Category Archives: Rare and Interesting

The Royal Seal

Windsor Castle is where Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll lives, so it is an unlikely setting for a motoring event. However in this, the year of her Diamond Jubilee, an automotive celebration and tribute has been arranged. Sixty of the finest cars in the world are on display at Windsor Castle this weekend, absolutely magical.

More later

John Brooks, September 2012

Miscellany Manceau

Our Special Correspondent has been in France at the Great Race. Here he shares some of his observations and discoveries.


In the days leading up to the 24 Hour race it is rewarding to look out for interesting cars round about Le Mans. Here are some that caught my eye and my delight:

This is “Zig”, one of the Aston Martin Zagato prototypes, lurking in the Le Mans paddock still wearing its Nürburgring 24 Hours clothing, waiting to have a go in the Aston Martin Festival Challenge support race. It finished 11th.

I can never resist a visit to the Museum at Le Mans and they do vary the exhibits so it is usually worth a call. They have a superb example of that extraordinary French car, the Panhard Dynamic. Introduced in 1936, it featured a unit-construction body, a sleeve valve six-cylinder engine, torsion bar suspension and, unusually, a central driving position.

Notice the three windscreen wipers and three-piece windscreen.

The bodywork was designed by Louis Bionier and had semi-enclosed wheels. Some 40 six-light limousines were made on the eve of the Second World War for the military chiefs.

Toyota have returned to Le Mans for the first time since their huge effort to win this race with the GT-One cars in 1998-99. These yielded at best only a second place and they had come very close to winning in 1994 with this car, the 94CV.

Gearbox trouble robbed it of almost certain victory in the last hour of the race.

It is 40 years since Matra scored the first of three consecutive victories in the 24 Hour race in 1972. This was recognised at various events around the city. The winning car of Henri Pescarolo and Graham Hill was to be seen in the Village at the circuit as was the 1974 winner of Pescarolo and Gérard  Larrousse.

At the traditional A.C.O. Press Conference Gérard Larrousse was awarded the Spirit of Le Mans Trophy – appropriately the 1973 winning Matra accompanied the occasion.

The popular Drivers’ Parade also remembered Matra’s achievements and no less than nine examples of their first proper production car, the 530, endured the incessant rain. The column of cars was led by a 530LX on board of which was Henri Pescarolo who had many successes in Matra cars.

Named after Matra’s R530 air-to-air missile, the 530 had a mid-mounted German Ford V4 engine shared with the contemporary Taunus and for the first two years production was entrusted to the French coachbuilder Brissonneau et Lotz at Creil.

Invariably one comes across a gem in the Parade and for this writer the favourite was the Morris Léon Bollée. This was one of William Morris’s failures. He was anxious to break into the French market and purchased the Léon Bollée factory at Le Mans. The cars  were produced as Morris Léon Bollées but did not sell well, although he was able to put his factory at the disposal of the Bentley team when they came to compete in the 24 Hour race. Later models used Hotchkiss engines before production finally ceased.
Tailpiece

Spotted in Falaise on the way home from Le Mans, this Quale Mangusta is reputed to be the only right-hand drive example. The Mangusta started life as the De Tomaso Biguà which appeared at the Geneva Show in 1996. Kjell Quale, the West Coast of America importer of many European prestige cars, agreed to fund the production for which a factory in Modena was used on condition that the car was called the De Tomaso Mangusta. Quale and De Tomaso soon had disagreements and the car was re-named the Quale Mangusta. It had a chassis designed by Enrique Scalabroni and bodywork by Marcello Gandini and under the bonnet lay a 4.6-litre DOHC Ford V8. About 284 cars were made between 2000 and 2001. The Mangusta platform was used as the basis of the MG X-Power SV.

David Blumlein, June 2012

 

Sebring Surprises

Our Special Correspondent has been on his travels once again, this time to Florida. The big birthday celebrations brought forth all manner of automotive goodness and here a select few are given due consideration.

For the 60th Anniversary of this classic race, the organisers were able to bring together a collection of magnificent cars associated with this eminent event.

Cunningham C-4R

Cunningham C-4R

After a toe-in-the-water effort at Le Mans with Cadillacs in 1950, Briggs Cunningham was determined to try to conquer the 24-Hour race with his own all-American cars. The C-2Rs were quite promising in 1951 but were far too heavy to compete with the likes of the Jaguar C-type etc., and so he commissioned a new lighter car, the C-4R. This was designed by Briggs George Weaver, previously associated with Du Pont’s 1929 Le Mans entry and then during the 1940s with the design of the American Indian motorcycles.

Cunningham C-4R

This C-4R is famous as the winner of the 1953 Sebring 12-Hour race in the hands of John Fitch and Phil Walters. The race was the very first round of the newly conceived World Sports Car Championship and thus the car was the first all American car to win an international sports car race.

OSCA MT4 1500

OSCA MT4 1500

Officine Specializzate Costruzioni Automobili – the company set up in December 1947 by the remaining Maserati brothers. They had sold their eponymous business to the Orsi family in 1938 but stayed with the firm until 1947 when the Orsis wanted to concentrate on more profitable road cars. The brothers wanted racing and built, at Bologna, small capacity sports cars. From 1950 onwards these had twin OHC 4-cylinder engines of varying capacities, the outstanding model being the MT4.

Big international recognition came to OSCA with the car’s win in the 1954 Sebring 12-Hour race, driven by Stirling Moss and Bill Lloyd.

OSCA MT4 1500

The strong entry of four Lancia D-24s, three Aston Martin DB3S cars and various private Ferraris all suffered problems, the leading Lancia of Taruffi/Manzon failing with just 54 minutes remaining. This little OSCA was there to pick up the pieces, five laps ahead of the surviving Lancia of Rubirosa/Gino Valenzano. Other OSCAs finished 4th and 5th.

It remains one of the major upsets of international endurance racing.

Maserati 450S

Maserati 450S

The brutish Maserati 450S, with a 400 b.h.p. 4.5-litre V8, had a lengthy gestation, design work on the engine having begun in 1954. A car was first seen during practice for the 1956 Swedish Grand Prix but its race début came in the 1957 Buenos Aires 1,000 km. It was instantly superior to all the opposition and Fangio and Moss led easily until that Maserati Achilles heel, transmission failure, intervened on the 57th lap.

At the Sebring 12-Hour race in 1957 Fangio and Behra had such superiority that they cruised home to a comfortable win. Maserati scored one more win that year with the 450S, at the Swedish Grand Prix, but the car suffered such bad luck in the final championship race at Caracas, Venezuela, that Maserati was unable to clinch the Sports Car crown from Ferrari.

1959 MGA Twin Cam Coupé

MGA Twin Cam Coupé

There came a decree from Longbridge, BMC Headquarters, that, following the accidents at Le Mans and in the Tourist Trophy in 1955, there were to be no further official works race entries. The way around this for Sebring was to employ regional drivers in cars entered and prepared by dealers in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

In 1959 a full team of Twin Cams with hardtops was prepared at Abingdon and shipped over to the States for drivers from the U.S.A. and Canada, using mechanics drawn from the workshops of BMC Hambro Auto Corp. in New York and BMC Canada.Gus Ehrman and Ray Saidel came 2nd in class behind a works Porsche with this car.

1962 MGA works car

MGA

This is one of the three lightweight coupés built by the MG factory for the 1962 Sebring 12-hour race. Powered by the 1.6-litre engine in a Twin Cam chassis, the car had 4-wheel disc brakes, Plexiglass rear and side-windows and fibreglass bumpers.

The three car team finished the race and this one came 20th driven by John Whitmore, Bob Olthoff and F.Morrell.

1999 BMW LMR V12

BMW LMR V12

This car was built by BMW Motorsport Ltd in co-operation with Williams Grand Prix Engineering at Grove in England. It was powered by a 48-valve 4 cam V12 of 5,990 c.c., a development of the engine that won Le Mans in the McLaren in 1995.

It not only won the Sebring 12-Hour race in 1999 but also that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours.

David Blumlein March 2012

Showroom Soliloquy

As money is losing value almost as fast as the politicians and bureaucrats can waste it, many are turning to assets to hedge against the silent theft of their wealth by the State. So art dealers’ businesses are  flourishing, as are those in the buoyant classic car market. Our Special Correspondent paid a visit to the hallowed ground at Brooklands, to see for himself what was on offer in the first big sale of the year in this locality.

Auctions invariably turn up some interesting cars and that of Historics at the Mercédès-Benz World at Brooklands was no exception, and a quick excursion into the museum at the old track also revealed one or two new exhibits as well.

1934 Hillman Aero Minx Streamline

Conceived by Capt. J.S.Irving – designer of the “Golden Arrow” Land Speed Record car – and A.H. Wilde, the Hillman Minx was launched in 1931 and went on sale in 1932. Some six months later the Aero Minx was introduced.

1934 Hillman Aero Minx Streamline

Mechanically similar with the same 1185 c.c. 4-cylinder side-valve engine, it was given a new under-slung frame, a high compression cylinder head and a remote control gear-change. To give a more sporting appearance the radiator grille was swept forward at its base. The standard bodywork style was a 2+1 fastback coupé with the rear seat set crosswise. From late 1934 an all- synchromesh gearbox was fitted and the Streamline open two-seater body was available.

1934 Hillman Aero Minx Streamline

By 1936 Rootes badge-engineering had taken over and the car evolved into the new Talbot 10.

1938 Lancia Aprilia

Irresistible was this beautiful blue Lancia Aprilia, Vincenzo Lancia’s last masterpiece. Of monocoque pillarless construction it boasted all independent suspension

1938 Lancia Aprilia

and a little gem of an engine, the 1352 c.c. V4 .

1937 SS Jaguar 1.5-litre

This was the smallest car Jaguar ever produced. Like all the stunning SS Jaguars introduced in 1935, it relied on Standard mechanicals, in this case the 4-cylinder Standard Twelve 1608 c.c. side valve engine. In the picture below you can see the name Standard stamped on the cylinder block.

1937 SS Jaguar 1.5-litre

While by 1938 the bigger 2.5-litre and 3.5-litre models were using special Weslake-developed overhead valve heads, the 1.5-litre used the Standard Fourteen 1776 c.c. engine with Standard-produced o.h.v. – this engine went on to power the post-war Triumph Roadster and Renown models as well as the what-was-now the Jaguar 1.5-litre. The early small SS Jaguar can be recognised by the spare-wheel cover whose top is higher than the level of the bonnet.

1937 SS Jaguar 1.5-litre

This “baby” Jaguar easily outsold all the other models in the pre-war range.

1924 Peugeot Quadrilette Type 172 Grand Sport

In the last days of 1919 Peugeot revealed their successor to the Bugatti-designed Bébé: the Type 161 Quadrilette which had a 4-cylinder 667 c.c. engine and the two seats mounted in tandem; this successful little car was made in the factory at Beaulieu in eastern France. In 1922 it was re-designed as the Type 172 and it acquired staggered seats. By 1924 production was moved to Peugeot’s main plant at Sochaux and later the engine size was increased to 720 c.c.

It was joined in 1924 by the Grand Sport, a 5CV model of which only 100 were made. It was clearly a tough little car as one of them won its class in 1926 in the car-destroying Circuit des Routes Pavées, a demanding race around cobbled roads in the southern outskirts of Lille. The standard model evolved into the 5CV Type 172 which appeared at the 1924 Tour de France and examples of the car took the first three places in its class in the first Mille Miglia in 1927. Certainly a rugged little car!

Nanette – a Brooklands Special

Felix Scriven was well-known as a driver at Brooklands in the 1920s where he campaigned an unlikely Austin Twenty which he painted in a variety of colours according to his whims. Later he commissioned F.W.Bond to design a 2-seater special for road and track use. Bond is chiefly remembered for his low-slung 2-seater sports cars  which he built in 1926/28.

The car for Scriven had a low under-slung chassis built by Rubery Owen and the engine was initially a 6-cylinder Sage unit but as this soon proved very unreliable Scriven was able to persuade the great Parry Thomas to provide him with a 4-cylinder 1847 c.c. Hooker-Thomas engine. Named “Nanette”, the car brought Scriven a convincing win in the “90 Short” race at the Summer B.A.R.C. meeting held at Brooklands in 1926.

TAILPIECE

A Pair of Peels

As examples of the modern production of electric-powered Peels, they provide an excuse to say something briefly about the original little Peel cars which qualified as almost certainly the world’s smallest passenger cars.

Mention the Isle of  Man to a car enthusiast and you will probably conjure up thoughts about the early Tourist Trophy races run around the island up to 1922 or the British Empire Trophy sports car races held at Douglas from 1951-53. But the Isle of Man had its own little car “industry” when the Peel Engineering Company of the town of Peel on the west coast, as fibreglass pioneers, decided to manufacture these extraordinary tiny cars.

The first model, the P50 similar to the blue car in the above picture, had a D.K.W. 49 c.c. fan-cooled 2-stroke single –cylinder engine mounted under the single seat and drove the single rear wheel by chain via a 3-speed gearbox. The little fibreglass-bodied car was only 53 inches long and 39 inches wide! The P50, which appeared in 1962, was joined by the 2-seater Trident in 1965 and this was all of 72 inches long!

Of special interest is the fact that British Leyland commissioned the Peel company to produce some fibreglass-bodied examples of the original Mini. Apparently these prototypes stood up very well to the rigorous testing schedule to which they were subjected but the project seemed to fizzle out.

David Blumlein, February 2012

Boulevard Périphérique

The Parc des Expositions located at Porte de Versailles, Paris is the venue each year for the Retromobile, a top notch celebration of automobiles, old and new. Now just a few hours by Eurostar from the centre of London, the show has attracted much attention from enthusiasts living on this side of the English Channel. With typical Gallic flair there is always something rare and interesting to enjoy. Who else but our Special Correspondent should be our guide to the treasures? Enjoy.

Delahaye Type 145

Delahaye Type 145

The mainstay of Delahaye’s competition activities in the late Thirties was the Type 135 sports car, particularly the Compétition Spéciale versions. Their motor was based on the tough old Type 103 lorry engine and among the Type 135’s many successes was its outright win in the 1938 Le Mans 24 Hour race. For the impending 3-litre supercharged/4.5-litre unsupercharged Grand Prix formula which was finally implemented in 1938, Jean Franςois designed a full V-12 racing engine which was used in the 145 chassis. Its greatest success was in the 1938 Pau Grand Prix when René Dreyfus drove a stripped version to defeat the official Mercédès-Benz Grand Prix team.Two two-seater cars were constructed and entered for the 1938 Le Mans race, the first V-12 –engined cars to take part in this famous event. They failed miserably, one through gearbox trouble after just seven laps, the other succumbing to overheating problems.

1923 Georges Irat 2-litre

1923 Georges Irat 2-litre

Georges Irat made fast touring cars in Chatou from 1921 with 4-cylinder o.h.v. 2-litre engines designed by Maurice Gaultier who had come from Delage. All but the body was made in-house and this example has coachwork by Carrosserie Morlaix of Courbevoie. Georges Irat had considerable racing success, usually thanks to Maurice Rost – he won the demanding Circuit des Routes Pavées, in the suburbs of Lille, in 1923 and 1925. He also won the Spanish Touring Grand Prix at San Sebastian in 1927 and the 2-litre class in the 1926 and 1928 editions of the Spa 24 Hour race. However, the cars ran without success at Le Mans in 1923-24-26.

1923 Georges Irat 2-litre

Georges Irat made a 6-cylinder in 1927, based very much on Gaultier’s engine, and in 1935 a small two-seater Ruby-engined car with front wheel drive; a Citroën 11CV unit became available in 1938, but these cars were not seen in serious competition.

1937 Renault Nerva Grand Sport

1937 Renault Nerva Grand Sport

Renault traditionally had large-engined top-of-the-range cars in their catalogues – the 6-cylinder 9-litre 40CV springs to mind, a car that set many records at Montlhéry in 1925-26, while the 1935 Monte Carlo Rally was won by an 8-cylinder Nerva Sport model.

At the 1934 Paris Salon the Grand Sport series was added to the range, having more aerodynamic lines inspired by the Caudron-Renault Rafale record-breaking aircraft. The Nerva Grand Sport was the first Renault to be fitted with the bigger 5.4-litre 8-cylinder engine. For 1937 the cars were face-lifted with V-shaped radiator grilles, headlights fully merged into the wings, spats on the rear wheels and a proper luggage compartment. Outwardly impressive with their long bonnets, the cars were still based on a vintage-style chassis with rigid axles and semi-elliptic springs all round and all up they weighed some 2.5 tons.

1937 Renault Nerva Grand Sport

Only 22 of these dropheads were made before the model was superceded at the 1938 Paris Salon by the Suprastella which used the same basic chassis.

1937 Renault Nerva Grand Sport

Notice how the lanky gear-lever for the central change is controlled through a slot in the dashboard – very unusual.

Skoda Hispano Suiza 25/100

Skoda Hispano Suiza 25/100

Skoda acquired a licence with the French-based Hispano Suiza company to manufacture the luxury H6B cars. The first car came off the production line at Plzeň in 1925. The first fifteen chassis were built from original parts supplied by the factory at Bois-Colombes in France; from the sixteenth car onwards all were truly Skoda Hispano Suizas built entirely in Bohemia – Skoda made the chassis and the bodies were by various Czech coachbuilders.

The first car was delivered to the country’s President, T.G. Masaryk – a black six-seater limousine with body by Vaclav Brozik & Sons. Production stopped in 1929 owing to the economic climate.

1936 Chenard et Walcker Super Aigle 24

1936 Chenard et Walcker Super Aigle 24

The French marque Chenard et Walcker is chiefly remembered for the fact that one of their 4-cylinder 3-litre cars won the first Le Mans 24-Hour race in 1923. One recalls also the superb little 1100 c.c. “tanks” of 1925 which did so well in sports car racing. By the mid-Thirties the Gennevilliers company was producing a very complex range of cars with too small an output. This Super Aigle 24 is one of a family of cars with an advanced specification: front wheel drive, independent front suspension by torsion bars and the option of a Cotal gearbox even if the 4-cylinder 2.5-litre engine still had side-valves. It did little to help save the company!

Lancia Lambda Spider Mille Miglia

Lancia Lambda Spider Mille Miglia

The Lancia Lambda, introduced at the 1922 Paris Salon, must go down in history as one of the landmark designs with its monocoque chassis, narrow V-4 engine and sliding pillar independent front suspension. Vincenzo Lancia did not see this innovative design as a candidate for competitions but made an exception for the Mille Miglia.

Lancia Lambda Spider Mille Miglia

From 1927 Lancia made a series of “Da Corsa” versions destined for the Italian 1,000 mile race. Crewed by Strazza/Varallo this car finished 4th overall and first in the 3-litre class in the 1929 Mille Miglia. It also helped Lancia to win the Coupe du Roi in that year’s Spa 24 Hour race.

Fiat 1500

Fiat 1500

Entered by Jean Brault at Le Mans in 1950 for himself and Louis Paimpol, this Fiat 1500 with special roadster bodywork was forced to retire in the 11th hour with gearbox problems. Jean Brault then ran the car in the Sports Car race that constituted the main event at the inaugural meeting of the Rouen-les Essarts circuit on 30th July  1950. Out of  twenty starters the car finished 17th.

Fiat 1500

This Fiat has sometimes been credited with having a V- engine but in fact it used the normal Fiat 1500 6-cylinder unit. Here’s the proof, thanks to the helpful folks on the stand.

TAILPIECE

What, pray, is this?

Trippel Type SG6/38

It is a Trippel Type SG6/38 built in 1941 with a 6-cylinder Opel engine, one of Hans Trippel’s amphibious creations. I have only included it because it was made in the German-occupied Bugatti works at Molsheim – triste dictu.

David Blumlein February 2012.

Our Friends in the North

The 2012 season stutters into life, while racing is almost impossible in the prevailing inclement conditions, there are always The Shows to visit. So the end of January and the arrival of February heralds two of the best, Retromobile and the Bremen Classic. More from Paris in due course, but in a recent visit to the Hanseatic City of Bremen our Special Correspondent has once more unearthed some ‘Rare and Interesting’ cars for our edification.

1955 Lloyd LP 400S

Appropriately, the Bremen Classic Car Show reflected something of the history of the north German car industry. Bremen itself was the centre of the Borgward empire but it was also the home of the Focke-Wulf aircraft factories, whose potent FW 190 fighter caused all manner of problems to the Allied air forces. Thus did Bremen invite much attention in World War Two from the Royal Air Force and Eighth Air Force bombers and by the end of the conflict the Borgward factories, which had been producing military vehicles, were about 80% destroyed. Yet the energetic Carl F.W. Borgward was to turn out Germany’s first all-new post-war production car, the Hansa 1500, and he was to achieve much success in the Fifties with his Lloyd, Goliath and Borgward vehicles. But , like so many of his ilk, the dynamic leader was not so good at the accounting and his world collapsed in 1961, partly because he was not making enough cars to be competitive and therefore profitable and because his ambitious plans for the Borgward Kolibri helicopter, designed by Professor Heinrich Focke, somewhat drained the funds!

The Borgward works were eventually sold to Hanomag who, by this time, were producing light commercials rather than cars and when Hanomag itself was swallowed by Daimler-Benz in 1971 we find the Sebaldsbrϋck factory, greatly extended, turning out Mercédès cars still today.

Bremen, in conjunction with Bremerhaven, possesses after Hamburg the largest harbour in Germany, and its most important activity is handling containers and motor vehicles. Each year more than a million containers pass through the terminal and the harbour is Europe’s leading port for the turnaround of cars – more than a million pass through the docks annually. Huge freight trains of container wagons and car transporter wagons can be seen plying incessantly night and day through Bremen’s Hauptbahnhof – Bremen is still very much involved with the motor car!

1955 Lloyd LP 400S

The Lloyd was a small car built to cater for the bubble car boom, the Lloyd Motoren Werke Gmbh of Bremen being part of the Borgward Group. Initially it had a 293 c.c. 2-cylinder 2-stroke 10 b.h.p. motor and the car had a wooden frame covered in leatherette. In 1953 the engine was enlarged to 386 c.c. and in 1954 steel bodies were used. They were very successful, 45,000 being sold in 1955.

1939 Adler Trumpf Junior

Adler (German for “Eagle”) hailed from Frankfurt am Main and by 1930 they were Germany’s third best selling car behind Opel and BMW. In 1930 the directors decided to move towards a more popular market and appointed Hans Gustav Röhr, who had just left his eponymous company, as designer. He came up with the most famous Adler of all, the 1.5-litre Trumpf which appeared at the 1932 Geneva Show. It had front-wheel drive , a 4-cylinder side-valve engine, all independent suspension and an all-steel body by Ambi-Budd of Berlin. It was, along with the 995 c.c. Trumpf Junior, a great success, 128,443 being made by 1939. It had much success in competitions (including Le Mans) and was built under licence by the Belgian firm Imperia of Nessonvaux and in France by Rosengart.

1966 Glas 1700GT

The Glas company started out by making farm machinery but in 1951 they produced a motor scooter, the Goggo. The firm is remembered best for the little 2-stroke economy car, the Goggomobil, which appeared in 1955 and which lasted until 1965. More conventional cars with 4-stroke engines gradually took over and the 1962 Glas 1004 was the first car ever to use a belt-driven camshaft. The 1300GT and 1700GT were styled by Pietro Frua  and were made from 1963-67.

1966 Glas 1700GT

Glas cars were good but had to compete with BMW and Porsche; they also made too many different models to be commercially successful – only the Goggomobil made a profit. BMW bought Glas in 1966 and adapted some models for a while – the GTs became the 1600GT with a BMW engine before being phased out in 1968. The Dingolfing factory was given entirely new production facilities and produces 5, 6, 7 series BMWs and bodies for Rolls-Royce. Glas cars did well in competitions, the 1204TS winning the Coupe du Roi at the 1964 Spa 24 Hour race.

1935 D.K.W.-Jawa

 

This is one of only 200 or so D.K.W.s with special bodywork by the Czechoslovakian manufacturer Jawa in Prague.

1935 D.K.W.-Jawa

It is an appropriate collaboration because Jawa turned to the impressive D.K.W. 2-stroke mechanicals as inspiration for their own designs (as did Saab).

1949 Tempo Hanseat

In the austere years after the war, Tempo 3-wheeled light commercials were to be seen everywhere in Germany, rugged single or 2-cylinder front-drive workhorses, usually with ILO 2-stroke engines. Car versions were made in small quantities but this 396 c.c. example is typical of the Hamburg company’s products.
Eventually Hanomag took over and then Daimler-Benz. Tempo made an interesting twin-engined military car, the G 1200, which was used by the Wehrmacht and armies of several other countries.

1935 Opel 1.2-litre

In 1931 the Opel 1.2-litre, styled like a Fiat, replaced their 4/20 model and it became Opel’s biggest seller by far between 1931-35. It was in turn replaced by the P4 briefly and then by the more familiar unit-construction Olympia and Kadett models.

David Blumlein, February 2012

Treasures from Italy

Italy as a state celebrated its 150th birthday in 2011. As part of the festivities the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile was rebuilt and reopened in Torino. Motorcars are as much a part of the true spirit of Italians as pasta and opera, a world without the automotive art of Italy would be a poorer place. So late in the year our Special Correspondent paid a visit to the collection, one or two rare treasures caught his eye.

1908 Brixia-Zϋst 10 h.p.

Founder Robert Zϋst, of Swiss origin, had a precision tool manufacturing plant at Intra on Lake Maggiore. At the turn of the century the company experimented with prototype cars and in 1905 the Zϋst company was founded in Milan to make cars and commercial vehicles. Initially expensive large cars were produced but a branch was set up in Brescia to make lower-priced smaller cars under the name Brixia-Zϋst – Brixia is the Latin for Brescia.

This splendid example has a monobloc 3-cylinder engine of 1386 c.c. The company was taken over in 1917 by O.M. (Officine Meccaniche). Production of the bigger S305 was continued until O.M. introduced their own designs, one of which won the first Mille Miglia in 1927.

De Dion rear axle

Here can be clearly seen the layout of the famous de Dion  suspension arrangement mounted on one of the company’s very popular runabouts. The de Dion tube is attached to the two rear uprights, helping to keep the wheels vertical (and thus more in contact with the ground) as the suspension rises and falls.

The arrangement became universally popular on racing machines from the Thirties onwards and production cars occasionally adopted the design also e.g. the Rover 2000 (P6) and the Smart City car. Interestingly de Dion themselves abandoned it for their own production cars from 1911!

1925 Diatto Tipo 30

Diatto was a carriage building firm dating from 1835 which gradually diversified into railway engineering and iron founding. Come the 20th century the company turned to cars and, during the First World War, aero engines including Bugatti’s 8-cylinder under licence. In 1922 the Tipo 20 2-litre overhead camshaft 4-cylinder car was marketed and from this evolved the Tipo 30, one which finished 11th in the 1925 Le Mans 24-Hour race.

Diatto built a number of Bugatti Brescia cars under licence and their straight-8 racing design was taken over by the Maserati brothers as the basis for their own Tipo 26.

1947 Cisitalia 202 SMM Nuvolari

Piero Dusio made his fortune through his textile business which specialised in oil cloth, sporting goods and military uniforms. He was no mean racing driver either, having finished third in the 1938 Mille Miglia driving the previous year’s winning Alfa Romeo. He set up the Corsorzio Industriale Sportiva Italia, Cisitalia, in 1944 to produce some exquisitely styled sporting coupés and spyders with Pinin Farina bodies. They were the work of Dante Giacosa (father of the Fiat Topolino), Giovanni Savonuzzi and Piero Taruffi and were based on the 1100 Fiat o.h.v. 4-cylinder engine. There was a multi-tubular chassis of chrome-molybdenum tubing, transverse-leaf independent front suspension and a rigid rear axle on coil springs and quarter-elliptics which served as radius arms.

1947 Cisitalia 202 SMM Nuvolari

This spyder was one of five entries for the 1947 Mille Miglia and almost provided the great Italian driver Tazio Nuvolari with his second Mille Miglia win. Dusio’s over-ambitious commission of a Porsche-designed flat-12 four-wheel-drive Grand Prix car caused the money to run out and Dusio moved to Argentina in 1949.

Chassis of the 1935 Fiat 1500

Fiats are often thought of as straightforward run-of-the-mill cars but from time to time this company has come up with some special designs – the 8V for example. There was inspired thinking behind the new 6-cylinder 1500 introduced at the 1935 Milan Show. This replaced the mundane Tipo 514 and was a breath of fresh air: aerodynamic bodywork, tubular backbone chassis and independent front suspension, a first for Fiat. It became a rival for the outstanding Lancia Aprilia in the late Thirties.

David Blumlein, February 2012

Speed Merchants

The few of you who read this blog regularly will know of my enthusiasm for the work of Michael Keyser. Aside from anything else he has the good taste to purchase images from me. Michael had a pretty handy record as a driver, including an outright win at Sebring, he has published many works which capture the essence of endurance racing in the early 70’s. So as the Sun is on its way towards Daytona Beach to herald another 24 Hour race, it is perhaps appropriate to look back to 1970 with the aid of his pictures.

1970 saw a brilliant, if brief, struggle between Porsche and Ferrari with the 917 and 512. The first encounter of the year was on the banking in Volusia County. Five Ferrari 512 entries took on two Gulf JWA 917s, add to this two NART Ferrari 312P coupés, two Matras, another 917 from Porsche Salzburg, and let’s not forget the Volvo 122S. I somehow doubt that in 42 years time the contemporary grid will inspire as much affection or interest………..

Much is made this year of the line up of driver talent that will be on display at the 2012 Rolex 24 and rightly so. However I think that the crop in 1970 was every bit as good, if not better………in no particular order.

Pedro Rodriguez/Nino Vaccarella/Jacky Ickx/Mark Donohue/Peter Revson/Vic Elford/Gijs van Lennep/Dan Gurney/Jean-Pierre Beltoise/Henri Pescarolo/Francois Cevert/Jack Brabham/Jo Siffert/Brian Redman/Mario Andretti/Arturo Merzario to name but a few……….F1 World Champions, Grand Prix Winners, Le Mans Victors, Indy 500 Champs…………what a line up

The race was a triumph for the Rodriguez/Kinnunen/Redman Gulf Porsche who had a winning margin of 45 laps. The crowd were kept entertained by a right old dust up for second place with the Siffert/Redman 917 just shading the 512 of Andretti/Merzario. Gianpiero Moretti made his Daytona race debut and had to wait another 28 years to win the race he coveted above all others. As if to reinforce the cosmopolitan nature of the event a Ferrari 250LM, at least 5 or 6 years old at that point, finished seventh overall and the Volvo retired.

One thing is certain, the 2012 race will be much closer…………….

All the images are courtesy and copyright of Michael Keyser and more can be seen HERE

John Brooks January 2012


Daytona Cobra Coupés

King Cobras

There will be much talk in the next week, especially from the PR flacks, about the 50th Anniversary of the Rolex 24 Hours. Well back in the 60’s Rolex did not sponsor the event and the race was only extended to 24 Hours in 1966, but hey why get in the way of a good headline? Plus it gives the Good Ol’ Boys down on International Speedway Boulevard an excuse to repeat the celebrations in four years and who wants to be a party pooper?

In 1965 the sportscar endurance event held at Daytona International Speedway was over a distance of 2,000 kilometres or 327 laps. It took over 12 hours for the winner, a Ford GT40 driven by Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby, to complete the distance.

In 1965 the real success story for the Ford steamroller was that of the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupés on their way to the FIA GT Manufacturer’s Championship. The opening salvo in that campaign was at Daytona and here are the four cars on the opening lap, flying in formation. #13 (CSX 2299) would finish second overall and top of the GT class with Jo Schlesser and Hal Keck on driving duties. This car was perhaps the most successful Daytona Cobra of them all, with class wins at Le Mans, Goodwood, Sebring and Oulton Park to add to the win on the banking in Florida.

John Brooks January 2012