This writer was intrigued by Vignale-bodied Ferraris before he knew they were designed by Giovanni Michelotti*, and a dozen years before he encountered a twin of the above car in a parking lot in Southern France in 1974. Why? Well, they seemed to hide complexities under their seeming simplicity, and even in a neighborhood where a grade school kid could get hit on his bike by a '54 Corvette (the author did) and drool over an Ace Bristol (the author did), nobody had one. Also, they were light and fast. The 166 coupe above, a 2-liter V12, is from 1950. The simple, inwardly-curving alloy flanks are relieved by a subtle indent linking the front fenders to the rear, and in an era of flat, 2-piece windshields, this one-piece glazing is slightly curved. Delightful, but rare. Alfredo Vignale* liked the design enough that he built a similar-looking coupe for Carlo Abarth's then-new car firm.
By 1951, Michelotti was experimenting with forms and details that would appear on many Vignale designs on Ferraris and other cars through the Fifties. On the 212 berlinetta above, chassis #0179EL, headlights have been moved into the grille, now an oval egg crate that would become a trademark, and they are flanked by fog lights and projecting front fender forms. Barely visible here is the extension of the vertical metal at the window sill into embryonic fins inset from the outer contours of the rear fenders. That effect is more pronounced on chassis #197EL, where the yellow fins contrast with black fenders on the Bumblebee car, a 212 model from 1952.
The 225 Sport below shows that Michelotti and Vignale would delete some decorative effects when their assignment was a road racer. The 225, a one-year model (1952), and marks the steady increase in the displacement of the Colombo-designed SOHC V12, in this case 2.7 liters. Apparently Buick hadn't patented the idea of cooling portholes, or Vignale didn't care. Road racers, unlike GT cars, usually had sliding windows instead of the roll-up variety. Ferrari built only 21 of the 225 Sport.
The coupe below, from the same period, shows how non-standardized Vignale's efforts were. Note the taller greenhouse and recessed grille, and the flanges in the alloy fenders around the wheel openings. Roll-down windows are a concession to comfort, but steering is still on the right. Maserati was already offering left-hand drive.
At the rear, the bright trim at the color separation line emphasizes the tidy, rounded contours, along with the recessed tail lights and gently wrapped rear window. Upon first seeing a Vignale coupe in Road & Track during an era of big chrome and bombastic fins, the author and his classmates were thunderstruck...
1952 was a busy year for Ferrari and for Vignale. The 225S gave way to the 250MM (after the Mille Miglia road race), and the V12 was now at the 3-liter displacement that would help make it famous. As you may have suspected, Ferrari models were named after their individual cylinder displacements during this period. Thus, a V12 model 250MM and a 4-cylinder 750 Monza were both 3-liter cars.
This 250MM coupe (or berlinetta, in Italian) has a lower-profile, more forward-slanting air intake than the earlier cars, and this one lacks the portholes.
Vignale also built some 250MM spiders, and Phil Hill took delivery of one from New York Ferrari distributor Luigi Chinetti in spring of 1953. That's Hill's car on the left, on the way to the Pebble Beach road races, a bit more than 8 years before he became Formula One World Champion in a Ferrari. Note that Michelotti's design emphases the concave, inward-sloping panels below the doors with some bright trim. Yes, some car makers were still putting trim on road racers. Mr. Hill might have preferred disc brakes instead. Despite the drums and the presence of the big 340 Mexico on the right, he won at Pebble Beach anyway.
That tubular-chassis 340 Mexico above is the only one of the 4 Mexicos built in 1952 as a spider. The others were coupes like the one shown at dockside below. Note the projecting front fenders, an idea Michelotti adopted from his earlier work on the 212 chassis, and low-set headlights fronting a trough between those fenders and the hood. Under that hood was the bigger engine NYC dealer and race driver Luigi Chinetti had requested, a new Lampredi design, still an SOHC V12, but at 4.1 liters, and linked to a 5-speed gearbox. It would eventually grow to 4.5 and then 4.9 liters...
And it give the 340 Mexico its distinctive proportions, with around half the car's length taken up by the engine bay, as shown below. The cars were named for Mexico's Carrera Panamericana, a long-distance road race, and they competed there. In 1952, Luigi Chinetti and Jean Lucas took 3rd place in a 340 Mexico coupe.
Later in 1953, Michelotti sketched out a more aerodynamic approach to the competition spider. Overhangs were minimal front and rear, and on several of the cars the headlights were covered by plexiglass shrouds. Vignale built this body style on the 166 Series II chassis, on the 250MM (the car below) and also on the 340MM.
Note how the air outlets (to cool Ferrari's soon-outmoded drum brakes) visually elongate the stubby, rounded tail. This new, pared-down look might have foretold more work for Vignale and his designer Michelotti, but Scaglietti produced sleeker, lower-profile Ferrari competition cars based on Farina designs in '54. That year Pinin Farina's share of Ferrari's production increased, foreshadowing Ferrari's order for 30 Farina-bodied 250GT cabriolets in 1957, and the 250GT coupe the following year. The latter was the first series-produced Ferrari, with over 350 finding buyers before production ended in 1960.
Footnote:
Michelotti's designs for Vignale on other chassis, including Maserati, Lancia, Cunningham and Triumph, are surveyed in "Michelotti and Vignale in the 50s & 60s: Pioneers of the Italian Line", in our archives for June 14, 2020.
Photo Credits:
Top: The Jensen Museum
2nd: carrozzieri-italiani.com
3rd & 4th: bonhams.com
5th thru 9th: the author
10th: The Phil Hill Collection
11th: youtube.com
12th: George Havelka
13th & 14th: youtube.com
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