The Etceterini Files Part 32: One Reader Recalls the Original Silver Fox, Piero Taruffi, and His TARFs

Recently, a reader named A.J. commented on our old post focused on the 1967 OSI Silver Fox*, the roadgoing catamaran in the photo at left above.  While we'd connected OSI's twin-hulled road racing concept to Nardi's Bisiluro, at right above, from a dozen years earlier, A.J. suspected we'd missed another influence, that of Italian driver Piero Taruffi, who had first built a twin-torpedo speed record car in 1948...

…powered by a 500cc, 50 hp motorcycle engine and called the TARF.  He'd noted, too, that Taruffi's nickname, the Silver Fox, might be connected to his influence on OSI's namesake car.  As with the later Nardi and OSI cars, the TARF housed its engine in one pod, and placed the driver in the opposite one.  Only one rear wheel was driven by a chain from the engine.  The engine pod featured air intakes at the nose and also above the engine.  The car was tested without fins and with at least two fin configurations. With the TARF-Gilera in its final form, Taruffi set 6 records, including the flying kilometer at just under 130 mph.

Perhaps the choice of a 500cc motorcycle engine for power was rooted in Taruffi's racing experience; he'd won the European 500cc Championship for motorcycles on a Norton in 1932. The photos below capture a TARF test run in an earlier configuration.  The air intakes have not been added, and the fins lack the aileron-like additions shown above. The TARF lacked a steering wheel because of tight space in the cockpit, so steering was provided by a lever on each side.  The ailerons, or rudders, allowed the driver to compensate for side winds. 

One TARF feature repeated on the later Silver Fox (but not on Nardi's Bisiluro) was an adjustable airfoil connecting the twin pods.  This marked a very early appearance of movable airfoils, and predicted their use on race cars with more conventional body configurations...

Taruffi produced a second record car in 1951, known as TARF II, or as the Italcorsa.  This car moved the driver to the right pod, with the engine, a 2-stage supercharged 1,720 cc Maserati inline 4, in the left pod.  Taruffi drove TARF II, below, to set a pair of records in March 1951, for the flying mile at 185.49 mph and the flying kilometer at 180.55 mph.  In January 1952, he set a new 50-mile record at 144 mph, and in April of that year set 4 more records, including a one-hour mark of 135.10 mph. Apparently encouraged by these results, Taruffi obtained a patent in August of 1952 for a triple-torpedo racer with a central driver pod, and separate engines on left and right. No prototype of this car appears to have been built, however.

Taruffi went on to prove his talent for driving cars went beyond setting speed records.  He won the Swiss GP in 1952 and finished 3rd in that year's World Championship standings. After winning the last running ot the Mille Miglia in 1957, the Silver Fox retired at age 50. In November of that year, he published an article in the Saturday Evening Post  reflecting his experience in the deadly '55 Le Mans and '57 MM, and calling for more attention to safety in racing.  In 1959 Taruffi authored The Technique of Motor Racing, which became a standard reference on the sport, and was later celebrated in a Piero Taruffi Museum in Bagnoregio. It has not been reported what the Silver Fox thought of the namesake car built by OSI in 1967. Piero Taruffi died in Rome at age 81, in 1988. TARF 2 wound up in Australia for awhile, was fitted with a Dino 246 V6 after losing its Maserati engine, and with bodywork restored, was auctioned to a private collector in Monaco a dozen years ago for just under 90,000 Euros.

*Footnote:  For a detailed look at that last, radical OSI-designed and built concept car, see "The Etceterini Files Part 23—OSI Silver Fox:  And Now for Something Completely Different", posted here on Feb. 9, 2021. For photos and discussion of the 1955 Nardi 750 Bisuluro, see our blog archives for "Architect-Designed Cars: Part 1", from May 7, 2017. The Bisiluro is pictured with other Nardi cars in "The Etceterini Files Part 14—The Cars of Enrico Nardi: Present at the Creation," from February 26, 2018. 

Photo Credits:

Top left:  Officine Stampaggi Industriali (OSI)

Top right:  museoscienza.org
3rd & 4th:  Fondazione Pirelli

5th thru 7th:  British Pathé on youtube.com

8th & bottom:  diseno-art.com

Forgotten Classic Revival Follies Part 4: Willys Interlagos (Willys?) Reinvented, Sort of...

After a certain amount of rumor and anticipation about a project that was supposed to launch a revival of Italy's Carrozzeria Viotti just under a decade ago, the mystery was resolved when the wraps were taken off the car in a slickly-produced video, and at the Bologna Motor Show in 2014...

What appeared was a smoothly aerodynamic, mid-engined coupe dreamed up by Emanuele Bomboi, styling chief of the revived Viotti, and something called Fast Design.  A couple of engines were mooted by the makers, including a 3.8 liter twin-turbo flat six (apparently Porsche) and a Chevy LT-1 V8, but it's not clear if any cars beyond the prototype were built, and what powered them.  Despite the car's frontal similarity to the French Alpine A110 rally cars of the Sixties and Seventies, the name was a real surprise: Willys Interlagos AW380 Berlinetta...

"Tribute to a Legend", the video released by Viotti tells us.  This was likely confusing to a modern European audience, who may have never heard of a Willys Interlagos coupe, and may have lacked any recollection of the Willys* name at all, unlike an older generation who may have associated it with the Jeeps that helped win World War II.

But for some reason, the Viotti / Fast Design effort was named after a license-built version of the Alpine Renault A108, the model preceding the more famous A110 and offered from 1962-'66 by Willys in Brazil...

Like the Alpine A108, the Willys Interlagos, named after a race track, was a tidy little rear-engined coupe with Renault Dauphine-based drivetrain and fiberglass bodywork by Giovanni Michelotti.  Like the French A108, it was offered in coupe, convertible and 2+2 versions, though we've never seen examples of the 2+2.  

The steel backbone chassis was shared with the A108, along with double-wishbone front suspension, rack and pinion steering, and disc brakes front and rear.  The original engine offered was the 845cc Dauphine inline four making about 60 hp with Gordini aluminum head, sending power to swing-axle suspended rear wheels through a 4-speed transaxle.  Not the stuff of legends, perhaps, but a sweet little car... 

Sweet enough that Willys of Brazil sold 822 over a 4-year period. It never, however, established anything like the competition record of the more powerful French cousin that came after it, the Alpine Renault A110.  And it's unclear whether any specimens of the Willys Interlagos were sold in Europe during its production life.  So the decision by Viotti to hang the fate of their revival* project on a not-quite-classic car unfamiliar to Europeans seems an odd one.  

There may have been other problems with selecting that name.  Though Viotti had purchased the Willys "W" logo, Fiat Chrysler apparently had rights to the name, and felt confident enough that it reintroduced "Willys" in 2020 on special Jeep models. This practice continued after Stellantis took over in 2021.  And late in 2017, the Renault Group issued its long-rumored 21st century version of the legendary Alpine A110 that had won the French Rally Championship in 1968 and '69, the European Championship in '70, and the World Rally Championship in 1973.  The new mid-engined car is on the left below, with its over-achieving ancestor on the right.  The front-end styling of both cars is a clear sign that the Alpine A110 is really the "legend" that Viotti had in mind for their tribute all along.  They just didn't have rights to the Alpine name... 

*Footnote:  For a look at other Willys cars produced in Brazil, see "Willys Aero Saga: An Afterlife in Rio"  posted here on August 29, 2019.  A photo essay on the Alpine Renault A310 and its predecessor A110 appeared here on January 9, 2021, entitled "Forgotten Classic: Alpine Renault A310."  Before we knew this business of attempting to revive mostly (or completely) forgotten makes of car was going to be a trend, we posted an essay on the ATS revival.  Then it got to be a trend, and we did a numbered series.  Here are the makes, the titles and the dates:

ATS:  "Forgotten Classic Revival Show: ATS 2500 & 2500GTS", Nov. 11, 2018.

Connaught:   "Forgotten Classic Revival Follies Part 1: The Connaught", March 31, 2021.

Spyker:   "Forgotten Classic Revival Follies Part 2: The Spyker Saga", April 8, 2021.

Frazer Nash:  "Forgotten Classic Revival Follies Part 3:  Frazer Nash, the 3rd Time Around", 

April 30, 2021.

*Photo Credits:
Top thru 4th from top:  Carrozzeria Viotti official video

5th:  Wikimedia

6th: pinterest.com

7th & 8th:  bringatrailer.com

9th:  Renault Group

The Etceterini Files Part 31: De Tomaso

Alejandro De Tomaso was an Argentine-born race driver and deal maker who entered the ranks of small-bore racing car specialists with some Ford-powered Formula Junior cars; we'd call them Late Period Etceterini. He attracted the attention of Carroll Shelby, an ex-race driver with similar talents for salesmanship, and they hatched a project to built 5 cars for an SCCA series for 1965.  De Tomaso hooked up Shelby designer Pete Brock* with Italian chassis and body makers, and proposed a chassis design based upon his spindly, tubular single-seaters, with engine blocks taking chassis loads.  This 1965 P70 used the backbone chassis that later formed the basis of the Mangusta.  While De Tomaso fell behind schedule developing special heads for a bored and stroked version of the Ford 289, Shelby sent Brock to Italy to work with Carrozzeria Fantuzzi on forming the alloy bodies (and not incidentally, to keep an eye on De Tomaso). This time, Brock's design incorporated the adjustable rear air foil which he had originally suggested for the Cobra Daytona coupe.  Shelby cancelled the P70 project when the special heads weren't ready for the 1965 race season (and when he was offered a key role by Ford in the Gt40 racing effort), and De Tomaso kept the two cars of five planned, outfitting the second version with a windshield and doors complying with European racing regulations. After taking over Ghia, De Tomaso credited that firm with the P70, but the design was all Pete Brock's.  Like Shelby, De Tomaso was occasionally prone to take credit for work done by others, especially when it was drop-dead gorgeous...

De Tomaso had offered mid-engined Formula Juniors in 1963; these also used Ford-derived power; in this case 1100cc inline, short-stroke fours.  The company only built a handful of these, but they gave De Tomaso experience with Ford as an engine supplier, and also provided the template for his first production car (well, sort of production), named after the Vallelunga race track. This design used the engine block as a stressed member in the chassis design, as in the Formula Junior car and the later P70.  

While the designer was not credited, it was someone who deftly adapted tight contours and proportions to the mid-engined chassis, and the low belt line and glassy greenhouse work well.  Only the towering bystanders give away the car's small size. The engine chosen was the 1.5 liter, 4-cylinder English Ford Kent unit tuned to make 104 hp, in this case without the Cosworth-designed twin-cam heads featured in the Lotus Elan.

Carrozzeria Fissore, which made the first few examples, had also produced the similarly glassy Elva BMW GT160, another mid-engined coupe that appeared in the same year.  After Fissore produced 3 prototypes, production was taken over by Ghia*. Ghia's limited capacity may be one reason less than five dozen cars were completed, including 50 "production" cars, the prototypes and a handful of alloy-bodied road racers. 

In 1966, De Tomaso exhibited the Pampero spider shown below at the car shows.  Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for Ghia, it sat on the same chassis as the Vallelunga, with the same 1.5 liter Ford four.  Sold by Ghia after a lukewarm response from critics and show-goers, its whereabouts remain a mystery...

But what happened next is not.  Giugiaro had originally proposed a mid-engined design to Iso after designing their successful Grifo GT car; it was adapted by De Tomaso for the Mangusta (after the mongoose that slays cobras, a dig at Shelby).  The Mangusta design deployed the creased flanks and low, oblong air intake framing quad headlights as the Pampero, but visual clues signal the V8-powered chassis derived from the cancelled P70 project.  The Mangusta made its debut in November 1966 at the same Turin show as Giugiaro's Maserati Ghibli, possibly leaving onlookers wondering which of those two might be the most stunning new car there. Silver, Giugiaro's favorite show car color, shows off the creased, tightly contoured lines.  Giugiaro emphasized the rear wheels and sloped the windshield steeply to impart form that was spare, focused and purposeful...

The butterfly engine lids dictated twin outer backlights; inside, a vertical backlight separated the passenger cabin from the engine, while deeply recessed vents in the lids echoed those aft of the side windows.  Note how the horizontal crease dividing the upper and lower flanks is roughly tangent to the wheel tops.  Rear tires were larger than fronts, and the design benefits from the designer's disinclination to add anything like practical bumpers at the rear...

…or any bumpers at the front, where the simple, forward-canted air intake tightly surrounded 4 round headlights that were 2 oblong units in Giugiaro's original sketch for rival maker Iso. For Iso the car was a lost opportunity, but it put De Tomaso on the map as a car maker.  It went into production in autumn of 1967, the year De Tomaso took over Ghia.  As the license plate indicates, just over 400 Mangustas would be made; of these, roughly 150 were for the European market. When Daryl Adams, owner of this pristine example, displayed it at a concours featuring Giugiaro's designs, the designer himself, a guest of honor at the show, signed the inside of the glovebox...

While the Mangusta was in production and De Tomaso was lobbying for a bigger project with Ford, Tom Tjaarda* designed the compact Mustela GT below, which appeared on the show circuit in 1969.  Based on a Ford V6 drivetrain, the hatchback Mustela would have made a very attractive alternative to the Capri Ford introduced in Germany and England that same year...

Even with the black mask denoting high-impact bumpers that were added in the Seventies, the Mustela would have outshone the Ford Capri (sold as a Mercury in the US) and the hapless Pinto-based Mustang II Ford offered for 1974.  But the Mustela was stillborn, partly because in the meantime, Ford had delivered that long-awaited big order to De Tomaso and Ghia...

The Mangusta had attracted the attention of Ford's corporate brass, and Lee Iacocca approached De Tomaso about a more practical production version of the Mangusta idea.  Ford had bought Ghia in 1970 and Giugiaro had left Ghia to start his own firm, so new chief designer Tom Tjaarda*, recently arrived from Pininfarina, handled design chores. A mid-mounted 351 Cleveland replaced the 289 and 302 offered in Mangustas, again with the ZF transaxle, and though the new car was essentially the same size as its precursor it offered more space, along with bumpers.  These were mostly decorative until the 1973 and '74 model years. Built at Vignale, also owned by Ford, owing to its volume production capacity, it overlapped the end of Mangusta production and went on sale at selected US Lincoln Mercury dealers in the spring of 1971. Over 5,600 were built during its US run, which ended after 1974.  After that, as we shall see, production of the Pantera continued in Italy...

De Tomaso displayed another Tjaarda design, this Deauville 4-door sedan at the Turin Show in 1970, and began production in 1971, the year of the Pantera launch. The Ghia-built body was clearly derivative of Jaguar's XJ series, but the Deauville was so carefully contoured, proportioned and detailed that it did a better job of looking like a Jaguar than the XJ40 series which appeared in 1986, the year after the Deauville exited production after 244 examples were built.  Power came from Ford's 351 Cleveland V8 as on the Pantera, suspension was all-independent, with 4-wheel power disc brakes.  Transmissions offered were a ZF 5 speed and a 3-speed automatic.  The chassis design was also used with longer wheelbase  from 1979  on Maserati's Quattroporte III, as by this time, De Tomaso had a controlling interest in Maserati as well as a connection to Ghia...

If the Deauville was De Tomaso's answer to the Jag XJ, the Longchamp (produced from 1972-'89 in 409 examples) seemed a response to the Mercedes SL and shared similar forms and proportions.  The Longchamp offered the same drivetrain and chassis design as the Deauville, but on a wheelbase 7 inches shorter at 102 inches.  From '76 to '83, DeTomaso offered a Maserati-powered variant as the Kyalami. The Deauville and Longchamp were the only production model De Tomasos with front-mounted engines.  In the end, it was the mid-engined Pantera that was De Tomaso's most popular car, with 7,260 produced before production ended in 1992.  

*Footnote:  Pete Brock's car designs were surveyed here in "Unsung Genius: Pete Brock, Car Designer", on Jan.16, 2017.  Tom Tjaarda's career designing cars got a retrospective in "Architect-Designed Cars Part 4:  Tom Tjaarda---Life Before and After the Pantera", posted on April 30, 2020.  Other designs for Ghia, including those by Giorgetto Giugiaro, were featured in "The Italian Line: Ghia Part 2---From Custom to Corporate", posted on October 31, 2020.

Photo Credits

Top:  hemmings.com

2nd, 7th & 14th:  Ghia Studios

3rd:  Lutziger Classic Cars

4th thru 6th (Vallelunga):  the author

7th (Pampero):  Ghia Studios

8th thru 11th (Mangusta):  the author

12th, 13th & 14th (Pantera & Mustela):  Ghia Studios

15th (Deauville):  Honest John Classics

16th & Bottom (Deauville & Longchamp):  Wikimedia

 

The Etceterini Files Part 30: OSCA——When a Maserati Is Not a Maserati

The above badge appeared on nearly all OSCA cars produced from 1949 through 1965. An earlier badge, which appeared after Ernesto, Ettore and Bindo Maserati founded OSCA in 1947, left out the part about "Fratelli Maserati", the Maserati brothers.  This might have been because when they sold their namesake car company to the Orsi family in 1937, their 10-year consulting contract stipulated they could not go off and make cars with Maserati nameplates. Their name for their new firm, Officine Specializzate Costruzione Automobile, translating roughly to "workshop specializing in car construction", may have demonstrated a deadpan sense of humor as much as respect for the legal technicalities.  One thing the brothers' new business plan didn't recognize, however, was how easy it was (and is) to make all your money go away by building racing cars.  Their original operation had beaten the odds for 23 years.  With the brothers still advising the new ownership, a Maserati had won the Indy 500 two years running, in 1939 & 40...

Unlike the Orsi family, which wanted to sell some road cars reflecting Maserati's racing glory, the Maserati brothers again went after racing glory itself.  Their first cycle-fendered cars, like the one above, featured their own single-overhead cam head on a Fiat 1100 cast iron block, fitting the first OSCAs into the growing category of etceterini.  Soon enough, though, these MT4 (Maserati Tipo, 4 cylinder) racers featured a 2AD specification, with twin overhead cams, as well as a new engine block.  By 1950, the brothers were providing parts for Amedée Gordini*, also native to Italy's Emilia Romagna region but working in Paris on his own racers, at first based on Simca (i.e., French Fiat) engine blocks.  Gordini suggested that the Maserati brothers create a new engine for Formula 1, with some funding provided by Simca...

The new engine, designated 4500G (for Gordini) was a 4.5 liter, 60 degree V12 with gear-driven overhead cams, and the brothers proceeded with it after Simca (and Gordini) dropped out.  One engine was fitted into an obsolete Maserati racer for Prince Bira, and another into a more modern OSCA chassis (above).  Another of the 3 engines built was fitted into what may have been the first Zagato-bodied OSCA road car. When the 4.5 liter Formula 1 was dropped after 1951, Grand Prix races were run on Formula 2 rules, so OSCA made a couple of Formula 2 cars with a twin-cam, inline six that was essentially half of the V12.  The Gordini inline 6 was built to a similar design. As a reminder of the OSCA-Gordini connection, a Gordini chases an early OSCA MT4 barchetta in the undated photo below...

OSCA built a handful (3 to 5) of 2000S sports cars with the Formula 2 engine design, but concentrated on improving the four-cylinder cars, offering the MT4 in a variety of engine sizes, from 1,100 to 1,500 cc, and by the end of the Fifties, to a 2 liter inline four.  One of those rare 2000S two-liter six-cylinder cars sits on the lawn at Pebble Beach below; it was built in 1954.

A more "standard" MT4 from this period is shown below...

The racing barchettas featured OSCA's trademark "cheese grater" grille, and, unlike contemporary Lancias and early Ferraris, usually featured left-hand drive. This may have reflected the brothers' preferences, as the first postwar Maserati road cars, built while they were still at that firm, favored LHD.

Bodies were contoured tightly in aluminum over the tubular chassis, which featured independent front suspension, a live rear axle, and drum brakes. Bodywork was contracted to specialists like Frua and Morelli, the builders of this purposeful example...

Morelli, a small carrozzeria based in Ferrara, concentrated on OSCAs.  Of the 78 to 80 MT4 models produced, 40 were fitted with Morelli bodies...

The MT4 began to post class wins in small-bore racing in Fifties Europe, and in the expanding schedule of SCCA races in the USA... 

OSCA, and Stirling Moss, sent a shock wave through the racing community, though, when the 1.5 liter, 1260 pound car below, piloted by Moss and co-driver Bill Lloyd, won the 1954 Sebring 12 Hours outright, beating Jaguars, Ferraris and Lancias with over twice the power.  It also beat a 5.5 liter Chrysler-engined Cunningham fielded, like this OSCA, by Briggs Cunningham's team.  After this moment, orders poured in for the little racers with the cheese grater grilles, which were offered by Alfred Momo's shop in New York for $9,000 to $10,000.  This example still makes 130 hp, and still sports a feature unlike other MT4 spiders, the cutout fender wells added by Momo's craftsmen to increase brake cooling...

The OSCA below, chassis #1108, is an early car that was re-bodied by Vignale in a style that closely follows their bodywork on the much larger Cunningham C3.  It's not clear whether this was done to celebrate the Cunningham team's success with OSCAs, which continued into the early 60s...

There were other Vignale coupes, like the MT4 below which raced at Le Mans in 1952 and won its class there in 1953.   Styling is by Giovanni Michelotti.  Note that the front fenders expose the wheels for better brake cooling, but unlike the Sebring winner, the concave surface extends across the doors to the rear wheels...

The Vignale-bodied coupe below was also designed by Michelotti with those concave flanks, but with a different grille design resembling his efforts on the Ferrari 212 series, also built by Vignale.  The photo underlines the small scale of these 86-inch wheelbase cars.

The rear view of the same car shows off the wild rear window arrangement, with the divided backlight extending forward into a kind of skylight.  Michelotti and Vignale experimented with unusual greenhouse schemes in the mid-Fifties, including bubble roofs as on the Lancia Nardi Blue Ray.

The MT4 below was bodied by Vignale in 1954 and also shows a similarity to their work on Ferraris, including the slanting egg crate grille and those portholes.  This car still exists...

...as does the black example below, which was perhaps the most fully road-equipped OSCA up to 1955, when it was exhibited by Vignale in Paris and sold to a local admirer.  Vignale's deft touches include a concave oval grille with fog lights, bumpers providing a bit of protection, and a wraparound rear window resembling that on the then-new Alfa Giulietta Sprint by Bertone.

The cheese grater grille, which appeared almost circular on some early MT4s, became a flattened oval on later OSCAs, like this red sports racer from the 1956-57 period.  It was bodied by Morelli.

The Maserati brothers also built 15 of the Tipo J, an 1100 cc Formula Junior racer, in the 1959-61 period, when Formula Junior gained popularity as entry-level, open-wheel racing.  

By the late Fifties, front-engined racers had nearly exhausted the search for lower profile and frontal area that would soon lead to the dominance of rear mid-engined designs.  Few of those cars, however, offered the sleek, pared-down grace of the S-498 below.  From the 1959-60 period, it was a 2-liter twin-cam four.  This series of cars introduced disc brakes to OSCA, and was also offered with desmodromic valves on the S-498 DS. These were mechanically opened and closed, like those on some Ducati motorcycles, and on the Mercedes 300SLR.  It seemed the Maserati brothers were always finding new ways to spend money on engineering and tooling.

As a way of dealing with these expenses, in a perhaps belated attempt at utilizing racing fame to reach a wider market, the Maserati brothers planned a joint project with Fiat, with Fiat agreeing to manufacture an engine of OSCA design for use in Fiat roadsters as well as in a road-going OSCA GT car.  Other than a handful of  Frua and Vignale-bodied coupes, most of which wound up on race tracks, OSCA had never made a serious touring car (with heater, bumpers, etc.) before. The first fruits of cooperation with Fiat appeared in 1959 as the Fiat-Osca 1500S, and they gave Fiat a high performance "halo car" to entice Americans and increasingly affluent Europeans (something it later tried with the Ferrari-engined Fiat Dino V6).  These cars were familiar Pinin Farina-bodied Fiat roadsters with OSCA engines.  The Maserati brothers wanted something more special...

Fiat soon increased engine size a bit for the 1600S, and the OSCA GT cars, when they appeared in the early Sixties, shared this displacement, though the OSCA version of the engine was a bit different, with forged connecting rods and other tweaks for race duty.  Fiat sold thousands of Fiat-Oscas, but sales of the OSCA 1600GT coupes (most fetchingly bodied by Zagato as on the GTZ above) barely brought OSCA's total career production tally to 200.  In 1963 the brothers sold OSCA to the MV Agusta motorcycle firm, and the last OSCA was built by the end of 1967.

*Footnote:  For a survey of OSCA history beginning with the founding Maserati brothers, see our post entitled "Almost Famous" in the archives for April 20, 2016.  We had a look at an attempt to revive the OSCA (nameplate anyway) with a mid-mounted Subaru flat four in "The Etceterini Files Part 16---OSCA Dromos and Jiotto Caspita: Subaru's Distant Cousins", posted October 28, 2018.  And we recounted the story of the OSCA's mechanical cousin, France's Gordini, in "The Etceterini Files Part 6---Gordini: French Connection, Chicago Subplot" in our post for March 27, 2016.

Photo credits:

Top thru 3rd image (OSCA insignia + 2 monochrome shots):  oscaownersgroup.com

4th:  Linda LaFond

5th:  Rapley Classic Cars

6th thru 10th:  the author

11th:  LCDR Jonathan Asbury, USN

12th:  the author

13th:  italianedacorsa.it

14th & 15th:  carrozzieri-italiani.com

16th & 17th:  vwvortex.com

18th: Wikimedia

19th:  classiccarcatalogue.com

20th:  the author

21th & 22nd:  oscaownersgroup.com

Bottom: the author