Tag Archives: Fantuzzi

Ditching The Iron Block – Maserati 200S #2408

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In 1952 Giulio Alfieri led the development of the Maserati Type 52, which would become known as the Maserati 200S, that was to replace the iron block A6GCS sports racing cars.

Maserati 200S, Silverstone Classic

The new alloy block 2 litre / 122 cui 4 cylinder motor featured 2 valves per cylinder actuated by two overhead camshafts.

Maserati 200S, Silverstone Classic

The chassis frame shared many components with the Maserati 150S and the rear axle was inherited from the A6GCS. The first three 200S frames were manufactured in house while 25 more were outsourced to Gilco.

Maserati 200S, Silverstone Classic

The first five 200S aluminium bodies were fabricated by Celestino Fiandri with the remainder, as seen on today’s featured chassis #2408 by Fantuzzi.

Maserati 200S, Silverstone Classic

Chassis #2408 was sold in September 1956 to Brazilian Severino Silva who is known to have raced Maserati sports cars on at least two occasions bookending 1957.

Maserati 200S, Silverstone Classic

In December 1957 Severino entered his car, for himself and Italian Corrado Manfredini to drive in the Sao Palo Grand Prix. Severino and Corrado finished 6th after starting from 10th place on the grid in this vehicles only known in period competitive event.

I believe Roger Lucas has been the owner of #2408 since 2006 during which period he briefly had it painted red, but by 2009 it was carrying it’s Brazilian colours again.

Thanks for joining me on this “Ditching The Iron Block” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again, for a look at a Bugatti tomorrow. Don’t for get to come back now !

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Fantuzzi Short Nose – Maserati A6GCS #2093

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The Maserati A6GCS was in it’s final year of production when today’s chassis #2093 is said to have been delivered to (Silvia?) Candini and (Francisco?) Landi in April 1955.

Maserati A6GCS, Hüni / Pearson, RAC Woodcote Trophy, Silverstone Classic

I’ve been unable to find any competition history for #2093 which is not the same thing as asserting that it never competed in any event in period.

Maserati A6GCS, Hüni / Stippler, Freddie March Memorial Trophy, Goodwood Revival

In fact the only information I have found on Francisco Landi is that he raced a Maserati 250F open wheel car to a 4th place finish with Gerino Gerini in the 1956 Argentinian Grand Prix.

Maserati A6GCS, Hüni / Stippler, Freddie March Memorial Trophy, Goodwood Revival

Since 2002 Lukas Hüni has been the owner of #2093 and he shared the car in the top and bottom photo’s at Silverstone with Gary Pearson in the RAC Woodcote Trophy at the Silverstone Classic in 2011…

Maserati A6GCS, Hüni / Stippler, Freddie March Memorial Trophy, Goodwood Revival

and with Frank Stippler in the Freddie March Memorial Trophy run in the evening at the 2012 Goodwood Revival.

Maserati A6GCS, Huni Pearson, RAC Woodcote Trophy, Silverstone Classic

Note that Medardo Fantuzzi produced aluminium bodies for the A6GCS in short form as seen here and a slightly more aerodynamic long form.

Thanks for joining me on this “Fantuzzi Short Nose” edition of Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I shall be looking at a Bugatti. Don’t forget to come back now !

08/09/14 PS Tim Murray has kindly informed me that Fransisco Landi was a Brazilian driver best known for winning the 1948 non Championship Bari Grand Prix driving a Ferrari.

Tim also wonders if the name of the other original owner is Sebastiao Casini and not Candini as I have been led to believe. If you can help solve this mystery please do not hesitate to chime in below or e-mail me.

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Alfieri Ghisa Corsa Monoposto – Maserati A6GCM #2033

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Between 1951 and 1953 Maserati built 12 A6GCM’s (Alfieri, 6 Cylinder, Ghisa – Iron Block, Corsa – Racing, Monoposto – Single seaters).

Maserati A6CGM, Silverstone Classic

The 2 litre / 122 cui twin cam motors were initially developed by Alberto Massimino and Vittorio Bellentani to produce 160hp and by 1953 with further development by Gioacchino Colombo the motors are said to have produced 197hp.

Maserati A6CGM, Silverstone Classic

The chassis design featuring a rigid rear axle with leaf springs, coil springs for the independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes is credited to Medardo Fantuzzi.

Maserati A6CGM, Silverstone Classic

It would appear two chassis were given the number #2033, both of which are extent today. The first appears to have been a recycled ’49 single seater chassis while the second, today’s featured car seen with Julia de Baldanza at the wheel, was built fresh from the ground up in 1951.

Maserati A6CGM, Silverstone Classic

At least two of the later 1953 A6GCM’s were turned into 250F types in 1954, so there is nothing unusual, in the somewhat chaotic Maserati scheme of things, for two cars to have received the same chassis identity.

Maserati A6CGM, de Baldanza, Silverstone Classic

Both cars bearing the #2033 identity appear to have been used by the works Officine Alfieri Maserati team but the individual histories, unsurprisingly, appear to be not so well documented.

Maserati A6CGM, Silverstone Classic

Of the 151 races in which the A6GCM type is known to have participated 6 victories were recorded of which one, the 1953 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, was a World Championship event won by Juan Manuel Fangio 12 months after he had broken his neck at the same venue.

Juan’s Italian Grand Prix win was the only victory in a world championship event against the hitherto dominant Ferrari 500’s driven by Alberto Ascari, Piero Taruffi, Mike Hawthorn and Giuseppe Farina.

Thanks for joining me on this “Alfieri Ghisa Corsa Monoposto” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at a Bugatti. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Brock’s Fantuzzi Body – de Tomaso Sports 5000 #P70-001

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In 1965 Alejandro de Tomaso turned his attention to building a run of 50 sports racing cars, to be known as the Sport 5000 using the central backbone chassis architecture of his Vallelunga road car as a starting point.

de Tomaso Sport 5000, Modena

Photo Courtesy Bill Noon / Symbolic International.

He replaced the 100 hp 4 cylinder Ford Kent motor used in the road car with a 475 hp 4.7 litre / 289 Ford V8 sourced from Carroll Shelby of the type developed for the Cobra sports racing cars.

de Tomaso Sport 5000, Modena

Photo Courtesy Bill Noon / Symbolic International.

The open top aluminium body work was designed by Pete Brock, who was responsible for designing the Cobra Coupé bodywork for Carroll Shelby, a year earlier and crafted by Fantuzzi.

de Tomaso Sport 5000

Photo Courtesy Bill Noon / Symbolic International.

The cars first public appearances, with rear wheels covered, were in the 1965 Turin Motor Show and 1966 Modena Racing Car Show. Around this time Ghia had stepped in with some financial assistance and the car was known as the Ghia de Tomaso. In March 1966 Pierre Noblet, Franco Bernabei, Umberto Maglioli were entered to drive the car in the Sebring 12 Hours, but it failed to show up.

de Tomaso Sport 5000

Photo Courtesy Bill Noon / Symbolic International.

The Sport 5000 entry for the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours was refused by organisers Automobile Club de l’Ouest, but in July 1966 Roberto Bussinello drove the Sport 5000, on it’s competition debut, in the Cuircuito del Mugello road race where the car retired on the opening, 66 km, lap.

Palm Springs Concours d'Elegance

The only Sport 5000 built at de Tomaso’s Modena factory would never race again, by this time Shelby had turned his attentions to the Ford GT40 programme and production of the Sport 5000 was put on indefinite ice.

Pete Brock used elements of the Sport 5000 design including the adjustable rear wing, in the Suzuki Hino race car, while de Tomaso used the strengthend chassis design in the Ford 289 and later 302 cui V8 powered de Tomaso Mangusta.

The unique Sport 5000, a contemporary of the Ford GT40 and Ferrari P3, did not surface again until after Alejandro de Tomaso died in 2004. In 2006 a second car was built known as a 70P using the original cars panels as a template for the copy.

Earlier this year the de Tomaso Sport 5000, which is now being offered for sale by Bill Noon’s Symbolic International, was seen, above, by Geoffrey Horton at Palm Springs Concours d’Elegance.

My thanks to Bill Noon at Symbolic International for sharing his photographs of the Sport 5000 and to Geoffrey Horton for sharing his photograph too !

Thanks for joining me on this “Brock’s Fantuzzi Body” edition of Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at an American project that took Jaguar back to Le Mans in the mid 1980’s. Don’t forget to come back now !

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From The Mystery Batch – Ferrari 196 S

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Early in the morning just after I arrived in the car park at the Goodwood Revival a couple of weeks ago I heard the low rev rumble of what was obviously a highly strung racing car, I looked over my shoulder to see a bright red car that looked like a Ferrari, sounded like a Ferrari and even smelled like a Ferrari right behind me. A while later I caught up with the car and mindful of keeping a stock of photo’s of Ferrari’s for Ferrari Fridays here at GALPOT I happily snapped away not entirely sure of what it was I was looking at.

It certainly looked like something from the late 1950’s, an HPI (like Carfax) check of the registration revealed that this car was built in 1958 and had a 2417 cc 147 cui engine an engine size I’d normally associate with a 246 Dino V6 from the early 1970’s.

Yet the car looked like a 12 cylinder Testa Rossa. Searching through Google images I came across another photo of what appears to be the same car labelled as a 1958 Ferrari 196S Fantuzzi Spyder.

I had a look at Barchetta website to see if I could identify the chassis number but could find no 196S model for 1958. There are however two 246S models listed for 1959 and 1960 the first chassis #0776TR owned by Sir Antony Bamford appears to also be known as a 196S, which looks similar to today’s featured car, but has a prominent additional scoop on the drivers side of the bonnet along with a perspex scoop for the carburetors.

The second 246S listed on the Barchetta site is chassis #0784 which I looked at a couple of weeks ago. Having drawn a blank as to which car 415 UXY was I tried asking at Ferrari Chat and was surprised to learn from Ed Niles and tx246 that this car is one of a batch of 12 196S replicas built more or less from scratch possibly in Modena possibly by ‘”Old Timers” that worked for Fantuzzi. Due to risk of these people losing their pensions, they work in secret.’

Searching ‘Ferrari 196S Replica’ in Google revealed two more cars from this mystery batch of around 12 which appear to have been built in the 1990’s, one yellow and one red the latter lists the name of the first owners as Mecanic – Import a specialist vehicle dealer in Belgium whom I have tried to contact and asked for more details about the ‘”Old Timers” that worked for Fantuzzi’ as of the time of writing I have had no reply.

My thanks to Ed Niles and tx246 at Ferrari Chat for their help unraveling today’s mystery car.

Thanks for joining me on the trail for another carcaeoloy hunt, I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at a Lotus open wheeler. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Private Investigations – Maserati 300S #3053

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Thanks to Ed Arnaudin’s superb photography we can have a look at the Maserati 300S at Lime Rock on May 9th 1959 that was raced by Joe Guibardo in Northeastern America during the 1959 season.

Just 28 Maserati 300S models were built from 1955 to 1958 to compete in the World Sportscar Championship. Thanks to contributions from Sir Stirling Moss the 300S is credited with three World Sports Car Championship victories two of them on the 14 mile Nurburgring in ’56 and ’57 along with many other wins in national races in Europe and the United States. In fact as with the the Ferrari 860 Monza we looked at yesterday Juan Manuel Fangio also drove a Maserati 300S to victory this time on two occasions in Brazil in 1957.

The 300S was powered by a 3 litre / 183 cui variation, with a lengthened stroke, of the 6 cylinder motor that was used simultaneously in the Maserati 250 F with a lower compression ratio to cope with the most commonly available fuel as stipulated in Sports Car regulations of the time. The drum brakes and stiffened suspension also show strong signs of 250 F heritage.

A trellis structured chassis was covered in an aluminium body penned by Madardo Fantuzzi who was also responsible for the second version of the Maserati 150S.

Perhaps the most incredible of Maserati 300S stories is that a 300S was raced against both a Porsche 908 and 910 in Brazil as late as 1971 ! Unfortunately we do not know the end result for the Maserati in that race but even so I hope you’ll agree a quite remarkable achievement just to enter a 15 year old design into a contemporary sports car race.

Slightly of topic regular GALPOT readers who really pay attention may recognise the name of the 5th place driver at Interlagos Antônio Carlos Avallone.

Allegedly Mark Knopfler is a long term Maserati 300S Owner.

Joseph Giubardo appears to have raced in Austin Healeys and MGs from 1954 to 1962 and used this 300S chassis #3053 from at least 1957 to 1959 scoring at least one class win at Thompson CT in 1957.

My thanks as ever to the Arnaudins for taking and sending the photograph and to Walter Baemer of International Maserati Research for identifying who this vehicle belonged to.

I hope you have enjoyed today’s Dire Straights edition of “Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres” and that you will join me again tomorrow for a look at a gargantuan Edwardian from the USA that recorded the first international race victory for an American driver. Don’t for get to come back now !

PS Slightly off topic but continuing the private investigation in to this photo graph wonderng if anybody recognises either the kid in front of, or the owner and hound in the, 1950 Cadillac Series 61 Sedan ? Thanking you in anticipation of your responses.

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Sweet and predictable – #43 Maserati 150 S #1643

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Thanks to again to Ed Arnaudin for today’s photograph of a Maserati 150 S owned by EF Spicer seen here at Thompson CT 20th July 1958.

7 43 27s

By the time the smallest ever Maserati, the 150S, was built in 1955 the Maserati brothers were long gone from the company bearing their name working on their new OSCA vehicles.

The popularity of the 1500 cc / 91.5 CUI sports car class racing led Maserati to fill the gap in the lower end of their range with this vehicle.

Following Ferrari who in turn was inspired by the fuel efficient advantages of an HWM four cylinder Alta engine, Vittorio Bellanti also ditched the prevalent smooth 6 cylinder engine architecture in favour of a new 4 cylinder alloy block, dry sump lubricated engine featuring hemispherical combustion chambers, double overhead cams and twin plug ignition which produced 140 hp at 7,500 rpm.

Valerio Colotti designed the chassis with independent front and de Dion rear suspension originally covered in a 300S derived body by Celestino Fiandri in 1955.

For 1956 the slightly less derivative body seen here was designed by Medardo Fantuzzi. Stirling Moss drove one of the factory entered 150 S’s in a sports car race to second place on the Nurburgring in 1956 beaten by margin of ‘just’ 3 seconds over 100 miles by Hans Hermann in a Porsche 550 A.

Stirling is alleged to have said of the 150 S that it was ” sweet-handling and predictable but overbodied and gutless.”

EF (Edward Farnham) Spicer drove the #43 in the photo to 9th place in the final all comers race on July 20th, 8 spots behind the winning Porsche 550 of Newton Davis.

My thanks and best wishes to Ed Arnaudin and his son Steve for todays photograph, Jerry Entin for vehicle identification and Terry O’Neil for the results.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s sweet & predictable edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil psycho on tyres’ and that you’ll join me again tomorrow, don’t forget to come back now !

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