Forgotten Classic: Willment Cars----Climax, BRM and Those One-Off Cobras

Around 1957, if you'd been reading car mags like Road & Track or the long-defunct Sports Cars Illustrated, you might have seen a little feature on the car shown above and below.  It's a sports racing car built by Englishman John Willment, with alloy bodywork by Williams & Pritchard, a firm that also built the bodies for Colin Chapman's Lotus 11.  The sharp crease surmounting the low air intake and linking the headlights is a distinctive design touch. 

The low profile, tubular chassis, alloy wheels and Coventry Climax single overhead cam engine, an 1100cc inline four designed as a fire pump engine, were all the rage in British club racing circles at the time.  The Willment's stabilizing fins, unlike those on the Lotus IX which had also been built by Williams & Pritchard, were deftly integrated into the body design with a horizontal crease curving up past flush tail lights and forward to the cabin.  This crease echoes the one linking the headlights on 407 H.  The frontal forms of the earlier Willment shown below, from 1956, were not so well integrated...

But the cars drew attention to the competitive talents of John Willment, who had designed an inlet over exhaust cylinder head for the old Ford side-valve fours before adopting the Climax engine, and expanding a chain of Ford dealerships that supported his racing activity.  In winter of 1962, Willment founded his own racing team, perfectly timed to run the Lotus Cortinas that would arrive in 1963, alongside the big V8 Galaxies, in saloon car racing.  But 1962 was also the first year of Carroll Shelby's Ford-powered AC Cobra, and Willment noticed the potential of that car early on. By 1964, when Shelby produced half a dozen Daytona coupes that would eventually help win the '65 Manufacturer's Championship, Willment wanted one for his team...

And in 1964, because Shelby declined to make him one, Willment acquired Cobra 289 chassis number CSX2131 and made one himself, with assistance from Daytona crew chief John Ohlsen, and copies of Pete Brock's drawings lent by Shelby American.  The roof seems a bit lower on CSX2131 than on the Daytona, and the rear wheel arches as shown in the early photo above are flatter. 

The frontal form of the Willment Cobra coupe closely follows Pete Brock's* design for the original Daytona, with a slightly more angled profile to the nose.  At first glance, it seems the high tail of the fastback coupe is also in line with the original...

Conveniently enough, the Shelby American Collection in Boulder, Colorado has one of the original Cobra Daytona Coupes on hand, so you can go over and have a look to compare the cars.  Pete Brock wanted an adjustable spoiler that could be raised for downforce as speed increased, but Shelby vetoed this on budgetary grounds.  Even so, the Daytona body added roughly 20 mph to the Cobra's top speed.

On closer examination, you note that the rear window of the John Willment Team car is recessed and nearly vertical, somewhat like the Ferrari GTO Series 2.  But this change was made in the 70s,  The original Willment coupe had a curving, flush backlight, as shown in the monochrome photo. It is not known whether Willment chose the red paint scheme in protest of Shelby's refusal to sell him a body shell.  It was maybe a coincidence that it was also the color of the Ferraris that Shelby was trying to beat...or maybe not.

Still, red color and all, Willment's CSX2131, the Almost Daytona, did well on the track, winning the Guards Trophy at Brands Hatch in '65, driven by Jack Sears, who had also driven the Daytonas.  

A comparison of the blue Daytona with the red Almost Daytona also shows how closely Willment's team followed Brock's body forms around the cowl, windshield and A-pillar.  Note also the boundary layer air control devices added to the Daytona's A-pillar; this was identified in tests as one of the few aerodynamic hiccups on Brock's design.

This was a busy time for the Willment team, as they also entered the stream of mid-engined road racers with a small series using the BRM V8, in 2 liter form an enlarged version of the 1.5 liter, 4-cam engine that Graham Hill had used to win BRM* a Formula 1 World Championship in 1962.  The red car below was built for the 1965 road racing season...

...while this blue one was built for 1966.  Old race photos show at least one BRM-powered Willment coupe with gull-wing doors; it appears this may have been converted to an open car later on.

One of the models in the display case at the Shelby Collection is this Ghia Supersonic from 1953-54, a design which appeared on a small number of Fiat 8Vs, at least one Jaguar special, and one Aston Martin.  What is it doing here?

Well, it's here because when Shelby introduced the 427 Cobra with its new, computer-designed chassis (a first, courtesy of Ford) with larger-diameter tubes, Willment wanted a coupe version.  Shelby apparently wasn't any more interested in making a 427 coupe than he had been in selling Willment a Daytona, so Willment adapted a Ghia-built alloy body from a 2 liter Fiat 8V Supersonic*.  During this period, it was probably easier to find a Fiat 8V with a blown engine than it is today; now these cars are so valuable that engines get restored along with the rare alloy bodies, and nobody would throw away the scarce Fiat 8V chassis, which like the AC Ace that formed the basis of the Cobra, featured a pioneering 4-wheel independent suspension.

The rear fenders of the Willment Ghia* Cobra had to be re-contoured to allow for the wider track on the 427; pretty much the same thing that happened to the rear fenders on the 289 roadster in the change to the 427, which appeared in 1967. The front fenders, grille opening and bumpers of Giovanni Savonuzzi's design were left unchanged, a good choice...

This car still exists, and has been featured on a website showcasing the glories of Italian coachwork, in this case, the Fiat Supersonic designed, like the original AC Ace, nearly a decade before the first Shelby AC Cobra turned a wheel...

Were there other Cobra coupes beyond those six blue Daytonas, the defiantly red Willment 289 Almost Daytona, and the 427 that hides under Willment's adapted Ghia Supersonic bodywork?  Well, yes, there is an authentic one, designed and built by AC Cars and racing at Le Mans in the 1964 photo below.  It's number 3.  But that car is a story for a future installment of we might call "Other Cobras You Forgot"...

*Footnote: We featured the Cobras in the Shelby American Collection in Roadside Attraction: The Shelby American Collection Part 1, on Dec. 28, 2017.  For more on the original Cobra Daytona along with other designs by Pete Brock, you might visit Unsung Genius: Pete Brock, Car Designer, posted here on Jan. 16, 2017.  The BRM V8, V16, and H16 engines are described, along with pictures of Old Faithful, the Championship-winning BRM, in The BRM Saga: Learning From History, Or Not, posted Oct. 15, 2018.  And for more info on the Fiat 8V and the Ghia Supersonic, you might want to check out The Etceterini Files Part 10:  Siata 208S & Fiat 8V, in the blog archives for Nov. 13, 2016.  There's a later Ghia Cobra design on the 427 chassis, and it was commissioned by Ford.  A survey of proposed successors to the Shelby AC Cobra roadster, including Ghia designs for Ford and AC, appears in AC Part 4: Shelby's Cobra Was a Hard Act to Follow, posted on Aug. 20, 2017.

Photo Credits:  

Top & 2nd:  Williams & Pritchard

3rd:  pinterest.com

4th:  secondstrike.com

5th thru 11th (Willment Cobra & Daytona):  the author

12th ('65 Willment BRM):  pinterest.com

13th & 14th ('66 Willment BRM):  autopuzzles.com

15th:  the author

16th:  gentlemanracer.com

17th:  autopuzzles.com

18th:  carrozzieri-italiani.com

Bottom:  AC Owners Club

Forgotten Classic: Kieft GP Car Tests Dream Engine 48 Years Late

It's July 1951 and that's Stirling Moss up there, explaining a 500cc Kieft Formula 3 car to American racer Briggs Cunningham*. The other guy flanking Cunningham is Cyril Kieft, whose specialist workshop built the car, in which a mid-mounted Norton motorcycle engine drove the rear wheels by a chain.  Cunningham was at the time involved in a multi-year effort to win Le Mans with a car of his own manufacture...

...and it cannot have escaped his notice when Moss won the race later that day.  Three years later, Moss would win the Sebring 12 Hours in an OSCA* run by Cunningham's team.  Kieft continued to have success in Formula 3, competing against similarly-shaped, mid-engined cars from Cooper*.  Meanwhile, success in F3 got the Kieft team thinking about Formula 1 in 1953, when they heard that while Grand Prix races in '52 and '53 were run to Formula 2 regulations, there would be a new Formula 1 in '54, with engine sizes increased to 2.5 liters. Coventry Climax was beginning to have success with its overhead cam inline 4 (designed as a fire pump engine) in 1,100 cc sports racers, and Kieft, along with competing firm Connaught*, decided to design Formula 1 racers powered by the promised Climax Godiva FPE (now there's a name) V8 racing engine. The new engine was named FPE by engineers Walter Hassan and Harry Mundy (of Jaguar XK fame) in jest; it was the first of the postwar Climax engines not originally intended as a Fire Pump Engine, and the engineers had a hard time selling the project to the firm's management. The 4-cam, dry-sump Godiva was tested by Coventry Climax with 4 Weber carbs and initially made 240 hp, but the Coventry firm's management began to have doubts when they heard about the 260 to 270 hp range of the rival engines from Maserati, Mercedes and Lancia.  With experimental SU fuel injection, the Climax V8 could exceed 260 hp.  In retrospect, the firm's caution was probably unjustified.  The Maserati 250F initially made 220 hp from its twin-cam six, and the Mercedes W196 GP car 256 hp, later upped to 290. The Lancia D50 initially made 260 hp. Also, unlike these other cars, the Kieft GP featured Dunlop disc brakes on all four wheels.  So one wonders what might have been...

Coventry Climax cancelled its F1 engine project for 1954, leaving the Kieft team with two completed tubular chassis with all-around independent suspension, the one above with lightweight alloy bodywork. The Wilson pre-selector transmissions, made by Armstrong Siddeley, were heavier than their Italian competition, but they were available.  The engine bays were empty, though, owing to the Coventry firm's reluctance to face the allegedly more powerful competition. One tubular chassis derived from the GP design was fitted with an American De Soto V8 and alloy body, was then crashed, and resurrected decades later...

But Kieft had other plans as well, and began to offer English club racers its tubular chassis with pioneering fiberglass bodies and cast alloy wheels in 1954, a year when alloy bodies and wire wheels were still the rule.  The cars featured independent suspension with leaf springs at the rear, and the overhead cam Coventry Climax four in 1,100 cc form.  In 1954, Kieft was the first car builder to run at Le Mans with the Climax 1,100 cc engine; it retired in the 11th hour with transmission failure.

The new car could apparently be ordered with road equipment, but it appears that only racers were sold at 1,560 GBP per copy.  The fiberglass body appeared a couple years before the Jensen 541 with its "production" fiberglass body, and 3 years before the load-bearing fiberglass body on Colin Chapman's pioneering, but risk-taking, Lotus Elite.

In the earlier photo below of the Kieft with number plate LDA5, it appears with a wider air intake and non-flared front wheel arches, and seems to be winking with one uncovered headlight.  William Boddy identified it in his book as a 1.5 liter.  But Kieft built cars with a variety of engines, including a Bristol and that one-off De Soto hemi, so it could've been...

These cars didn't make money for Cyril Kieft, though, so by 1955 he'd sold the car-making operation, along with the two GP chassis, to Merrick Taylor. In that way, the Kieft story follows the theme of many others in this series, which is often about how making racing cars is a great way to lose money. The new owner switched the Kieft company emphasis to race preparation and tuning of other makes of cars after 1956, and changed the name in 1960.  For the GP cars waiting for their intended engines, though, that's not where this story ends...

The Kieft GP chassis passed through various owners to Gordon and Martyn Chapman, who discovered 3 FPE engine blocks, 8 heads, and other parts in an abandoned building near the Silverstone track. They bought the lot, and found that the FPE shared some vital parts with the later (GP Championship-winning) FPF four-cylinder engines. After Gordon Chapman's death, Bill Morris bought the GP chassis and the engine parts.  The chassis with body in place was completed with an FPE engine in the bay, an uprated Wilson gearbox, and with the alloy coachwork detailed with cooling vents and painted in a metallic green that Cyril Kieft selected. Rear suspension was given a bit of negative camber. Fifties car magazines would've called the cramped interior "businesslike." Not too long after the beginning of the current century, the Kieft GP car was finally ready to run, as Bill Morris said, "only 48 years late."

The chassis plate tells the story.  This is the car with Chassis #1, and Engine #1...

...and it finally ran.  On September 21, 2002 the Kieft GP car ran its first-ever road race at the Vintage Sports Car Club Silverstone meet.  In the audience was 89 year-old Cyril Kieft.  He'd  lived long enough to see his dream racer get its dream engine and hit the track, and to hear the wail of the near-mythical Godiva FPE at full song.  Cyril Kieft died in 2004.

*Footnote:  Cunningham's namesake cars were profiled here in "A Moment Too Soon: The Cars of Briggs Swift Cunningham", posted April 15, 2017, and we told the story of the Moss victory at Sebring in Cunningham's OSCA in "OSCA: When a Maserati Is Not a Maserati", posted  Dec. 29, 2022.  Cooper Cars, which like Kieft had origins in Formula 3, had its longer and more successful history surveyed in "Cooper Cars Followed a Winding Road to the Major Leagues", in these posts for Feb. 11, 2022. And finally, the seldom-told story of how the Connaught came to be, and of how it became the first British car to win a Grand Prix race after World War II, is told in "Celtic Rainmaker: Connaught Ended  the Longest Drought in Grand Prix Racing", in our archives for July 24, 2016. 

Errata:  We made a typo on the first version of the GP car's first race.  It was Sept. 21, 2002, not Sept. 2021.  Apologies.

Photo Credits:  

Top & 2nd:  500race.org

3rd:   bonhams.com

4th:   Bill Morris

5th:   car.info

6th:  pinterest.com

7th:  C. Dunn, featured in The Sports Car Pocketbook by William Boddy, Sports Car Press, 

        New York City 1961. 

8th:  Wikimedia

9th thru bottom: bonhams.com

Kit Houses, a Solution to Overpriced Housing? A 1920s Sears Kit House in Boulder Revives the Question...

On University Hill in Boulder, you happen upon this Craftsman style bungalow in what looks like its originally intended form.  There's a welcome absence of those awkward second-story additions that real estate agents have taken to calling "pop-ups", as though all old houses are somehow yearning to release their inner Clashing Additions, like English muffins springing out of a toaster... 

Intrigued, you walk around the place.  It's well-maintained, with an array of photovoltaic panels on the roof that shows the owners' concern for their carbon footprint.  Another thing that would keep the carbon footprint down is the actual footprint; the house is modestly sized. In a country where the average new single family house in 2021 was just under 2,500 square feet, this one appears well under the average. If you're a follower of historic residential architecture, though, there is something vaguely familiar about this house, so you take some pictures before you move on...

From 1908 until 1940, Sears, Roebuck & Co. offered kit houses as part of their Modern Homes catalog. Over 70,000 of these kit houses were sold in a variety of styles (around 370) and sizes, before sales wound down during 1942. These houses were shipped to buyers in boxes containing wood framing elements, doors, windows, siding and trim, all marked for location. Think of that IKEA bookcase you may have bought, only even more of a pain to assemble. It turns out, though, that buyers saved plenty of money by ordering the components this way, compared with paying a contractor to source them. Also, as the houses were already designed, there was no architect's fee (hmm...sorry, fellow architects), though there was the cost of engineering and building the foundation, which needed to relate to various soil conditions, sloping vs. flat sites, etc.  Our University Hill example happens to be a Sears Oakdale...

In the mid-Twenties, when the Oakdale was still offered in this friendly-looking Craftsman style, the kit price was just under $1,800.  For comparison, in 1925 a new Ford Model T was yours for $260, in factory-fresh black. By the Thirties, Sears had restyled the Oakdale, removing some of its homey charm.  But it was still a bargain...

This version of the Oakdale turns out to have an enclosed back porch in compatible style, and a garage that is not of Sears origin.  The overall condition of the house is evidence of the likelihood that people still feel at home here...

This might be a good moment to point out that after World War II, shortly after Sears got out of the kit house business, there was a revival of interest in manufactured housing in the USA, in order to meet the demand for housing created by legions of young people leaving the military and starting families. One effort launched in Chicago was Lustron Homes, prefabricated in steel using manufacturing techniques employed in the car industry, and with enameled steel exterior panels. Unlike the kit houses, the components on these prefabricated houses were combined into subassemblies for speedier results.  Opposition to these prefab designs came from construction unions, who saw them as a threat, and from various building and zoning departments, whose expertise was based on traditional construction techniques and whose codes failed to allow for new methods.  Lustron folded after 1950.  Most of the suburban sprawl that accommodated the postwar housing boom was achieved using conventional on-site construction.

How much of it was conventional?  Well, according to eyeonhousing.org, the total US market share of non site-built single-family houses (that is, modular or panelized) was only 2% in 2021. According to Dwell Magazine, the prefabricated share of the new single-family housing market in Scandinavia that year was 80%.  By the late Fifties, Scandinavian firms were pioneering prefabricated, modular and panelized designs. Their design, detailing and provisions for energy efficiency in these have kept up with technical advances. Equally important, zoning codes throughout Scandinavia encourage these houses, and building codes address the technical aspects.  By contrast, when we designed a house addition based upon modifying steel shipping containers in Denver in 2014, the building department was uncertain about whether this constituted a prefabricated house, and delayed approval while searching for a category under which it could be evaluated.  Manufacturers like Pluspuu in Finland offer a variety of configurations emphasizing energy efficiency, in sizes that have increasingly vanished from American cities and suburbs owing to land costs.  The logic seems to dictate that with land prices high, one needs to build as big as zoning allows to maximize profit.  As a result, the late 70s was the peak period for small home builds (averaging 1,400 sq. ft.), averaging over 450,000 per year, but that number is now around 60,000 in the US.

Allowing accessory dwellings on standard lots would help provide more affordable housing, at the small cost of rewriting some low-density single-family zoning. Adapting zoning to allow more multi-unit housing and allowing modular construction for that would also offer a path out of the housing crunch.  A coordinated approach encouraging multi-use zoning and adaptive re-use of often-abandoned but sound buildings in rural downtowns could also provide housing, especially for those who can now work at home, and don't need to be near a large urban center...

It's all enough to make you wonder if Scandinavians know something we Americans don't know. As potential first-time buyers are confronted with an impenetrable housing market offering oversized, wasteful, uninspired choices, it's probably time for zoning changes that allow greater density, and for building code changes that allow for more prefabrication, including kit and modular houses, and for architects and designers to offer something more connected to the way a whole new generation of housing consumers wants to live.

*Footnote:  For Part 2 of this long-interrupted series on mobile, modular, prefabricated and kit houses, please see "Mobile vs. Prefab: If It Can't Go Anywhere Can It At Least Look Like Home?", in our archives for August 3, 2017.  In that post, we visited modular and prefab housing exhibits in Chicago and New York, reported on an innovative reconfiguring of a mobile home by CU students here in Boulder, and also showed a factory-built house in Finland.

Photo Credits

Color shots of the Sears Oakdale house in Boulder are by the author.  The monochrome shot of the Oakdale with plan is from the Sears Roebuck Modern Homes Division, while the perspective of the Craftsman style version above it is from searshouseseeker.com. The color shots of the Pluspuu houses are from pluspuu.fi.  The bottom shot of the Norwegian kit structures is from katus.eu.

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