their own; also, I'm lazy enough that I didn't relish the idea of re-writing that first post. So here, courtesy of Ron Budde, is the rest of that car show story from over half a century ago…

 

Though the star attraction of that Paris show over 50 years ago was the new Maserati-powered Citroen SM, Ferrari was still at or close to the top of many car enthusiasts' wish lists, and the crew from Modena brought a fleet of desirable cars. In the photo above, three mid-engined 246 Dino coupes, foreground and at left, wrap around a metallic brown 365GT 2+2 and a yellow 365 GTB/4, otherwise known as the Daytona. The 2.4 liter, 4-cam Dino V6, a product of an engine deal with Fiat that allowed them to use the same power plant in their front-engined Fiat Dinos, was part of a successful program to bring Ferraris to a wider audience than the big, V12-powered cars had found.

Another new face at the Paris Salon that fall was Alfa Romeo's Montreal, originally designed as a show car for the 1967 Montreal Expo by the young Marcello Gandini at Bertone, who had designed the spectacular mid-engined Lamborghini Miura in '66, and the 4-passenger Espada lurking in the background a couple years later.  The new Alfa GT, which had made its debut at the Geneva show in March of '70, substituted an aluminum, cross-plane 4-cam, 2.6 liter V8 for the familiar twin-cam 1.6 liter Giulia engine in the show car. It adopted that show car's nickname, Montreal, and derived the new engine from the 2 liter V8 in the Type 33 Stradale, and also in Alfa's endurance racers. The chassis of the Montreal, though, was the tried-and-true Type 105 from Alfa's sweet-handling GTV, and featured 4-wheel disc brakes and a well-controlled live rear axle. Another car on the Bertone stand was the Shake dune buggy prototype below, based upon the rear-engine, front-radiator Simca 1200S GT coupe, then in series production, for which Bertone supplied the Giugiaro-designed bodies. This was the era of the dune buggy.  While the Myers Manx was already selling many copies to fans in the US, especially California, Europeans took notice after one appeared with Steve McQueen at the wheel in 1968's The Thomas Crown Affair.  In an effort to get another production contract from Simca, Bertone built 2 Shake prototypes, and race car builder Matra made 2 more.

Another car making its debut at the show was Ligier's JS2.  Race driver Guy Ligier* had already built a couple of successful mid-engined JS1 road racing coupes with glassy Frua-designed bodywork and Cosworth Ford twin-cam 4 cylinder engines. His intention was to offer a production GT coupe using the 60-degree V6 engines (around 2.6 liters) made by Ford of Germany.  Mid-engined cars were trendy in this era, and the use of a mass-produced engine would have cost advantages.  But after this prototype made its debut with the Ford V6, Ford declined to provide engines, and Ligier adopted the 90-degree, 2.7 liter, 4-cam Maserati V6 and 5-speed transaxle from the new Citroen SM for his production cars. Ligier's company would build around 250 cars, including 7 Series 2 models with a 3.0 liter Maserati V6, before the fuel crisis of 1974 ended their GT car program. 

Porsche displayed the air-cooled, 4.5 liter, flat 12- powered 917 that had finally won the Le Mans 24 Hours four months earlier after years of chasing Ferrari and then Ford.  The rain-drenched event was depicted in Steve McQueen's heavily fictionalized film Le Mans*. The 917 engine was over twice the size of the flat 6 in the white 911 behind the racer.  Behind that 911 is a line of new mid-engined 914s, a project designed to give VW something sporty to replace the Karmann-Ghia, and Porsche an entry-level car.  It was, in that way, something like the 1965 Ferrari-Fiat agreement that produced Fiat and Ferrari Dinos, though those cars competed in a pricier category.

The Porsche 914 styling, with its flat sides and rectangular form, was not without its critics. The Heuliez 914/6 made its debut at the Paris Salon, and Jacques Cooper's design proposed a fastback coupe form that was more aerodynamic and more practical.  The nose displayed a lower profile, and the windshield was steeper. 

At the rear, a hatch provided access to luggage and the flat 6 engine.  The project had begun at Brissonneau & Lotz, which produced bodies for GM's Opel GT starting in '68. When B & L ran into financial troubles, Heuliez, known for making commercial bodies on Citroen chassis, took over and finished the car. Around the same time, Italian designers Frua and Giugiaro produced their own 914 alternatives. Because none of these designers had managed to convince Porsche management to build their cars in series, all their prototypes remained one-offs.  This Heuliez car was recently restored and sold at auction...

Even though that autumn show was called the Salon de l'Auto, motorcycle makers like BMW couldn't resist plugging their wares.  When I got back from an architectural tour of the Low Countries and Scandinavia in a Fiat 1500 shared with 2 other students, we look a look at Paris traffic, assessed the parking situation, and decided to sell our Fiat (think it was a '63) at the American Express.  One classmate wound up with a BMW R-50, but students with thinner budgets often went with French Mobylette mopeds.  Students with still thinner budgets, like mine, opted for the mainstream, classic bicycle.  Seem to recall that mine was a Roland Superluxe, which I recall leaving with our landlady in springtime when our sojourn in France was at an end...

*Footnote: 

The first part of this Lost Roadside Attraction post appeared here on April 19, 2021 under the title "Lost Roadside Attraction: 70s Car Shows on Paris Streets, and at the Parc des Expos."  We posted a brief history of Guy Ligier's race and road cars on November 15, 2020 entitled "Forgotten Classic: Ligier JS1 & JS2", and a review of Steve McQueen's film Le Mans on March 5, 2021.

*Photo Credits:
All photos were generously supplied by Ronald Budde.

Film Review: Notes on Michael Mann's "Ferrari"

Director Michael Mann's Ferrari, released on Christmas 2023, catches Enzo Ferrari and his namesake firm in a period of challenge.  Ten years after founding a car-making operation (mostly to support a racing team) in 1947, Enzo and wife Laura face stiffer competition from Maserati, at a time when both firms plan series production, to make hundreds of cars a year instead of a few dozen, to increase their cash flow.  Maserati had previewed the game-changing (for them) 3500GT road car early in 1957, and are a strong favorite to win that year's Formula One championship with their 250F and driver Juan Manuel Fangio.  Much to Enzo's annoyance, Maserati had won the '54 World Championship with Fangio in the 250F, beating the Ferrari Squalo (shark) shown below.  Mercedes had taken the World Championship in '55, and Ferrari had only managed it in '56 with Fangio driving what was actually a Lancia D50 with Ferrari badges, donated by Gianni Lancia to Ferrari when racing had bankrupted Lancia.  In a theme echoed many times on this blog, making racing cars is shown to be a great way to get rid of all your money...

As we are introduced to Enzo (played by Adam Driver) and Laura (Penelope Cruz), we find that this has been the case for them as well.  On top of financial worries, they are shadowed by the death in 1956 of their son Dino after a long illness.  Besides that '56 GP Championship won with a Lancia, there had been a bit of good news when Eugenio Castellotti had won the rainy, accident-plagued Mille Miglia, a thousand-mile endurance race on public roads, in the Ferrari 290MM below, but in the film we see Castelotti die the next year testing a GP car.  And Ferraris were beaten by Jaguars at Le Mans, the most important endurance race, three years in a row, including '57. When Enzo's accountant notes that Mercedes and Jaguar sell thousands of cars a year, using racing only as a form of advertising, he also points out that Ferrari sold only 98 cars in 1956.  Ferrari replies that for him, selling cars is only a way of supporting racing. His drivers point out to him that the English have "invented brakes", meaning the disc brakes on all those Jaguars and on the new, mid-engined Coopers, but Enzo waves the reference to Cooper away by saying that the horse must come before the cart.  This shows that at heart Ferrari may have been more of a poet than an engineer, because, after all, only front-drive cars put the horse before the cart, and these Fifties Ferraris all have their engines in front, but their driving wheels at the rear...

The film doesn't reveal the ways in which cash flow has gone the wrong way for Ferrari's car business, but the 290MM shown here is a textbook example.  It's a 3.5 liter V12, and shares its tubular chassis and 4-speed, rear-mounted transmission with the 3.5 liter, four-cylinder 860 Monza. Wait, you say, Ferrari made 12 and 4-cylinder engines of the same displacement? Yes, they did, and their engineers also created a small number of inline 6-cylinder engines up to 4.4 liters, V12s from 1.5 to 4.9 liters, and more conventional chassis designs with the transmissions right behind the engine in the decade from '47 to '57.  Even in Italy, with lower labor costs compared to the US or Germany, tooling costs must've been through the roof. Jaguar used only one engine and 2 chassis designs in this period, and Porsche only 2 different engines and 2 chassis.  And that simple Cooper with its relatively cheap, store-bought Climax 4-cylinder engine behind the driver would win the Formula 2 Championship in 1957, the year that Ferrari released a new V6-powered Formula 2 car named for his son Dino.  Cooper would win Formula 1 World Championships in '59 and '60, sending a shock wave through the racing world...

The film shows Ferrari showing up before the fateful '57 Mille Miglia, which starts at night, to talk with drivers, though he was known to avoid going to races as he'd seen enough accidents during his own career as a race driver. The night racing scenes are gripping; the production team built 7 replica racers for the scenes involving close racing, including the scene where Stirling Moss slides down a grassy slope after the brake pedal breaks off on his Maserati (this actually happened).  Other cars fit the period, though Enzo probably didn't drive the Peugeot shown in an early scene where he leaves the abode of his mistress; Motor Trend indicated in a '57 visit to Modena that he drove a Fiat.  That early scene underlines the tension between Laura and Enzo, as he spends more time with his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) and their young son Piero, in the wake of Dino's death. This subplot is important to understanding how Laura devoted more time to tracking her investment at the factory itself as Enzo spent more time away or secluded in his office, a phenomenon that led to the famous Great Walkout of October 1961, when 8 engineers left Ferrari in protest of what they viewed as Laura's interference. The Great Walkout followed Ferrari's winning the '61 World Championship with a modern, mid-engined, disc-braked product designed by those engineers, and led to their designs for competing makes like ATS, Bizzarrini, Iso, and most famously, Lamborghini...

There is some foreshadowing as Ferrari tells a driver, "Watch out for children and stray dogs; they're the biggest danger", and you catch a sense of foreboding when we meet a family at dinner just before the cars plunge along a tree-lined country road past their house. An accident that killed Ferrari driver Alfonso de Portago, his co-pilot Edmund Nelson, and 9 others, including 5 children, is depicted with relentless realism (this is not a movie for children).  Italian law led to criminal prosecution of Ferrari and tire maker Englebert, and they were only exonerated 4 years later when it was found a glass reflector in the roadway had slashed a tire.  Racing on Italian public roads, however, was banned soon after the race, which was won (as if it mattered) by Piero Taruffi*. When an engineer tells him that everyone is aware of the presence of death in racing, Ferrari replies that families and children are not aware of this.  After this scene, he walks his son Piero toward the mausoleum where Dino is interred, telling Piero, "You would have loved your brother.  He would have taken you everywhere."  The film leaves us there, about a year and 5 months before Ferrari finally introduced its first real production car at the Paris Auto Salon, 4 years and 5 months before the Great Walkout, nearly 8 years before an engine deal with Fiat that led to the popular V6 Fiat and Ferrari Dinos, and a dozen years before Fiat's acquisition of a 50% stake in Ferrari. The production cars and the Fiat deals helped Ferrari weather fallout from the Great Walkout, the costly endurance racing battles with Ford that occupied 5 years starting in 1964, and the need to meet the demands of a changing car-buying public.  But those are stories for another day… 

*Footnote:   Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey) makes it clear it no longer matters to him when Ferrari calls to congratulate him.  The real Taruffi may have felt this wey, as he wrote an essay for the Saturday Evening Post later in 1957 criticizing the lax safety at motor races, and suggesting improvements.  For more on Taruffi and his TARF speed record cars, see "The Etceterini Files Part 31", posted here on June 11, 2024. 

Photo Credits:  

Top:  Neon 

2nd & 3rd:  the author

4th:  Lorenzo Sisti, Washington Post 

5th:  Eros Hoagland, Washington Post