Bizzarini 5300 Strada

Italian men of the last century had an astonishing ability to build sports cars by the sheer force of their egos. Enzo Ferrari and Ferruccio Lamborghini are two names that clearly fit this bill, and one lesser known but no less influential name is Giotto Bizzarini. This tough-talking Tuscan blazed a trail through the Italian Gran Turismo scene that left tires smoking through the 1960s and collectors grinning clear through to the new millennium.

Bizzarrini was born in the small coastal town of Quercianella near Livorno in Tuscany in 1926. Descended from a long line of engineers, young Giotto took on the family trade but only after a wild youth spent largely in the forest, hunting and fishing as World War II raged around him. He developed a fierce independence and survivalist mentality that, coupled with the typically Tuscan tendency toward blunt speech and sometimes tactless sarcasm, made him a formidable presence in the workplace.

To complete his degree in engineering at the University of Pisa, Bizzarrini built an entire car as his thesis (see sidebar). After a short stint as a teacher, that running resume netted him a job at Alfa Romeo as test driver in its experimental department. With his engineering background, his ability to hear, feel and sense problems before they blew up or damaged other parts of the prototypes earned him immediate respect and advancement.

But Bizzarrini had only been at Alfa for a few years when he heard that one of Ferrari's test drivers had unexpectedly died, leaving an opening. Ferrari, too, preferred engineer-drivers, and thanks to a cousin who knew the brother of Ferrari's operations director, young Giotto got an interview. Ferrari hired him in February 1957. He rose quickly through the ranks; by 1958 he was made head of Controlling and Testing for Production and soon after rose to Controller of Experimental, Sports and GT Car Development.

At Ferrari, Bizzarrini's greatest challenge arose as a direct response to the 1961 debut of the impressive Jaguar E-Type. Ferrari wanted a new car that would beat it, and he wanted it fast. This would be the first Ferrari to be designed and built--from engine through to the final body--entirely within the experimental department. Ferrari wanted the project kept secret, so Bizzarrini hand-picked four trustworthy engineers and immediately tackled the project, using the Ferrari 250 Short Wheel Base as the starting point. The result of their efforts would be the 250 GTO, Ferrari's last great front-engined racer.

However, Bizzarrini would not be there to celebrate the GTO's completion. In November 1961, Bizzarrini and several colleagues would leave Ferrari in the famous "Walkout" precipitated by Ferrari's impetuous firing of the popular commercial manager Gardini. Almost immediately, racing aristocrat Count Volpi of Scuderia Serenissima hired the four top ex-Ferrari engineers to create the new ATS, envisioned as a Ferrari-beating GT. However, personalities and politics caused Bizzarrini to leave that company after incorporation but before the new car was built.

At the same time, an invitation had come from another new car manufacturer, Iso. Milan industrialist Renzo Rivolta--holder of another formidable ego--had turned the former refrigerator manufacturer into a successful motorcycle and small-car company (creating the tiny one-cylinder car that was licensed to BMW as the Isetta). Renzo had grand plans to build a luxury GT, and earlier collaboration with the Briton John Gordon resulted in a prototype called the Gordon GT. This was the car Rivolta asked Bizzarrini to test drive (it would later be known as the Gordon Keeble).

Though Bizzarrini found much to dislike, one thing he absolutely adored was the car's motor--a Corvette 327 V8. As Bizzarrini later told author Winston Goodfellow, "It was my first time driving one, and I was shocked. It was superior to Ferrari's engines, offering the same power with more immediate throttle response. I remember telling Mr. Rivolta that it was fantastic, and that the Gordon had more acceleration than the Ferraris of the era."

Thanks to Bizzarrini's assessment, Rivolta decided not to pursue the Gordon but to instead start from scratch with his own, self-named GT powered by the same Corvette engine. Rivolta hired Bizzarrini to bring the car to life, and the first step was building the chassis. Bizzarrini, coming from Ferrari, argued for a spaceframe tube chassis, but Rivolta insisted that his car would be mass-produced and therefore would need a stamped steel platform and monocoque chassis. Rivolta won that argument, but Bizzarrini's insightful engineering helped produce a complex but very efficient platform that was not only easier to mass produce but substantially increased the car's rigidity without increasing its weight.

By the time the Rivolta GT's first two prototypes and first production car were thoroughly tested, Bizzarrini had his own consultancy office back home in Livorno, incorporated under the name Autostar. It was February 1963 when the Rivolta contract ended, so new jobs came from Campagnolo converting drum brakes to the company's new disc brakes, and from another upstart GT manufacturer, ASA. Bizzarrini brought the "Ferrarina" or "baby Ferrari" to life as the ASA 1000 GT.

His next contract came from the bull-master of Sant'Agata, Ferruccio Lambor-ghini. Lamborghini's grand plan was to build the perfect V12, and he engaged Bizzarrini to design it for him. Lamborghini's requirements were simple: a minimum of three liters and 350 horsepower; as a spur to more power, Bizzarini was to be paid extra for every additional hp he could crank out of his new engine. Within four months, Giotto presented Ferruccio with a 3.5-liter all-aluminum double-overhead-cam engine, with six vertical double-barrel Webers and 9.5:1 compression. Horsepower came to 360-370 at 8000 to 9000 rpm (depending on who measured). Ferruccio was satisfied, Bizzarrini was well paid, and this engine became the basis of all subsequent Lamborghinis.

It wasn't long after Bizzarrini signed off with Iso that he was called back, this time to produce a berlinetta (fastback coupe) to be called the A3. Renzo Rivolta wanted a luxurious street car, but Bizzarrini wanted to build a full racer. Giotto ended up having his cake and eating it too, as he worked with Rivolta's chief engineer, Nuccio Bertone and his chief designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, to perfect the body and engine design of Rivolta's A3/L at the same time that he built his own A3/C (C for competition or corsa). Rivolta had given Bizzarrini an A3 chassis that he took home to Livorno, and he was basically free to do with it whatever he wanted. Both cars were completed in a miraculously short amount of time, ready to appear side by side at the October 1963 Turin Auto Show. Bizzarrini's was the rougher of the two, not just because it was a race car; there hadn't been time to paint it, so Bizzarrini had one of his men etch swirls onto the raw aluminum body.

Bertone's luxurious A3/L version, named the Iso Grifo, was the hit of the show (and a major feather in young Giugiaro's cap), but Bizzarrini's raw offering struck a chord, too. Inside that powerful but stark body was the 365-bhp Corvette V8, pushed back so far toward the center of the car that it came into the driver's compartment; in fact, to reach the distributor, you had to pull a flap up on the dashboard! The wheelbase was shortened (from 2700mm to 2450mm), and the A3/L's 22-gal. fuel tank was discarded in favor of three interconnected smaller tanks--one on each side of the car and the third right behind the two seats (total capacity came to 37 gal.). The result was the first true "front mid-engine" car and an extraordinarily well-balanced one, with weight distribution 50.5 percent in front and 49.5 percent in the rear--virtually 50-50.

For the engine Bizzarrini designed a special manifold that pulled a pipe from each cylinder into a "bundle of snakes" that were then gathered into two and run all the way out to the rear as exhaust pipes. With four Weber 45 DCOE twin-throat horizontal carburetors, Bizzarrini claimed the engine put out 405 bhp at 5400 rpm.

The body, much lighter than the A3/L, was similarly shaped, except that the windshield had a more distinctive rake, sloped at almost the same angle as the engine hood. Like all racers, the interior was spartan, especially compared to the luxuriously trimmed A3/L. The first A3/C body, built by Piero Drogo of Sports Cars Modena, hosted some 7,000 rivets as insurance that the welds would hold. With a Borg-Warner T-10 4-speed transmission and suspension identical to the A3/L's (independent in front and the deDion system out back), the car attracted enough attention to convince Rivolta to put it into limited production. Rivolta even supported the car's first racing efforts, which included a first in the over-5000cc class at the 1964 Le Mans 24 Hours. The car returned to Le Mans in 1965, but this time Bizzarrini was largely on his own; Iso provided chassis, parts and only limited support. The car again won its class, but by the end of August that year, Iso ended its association with Bizzarrini.

Giotto was not about to abandon the car he considered a "second generation Ferrari GTO." He continued to build the cars out of his Livorno workshops, calling them "Bizzarrini Grifos" until he agreed to allow Iso exclusive use of the Grifo name in late 1965. From then on these cars became known as "Stradas" or "GT Americas," and a 1967 "Strada 5300" (in honor of the displacement of the Corvette engine) is the car featured here.

Twenty-five years later, when interviewed by an Italian magazine, Bizzarrini described the Strada as "his dearest creation." This car is also very dear to its current owner, Ron Spindler of Van Nuys, Calif. Ron heard about Bizzarrinis before he ever saw one. "It was probably 1981 or '82," he explained, "when a gentleman I knew said, 'I just saw the most beautiful car I've ever seen in my life. It's a Bizzarrini.' I had never heard of it, and later I looked it up but I couldn't really find out much about the car. Finally we were at the Santa Barbara Concours d'Elegance and I walked by a rather isolated car, and I gathered it was a Ferrari. But the closer I got it just didn't have the lines of a Ferrari; it had more body to it--more beef to it. I took three pictures of the car and went up to it, and it was a Bizzarrini and I said, 'Ah ha! now I understand.'"

Ron kept those pictures on his desk for years. "Every now and then I'd look at them and say 'Boy, that really is some car.'" Finally he saw an ad in Hemmings Motor News, and before long he was the proud owner of the Strada you see here. Once he had the car in his garage, he says, "I just looked at it; it is just such a gorgeous car."

The restoration took about two years, begun by stripping the car all the way down to the bottom. The car was invited to the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance based on a picture of the incomplete body, and the restoration wasn't finished until barely a week before the event. Though Ron had joined the Bizzarrini club and contacted several owners, there were a couple of tricky points in the restoration. "The weirdest thing was the side fins, those lower scoops," Ron explained. "According to all the authorities, they are supposed to face forward to capture air. But according to the metalwork on this car, we could not get them in forward facing. I had heard stories that they tried everything for this car because it was hot; your legs are under the exhaust pipes of the engine, the engine is right next to your knees, and I don't doubt that they tried these things forward, backward, any way they might be able to make it work. But we caved in to the established convention and cut a little metal away to get them in facing the forward direction."

Ron was right that heat was an issue with these cars. Those custom Bizzarrini heads were known for rattling and, by virtue of the engine's placement, for overheating the front brakes. Another problem was the distributor, which was so close to the firewall it occasionally suffered ignition and sparking problems. The Corvette engine also had to be reworked a bit--Italians liked high-revving engines and the 'Vette valves had a tendency to float above 5500 rpm. Worse, early models suffered cracked connecting rods, especially in Germany, thanks to prolonged high-speed driving on the autobahnen. Calls to GM for help were answered with a simple, "You Europeans drive too fast!" So Bizzarrini and Rivolta solved that problem by making their own specially reinforced rods.

Another tricky part of the restoration of Ron Spindler's car was the exhaust. "There was a fellow in northern California who said he had the last factory-original muffler exhaust pipe in existence. These were engraved and very special; they were an encased muffler. I took a lot of photos, and he was kind enough to do a pencil tracing to get the impression of all the lettering. So we fabricated the exact factory muffler, worked through polished stainless, had it engraved exactly like the factory. One of our judges at Pebble Beach looked at those exhaust pipes and said, 'Where did you get these?' I said, 'Well, I could tell you we got them from the factory, but in truth, we had to make them.' He said, 'I wouldn't dock you for that. That's fantastic.'" The car took first place in its class and was featured in the Pebble Beach Concours Parade of Elegance. That was 1998, and since then this Bizzarrini has won several more firsts and Best of Shows at concourses all over California.

The car was so nice, in fact, that Ron decided to buy a second one to drive. When journalists first had the opportunity to drive these cars back in the 1960s, the praise was nearly universal. Most agreed with writer Etienne Cornil, who wrote in the Sporting Motorist that "...we have never come across such disconcerting ease at such speeds...the car's stability seems incredible...at 150 mph one could easily leave hold of the steering wheel...there is no doubt that engineer Bizzarrini's creation merits high esteem among the fastest grand touring cars in the world."

Ron has nothing but praise for the Strada's driveability. "When you drive it and kind of push the steering wheel into the corner, it just takes you around the corner. After the first few, you're so comfortable, you'll take anything; you'll take any corner at any speed with no fear."

Only about 25 Iso Grifo A3/Cs were built before Bizzarrini took over in 1965, and something between 135 and 155 Bizzarrini Stradas and GT Americas (sources vary) were completed before Bizzarrini moved on to other things after 1969 (including work with Opel, GM and AMX, as well as a one-off supercar of his own design in 1991). The low numbers ensure that cars like Ron Spindler's Bizzarrini Strada--both the show car and the driver--will become ever more valuable as the new millennium rolls on. Reason enough to be thankful that at least a few of those 20th-century Italians were able to indulge their insatiable egos.

Bizzarrini 500 Coupe
Young Giotto Bizzarrini's college car at the University of Pisa was a step up from the average student's. The original Fiat 500--nicknamed "Topolino" (little mouse) both for its diminutive size and similarity to the cartoon car driven by Disney's Mickey--was the world's first "people's car"; the Topolino became available to the public in 1936, while both the Volkswagen and Citroen 2CV had to wait until after the war to reach the public.

The first series 500 A had run its course by the time Giotto came along, so he bought himself a 500 B. These Topolinos, introduced in 1948, were marginally better than the As; the tiny 569cc two-main-bearing engine now had overhead valves (instead of side valves) and 16.5 hp instead of the A's measly 13 hp. If you find it hard to believe the future creator of a 400hp Italo-American hybrid would settle for that kind of horsepower, you're right: Bizzarrini fitted his new B with a special cylinder head from Turin-based "hot-rodder" SIATA. He also bought the special barchetta body--the word means "little boat" and aptly describes the rounded silhouette that resulted when you chopped the top off the little Topolino sedan.

Even with these improvements, the car was fairly commonplace. Everybody who could afford it modified these bare bones automobiles--in fact, the list of fuoriserie (custom-built) Topolinos is so long it fills an entire book! But as Bizzarrini neared graduation, his little Topolino seemed the perfect palate for demonstrating his skills in automotive engineering.

First, he designed a closed coupe body using a tubular structure similar to that used on the fascinating new Ferrari coupes. His aerodynamic studies suggested that the "teardrop" slipped through air the best; thus the egg shape on this unique little coupe.

Bizzarrini tested his budding theory on engine placement in this car by removing the engine from the front (in the standard Topolino it rides over the front wheels) and pushing it back into the center of the frame, almost inside the passenger compartment.

For extra power Bizzarrini removed the tiny original carburetor and installed two Dell'Orto motorcycle-like twin carburetors. These were still too simple, though; Bizzarrini thus developed a "pneumatic injection" system that allowed the driver to enrich the fuel supply in the two carburetors by activating a pear-shaped push-button inside the cockpit.

The completed car, painted in its original light blue, no doubt impressed Bizzarrini's supervisors at Alfa Romeo. They let him run the little coupe on the company test track, where he pegged 155 km/h (about 95 mph), equal to the speeds posted by Alfa's own 1900 saloon! When Enzo Ferrari heard about Giotto Bizzarrini and the odd car he drove, he reportedly said, "Anyone crazy enough to drive such a strange car is surely fit for working in Maranello!"

Bizzarrini himself was pleased to learn of the car's resurrection and restoration in 1992. "I worked out this car according to the same principals I used with the Ferrari GTO and with the Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada," he said. "They all bear my technical signature."

Today, the car competes regularly in the Mille Miglia Storico, a tribute both to the versatility and diversity of Fiat 500-based automobiles and to the talents of one of Italy's greatest freelance engineers, Giotto Bizzarrini.