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The international charm of a city where contemporary architecture blends with the wonderful views of the lake and the surrounding peaks Words Alessandro Giudice Photography Alessandro Barteletti Video Andrea Ruggeri Swiss Grand Tour is a project to discover itineraries driving classic Alfa Romeo cars, in partnership with Astara, the distributor and importer of the Brand in Switzerland. Among all the Swiss cities, Lugano has a strong and special personality. Its proximity to Italy and the short distance that separates it from Milan have helped develop a lifestyle where a taste for beauty, particularly fashion and design, and cultural opportunities, expressed through a packed calendar of exhibitions and events, have made Lugano the most Mediterranean city in the Confederation, as well as a top financial centre. [click to watch the video] In the light of these considerations, we imagined an intense and “short but sweet” itinerary around Lugano and its lake to take in the scenery. Continuing our exploration of Ticino, which began in the hills of Malcantone, we set out from Figino, a small municipality on the banks of the Ceresio, the point of arrival of our first itinerary through the canton. And here we met Giovanni Poretti, Lugano-born legal expert and economist, who for the tour lent us one of the most valuable pieces in his Alfa Romeo collection: a shiny pastel grey 2600 Coupé Sprint with its long front, ideal for housing the straight-6 engine. All in all, a very classy car and sufficiently glamorous for visiting the sophisticated and picturesque locations along the route. Starting from Morcote, an authentic lakeside gem, we pass through the village following the road keeping the lake on our right. Here the spectacle of the arcades adorning the luxury villas along the lakeside invites us to stop, even just for a refreshing drink while admiring the view across the water, with the Mottarello, Cascolo and Grumello mountains that draw the Italian coastline alongside the bay at Porto Ceresio. The village of Morcote stands on the bank. Strolling around the narrow streets, you take in some interesting architectural details and soak up the relaxing atmosphere; you really must climb the 400 steps at the back to reach the Renaissance church of Santa Maria del Sasso and the oratory next door, devoted to St Anthony of Padua. Right next to these two church buildings are the Scherrer Gardens, one of the amazing creations of Arthur Scherrer, from St Gallen, who in the early 1930s imaged a place that could contain all the wonders he collected on his travels around the world. Open from March to November and known as the “Garden of Wonders” (the naturalistic transposition of the “wunderkammer” that were so fashionable in the 19th century among aristocratic families), the park is home to numerous subtropical plants, bamboo forests and Mediterranean maquis, dotted with art works and reproductions of temples, villas and constructions styled to underline the eastern or western vegetation. Don’t miss it. Returning to the lakeside road, leaving Morcote, turn left up the slopes of Mount Arbostora towards Carona. This is a spectacular and really enjoyable road, even in the rather narrow stretches. The ideal place for making the most of the driving pleasure in a charming and very punchy car like the 2600 Sprint, as well as the technology that keeps the 520 HP of the red Giulia Quadrifoglio accompanying us at bay. It's quite hard to keep your eyes on the road without being distracted by the view, which in some points is absolutely breathtaking! Carona is a hamlet perched at an altitude of 600 metres above sea level, and is considered a neighbourhood of Lugano even though it lies 8 kilometres from the city. It is bursting with artistic expressions, with many houses decorated with sculpted friezes and fine details. The symbol of this pervasive refinery is the frescoed façade of the municipal Loggia and arcade: the building stands next to the church of San Giorgio (where you will also find a large 16th century painting inspired by Da Vinci’s Last Supper), with a bell tower in local pink stone and the sacristy above an arch over the road, all forming a beautiful square at the entrance to the village. Talking of religious buildings, the Madonna d’Onero sanctuary, with its porticoes and Via Crucis in front, occupies the top of the hill just outside the village. Driving downhill from Carona towards Lugano, we come across small hamlets and ancient villas looking over the lake to our left along the route. A large sign stating “Benvenuti al Paradiso” (“Welcome to Paradise”) should not be misconstrued: nothing supernatural, just the boundary with what is considered the most prestigious residential district of Lugano, but which in fact is a municipality in its own right. With its elegant and exclusive contemporary architecture, it is also the departure point of the funicular railway that runs 1660 metres to the top of Mount San Salvatore, a very popular scenic spot with breathtaking views over the lake and the peaks of the highest mountains in Switzerland and Italy. Lugano’s urban development, overseen by some of the greatest names in world architecture, is one of the most inspiring reasons for visiting the city. Starting from the buildings by Mario Botta, internationally renowned Ticino-born archistar which can be admired entering Lugano from Paradiso: the cylindrical Cinque Continenti centre, topped by a metallic structure, or, just outside the city centre in Via Pretorio, the red-brick Palazzo Ransilia, this time topped by a tree. The works of another Ticino-born architect, Ivano Gianola, include the spectacular LAC culture centre, which hosts exhibitions and artistic performances, as well as the MASI - Italian-Swiss Art Museum - , surprisingly built on pillars so as to not hinder the view of the lake. A suggestion: the centre of Lugano is quite compact with a large pedestrian area. It is worth visiting it on foot, maybe starting from the lakeside promenade. Visit the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, next to the LAC, with its wonderful Renaissance fresco by Bernardino Luini “Passion and Crucifixion of Christ”, and enjoy a stroll along Via Nassa, which under the 270-metre-long arcade once used by fishermen to dry their nets, today offers classy shops and boutiques, up to the historical Villa Ciani and its gardens. Back in the car, the itinerary sets off once more from Villa Ciani towards Castagnola, leaving the lake for a few kilometres before finding it again on the right, at Ruvigliana, and on to Aldesago, on the slopes of Mount Brè, which with its 933 metres dominates the eastern part of the city. From here, along 6 kilometres of straight roads and wide sweeping bends, we reach Brè Sopra Lugano (its full name), a small hamlet with stone houses and streets, dotted with frescoes left by numerous artists – from Aligi Sassu to Wilhelm Schmid and Josef Birò – on the houses during their stays there both in summer and winter. From the village, a partially unpaved road leads to the top of the Brè in just a few minutes. In this charming panoramic spot, a terrace looks over Mount San Salvatore and the gulf of Lugano below. Then, looking up across the Alps and Monte Rosa, it springs to mind that perhaps it would really be worth putting up a sign “Welcome to Paradise”. THE COLLECTOR: Giovanni Poretti The "2600 Sprint" Not a particularly famous car, many have never driven it, but this has fuelled its reputation as a car with heavy steering, which is not true, especially when seen with the eyes of today and in relation to the cars of its time. I find it very pleasant to drive, it’s not a light car as it was intended for a certain type of use, a large touring coupé, although some people did try to race it on the track. The 2600 is quite agile, but don't be afraid of its weight (1370 kg) and size (4.58 m long, 2.58 m wheelbase): the engine is sufficiently powerful and has enough torque to be entertaining. I agree with the tests conducted by Road&Track at the time: they said don't worry about entering a bend at high speed, as once it gets in there the 2600 Sprint is stable and safe, and holds the road well, despite the tyres of the time not being what they are today. The Modern Alfas I have always been a car enthusiast, and an Alfa Romeo fan in particular. While I loved all the cars of the 1960s and most of those of the 70s, from then onwards I have noted some kind of increasing banalisation, in the sense that the characteristics of each brand have been lost, in favour of uniform performance. The ties with Alfa Romeo make me like its models more than others. I recovered this respect after all the events that have marked and rather watered down Alfa’s history, but which today place the company in the centre of a development programme that, I hope, will help it to regain those unique features that made it a worldwide driving legend.

In a region of empty roads winding through the forests, the pleasure of driving blends with the discovery of some charming and, at times, mysterious places. We stumbled upon them at the wheel of a 1969 Junior Zagato Words Alessandro Giudice Photography Alessandro Barteletti Video Andrea Ruggeri Swiss Grand Tour is a project to discover itineraries driving classic Alfa Romeo cars, in partnership with Astara, the distributor and importer of the Brand in Switzerland. This is the only one of the 26 Swiss cantons to have Italian as its only official language. This is why, imagining an itinerary through Ticino, we decided to start from its south-western border with Italy, following the river Tresa, an emissary of Lake Lugano in the municipality of Ponte Tresa which then flows into Lake Maggiore. Ponte Tresa is not only a major border crossing, it is also a lakeside town with beaches and tourist amenities that, in the warmer season, offer visitors a full range of bathing facilities and opportunities. A couple of miles from the town, heading towards Lugano, you reach the municipality of Caslano, a charming and colourful tourism and cultural outpost looking over the water with its characteristic peninsula. Here you can not only surf, swim and sail: there are also some interesting trekking routes on and around Mount Sassalto, a protected natural oasis with a variety of plant species, and then take a tasty break at the Museum & Chocolate Experience Alprose, or a cultural diversion at the Fishing Museum. [click to watch the video] Having explored the area, we start our itinerary from Ponte Tresa, taking Via Cantonale along the right bank of the river Tresa. In contrast to the rather impervious Italian bank, as soon as you leave the town the Ticino coast of the river opens into a large, sun-kissed plane criss-crossed by straight roads linking farms, small businesses and charming villages typical of the border areas, where the lasting presence of two close yet different cultures has created a curious mix of habits and traditions. With the support of Reto Sormani, Alfa Romeo collector and expert of the local area, we wanted the route through this part of Ticino to be marked by driving pleasure, on exhilarating yet possibly quiet roads. A pleasure that was crowned by the agility and power of the car Reto put at our disposal: a bright red 1969 Alfa Romeo Junior Zagato 1300, for the occasion assisted by a really special support car, the 520 HP Giulia Quadrifoglio. The first leg of the tour runs through Sessa, recognisable even from a distance by the size of the bell tower of the San Martino Church, dating back to 1200 and built by the local feudal family Sessa, which took on its current Baroque style in the 15th century. This pretty town has a characteristic urban structure, which has maintained its appeal as an ancient hamlet. Here we also find the Palazzo del Tribunale (Court Building), because, we should remember, Sessa was to all extents and purposes the capital of Malcantone, the region connecting Milan to Lugano and then to Northern Europe. There are several theories behind the name. One states that the strategic and disputed border region was inhabited by both traders and travellers and bandits and criminals, who robbed the wayfarers. Another states that it comes from the rather bad-tempered character of its inhabitants, rough mountain folk: both are sufficient reasons for adding the prefix “mal” (“bad”) to the term “cantone”. Departing from Sessa, the first part of the route runs through the chestnut woods covering the hills. The route runs uphill along wide, well-marked and enjoyable winding roads, where the GT Junior Zagato began to offer all the thrills it is capable of. By one of the bends you will see a minecart, telling of the mining tradition that made Malcantone one of the richest mining regions not only in Switzerland but in the whole of Europe. The minecart is but a clue to the location of the gold mine (along with the local silver mine) which lies a few miles ahead in Costa di Sessa. Following the signs, you will reach the entrance of the mining tunnel, recovered in the last decade and offering interesting guided tours, as well as the first leg of the Mining Park Trail, along which trekking enthusiasts (frequent visitors to Malcantone) can reach other sites telling of the special and somewhat unexpected history and economy of the Confederacy. Like the story of Domenico Trezzini, architect and town planner born in Astano, a village with 300 inhabitants lying three kilometres from Sessa, who studied in Rome and in 1703 was called by the Tzar Peter the Great to help design St Petersburg, the new capital of the Russian Empire. Trezzini, to whom an impressive statue was erected in the Russian city, designed the Summer Palace, the Peter and Paul Fortress and Cathedral, curiously the saints after whom the Baroque parish church in Astano, dating back to 1636, is also named. The route then continues on to Novaggio from where, running along the southern face of Mount Lema, reaches Miglieglia. In addition to the modern cable car that leads to the top of the mountain, here you can also visit the beautiful Romanic Church of Santo Stefano al Colle, inside decorated with brightly coloured late-Gothic frescoes: don’t miss this tiny gem. From here on the road becomes quite spectacular, with its harmoniously winding bends and scenic views that appear out of the blue. In Breno, the main town in Upper Malcantone, the beautiful blue and white Casa Cantonale welcomes visitors. Wander round its narrow streets, stop for a tasty meal in one of its “trattorie” and then visit the monumental Church of San Lorenzo, built in the 13th century, renovated two centuries later, its neoclassical façade added in 1912. And talking of religious buildings, the view from the Church of Santa Maria Juvenia, a beautiful complex dating back to the 9th century next to the Iseo cemetery, near Vernate, is quite spectacular. The church can be reached along a short diversion from the route, offering breathtaking view of Lake Lugano and beyond. And here in Vernate we begin to approach the lake. Descending into the valley, on a right-hand bend, take the road to the left towards Bioggio, an alternative scenic route that runs half-way along the hillside. Driving through almost uninhabited ancient hamlets, you will enjoy the genuine simplicity of mountain life, while the architecture of the houses and commercial activities dotted along the road clearly indicate that you are approaching more sophisticated places. Returning to the rhythms of nearby Lugano, marked by the bridge over the A2 motorway leading to the Gotthard Pass, you will drive through Breganzona, Muzzano and then Risciano, towards Agno as far as the left-hand turn towards Figino. This picturesque lakeside town is the point of arrival for this unusual yet appealing itinerary, through a Ticino in which Lugano is the main place of attraction and yet has some unexpectedly wild delights to be discovered amongst the chestnut-covered hills. THE COLLECTOR: Reto Sormani The "Junior Z" I chose the Junior Z for its classic mechanics, with a four-cylinder, twin-cam engine, housed in a unique body. For me, who has always loved Alfa Romeo sedans, it was an extraordinary choice that added some zest to my collection, as well as an investment in a model produced in limited numbers. From a dynamic perspective, I appreciate its exceptional road-holding, thanks to a combination of lightness and power that make it agile and easily manageable. The 90 hp engine, which may not seem like much on paper, performs excellently on a weight that doesn't exceed 1000 kg. It's very responsive to the load, and it's clear that you feel the difference when you have a passenger. However, it's a very enjoyable car and surprisingly fast: on the track, I've reached 180 km/h effortlessly. Not bad for a fifty-year-old car of only 1.3 litres. The Modern Alfas As an ardent Alfista, it's enough for me to get behind the wheel of a modern Alfa to find many things that make it unique and recognizable. I recently spoke with someone from the Centro Stile, and I was struck by the fact that even today, those who work at Alfa Romeo put their heart and passion into it. I have a Giulia that I use every day and a Stelvio Quadrifoglio: then I get behind the wheel of a 2004 GT 3.2 with a manual gearbox, and my heart opens up. Perhaps I am made for slightly old-fashioned, rough Alfa Romeos.

The story, known previously to only a handful, of an Alfa Romeo test driver and racer who walked away from the sport directly after winning the Italian and European titles in one of the most prestigious car championships. Words by Mario Simoni. Photos by Centro Documentazione Alfa Romeo, Foto Alquati Milano, Quattroruote, Leone Pelachin Archive, Mario Simoni Archive. From 1976 to 1983, hundreds of skilled drivers participated in the Alfa Romeo Promotional Trophy – a series of races held on circuits across half of Europe. In those championships, two young drivers who later rose to Formula 1 fame took part, the Spaniard Luis Perez Sala and the even more famous Gerhard Berger. Monza, Imola, Zeltweg, Nürburgring, Paul Ricard, Zandvoort, and Hockenheim were just some of the racetracks. In front of hundreds of thousands of Formula 1 spectators, real battles took place in the pursuit of the Alfasud and Alfa Sprint Continental Titles. Of those drivers duking it out, Leone Pelachin – in his Alfa Romeo – always stood out for his sportsmanship and gentlemanliness. These were the years in which Alfa Romeo regained its prestige in the world of racing thanks to the skill of a great technician like engineer Chiti and the capabilities of a racing team like Autodelta. In 1975, it had just won the World Championship for Makes with the 33TT12 and entered Formula 1, supplying its 12-cylinder engine to Brabham from '76 to '79. Also in 1979, Alfa returned to the World Championship as a constructor, where it remained as a team until 1983. The awareness that competitions were the best business card to win over sports clientele led, in those years, to focusing on a racing version of the best-selling and most popular Alfa Romeo sedan, the Alfasud. Thus, in 1976, the Alfasud Trophy was born, reserved for the racing version of the coupé birthed in ‘72 by Rudolf Hruschka – one of the most skilled technicians in automotive history who had started his career at Porsche and Cisitalia. In Hruschka’s Alfasud project, a sporting soul was imbued in the compact two-volume sedan, equipped with an excellent front-wheel-drive chassis (the first in Quadrifoglio's history) and a 4-cylinder boxer engine capable of optimizing weight distribution, but above all with great potential for sporting use. For the engineers at Autodelta, tasked with developing the kit that would transform the comfortable Alfasud into a real racing car, the task was not the most challenging. There are few drivers who, without a "father" or a sponsor behind them, have managed to reach Formula 1. Among them, it's worth mentioning Consalvo Sanesi and the great Lorenzo Bandini, who went from being a simple mechanic to an unlucky Ferrari driver. The real major hindrance to Leone Pelachin's career, besides his family, was the handicap of starting racing at the age of thirty, when the careers of many drivers are already on the decline. Not so much for physical or skill reasons, as demonstrated by the successes of "grandfathers" like Alonso at 42 and Hamilton at 39, but also the incredible career of Nuvolari, who at over fifty risked winning the Mille Miglia twice. But Leone Pelachin had all the strength and desire to continue racing and winning at 35, and that farewell at the peak of his career and the dream of a lifetime must have been the most difficult moment after years of success. MS: Leone, did you never think about starting racing until you were thirty? LP: I'd always had a passion for cars and racing, but I never thought I would have the chance to race on the track. In reality, I wanted to be a tester. Racing was a dream that came true when I realized I was really good at driving, but before reaching that point, I had to cover tens of thousands of kilometers, first on the roads and then on the Balocco track with Alfa Romeo models under development. It was at Balocco that I truly learned to drive: hundreds of accelerations from a standstill, top speeds, recoveries, special tests with all the prototypes of Alfa production cars, always collaborating with the designers from Arese, including engineer Felisa, who later became CEO and Managing Director of Ferrari and Aston Martin. But before becoming ‘good’, how many mistakes, how many breakdowns, how many accidents... Fortunately, never with any consequences. MS: How did you go from being a simple mechanic to a tester for Alfa Romeo? LP: At 14, I started as a mechanic in a workshop in Rho, just a stone's throw away from Arese, but my dream was to work at Alfa Romeo. So, in 1969, after my military service, I applied and was hired as an engine/carburettor technician. I was already capable of dismantling and reassembling an engine by myself, and I enjoyed that work. After not even a year in the experimental department at Arese, my dream increasingly became to become a tester. The desire was so strong that I asked my workshop head every day to be transferred to that department, and after being told "no" a hundred times, he finally said, "Okay, if you really want to, try it..." The test went well, and so, after covering almost 100,000 km in less than a year on the roads of Lombardy, along the Apennines, and over the Alpine passes to test the new Alfa models, the big day arrived. The chief tester called me and said, "Pelachin is doing well, from Monday he goes to Balocco track." I'll never forget that day. It was as if the gates of Heaven had opened. I could have cried tears of happiness! MS: And how did you find Balocco? What cars did you drive? LP: I drove all the production models from that period, from the Alfa 6 to the Montreal to the Alfasud. But my main task was to develop and verify tires for the new models before putting them into production. We conducted endless tests, especially at night, to avoid being photographed by "prototype hunters," and of course, we drove a lot on wet surfaces. That's how I became a true expert in driving in the rain, as seen in the wet races of the Trophy. Among the testers, there was also a sort of time challenge on the Balocco lap, and after a while, I was the fastest of all, both on dry and wet tracks. At first, no one believed it, until I had to compete for a series of tests – first with my chief tester Bruno Bonini, whom I "defeated" driving an Alfetta prototype, then with the head of all the Balocco testers, Guido Moroni, who at the end of the tests with a GTV 2000 declared, "It's right that the apprentice goes faster than the master." There was also a tester from Autodelta, as well as a driver in the World Championship for Makes, who once, invited to a challenge with me by the head of the Balocco timekeepers, preferred to turn down the invite. Who knows, afraid of being beaten maybe? MS: In the many tests you conducted, is there one you'll never forget? LP: The most incredible of all was driving the Montreal: a "speed test" from Reggio Calabria to Lubeck. From the extreme south to the extreme north of Europe in just 20 hours with the Montreal. It was a report published by the magazine Quattroruote with the title "See you tonight in Lubeck". It was 1972 and there were no speed limits then, and the traffic was a whole different story, but there were still customs checks, and some sections of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria and Brenner motorways were missing. What we did with two Montreals, myself and the tester Francesco Brignoli in one, and the journalist Bruno Bonetto and the chief tester Bruno Bonini in the other Montreal, is truly incredible and unrepeatable. It's almost 2,600 km, so we maintained an average speed of over 130 km/h! Today, no one, with any car in the world, could beat that record. All thanks to the Montreal which, with the 200 hp of its V8, exceeded 220 km/h and, in addition to demonstrating great road qualities, never had any problems throughout the entire journey. MS: In the early Seventies, the development of the Alfasud was in full swing. How was it going? What was its development like? LP: From the first tests, when we drove with the entire body camouflaged, almost like a van, the Alfasud performed very well, and we never had major problems. When the Golf came out, which was considered the most direct competitor, we compared it extensively at Balocco with ours. We were superior in everything, especially in road behavior and steering functionality, not to mention the engine and performance: our 1200 boxer engine clearly outperformed Volkswagen's 1100 and 1300. There was also an Alfasud that no one ever saw and that was on the verge of going into production, but even after our tests, it was rejected. MS: What model was it, and what happened? Were there other Alfas that you tested but never made it into production? LP: It was the Sprint Spider, designed by Giugiaro alongside the sedan and coupe, which in some ways resembled the Fiat X1/9, with the large roll bar and removable roof. It was intended for the American market, but due to the investment required and the design that didn't convince, it remained on standby. The final blow came from our tests at Balocco on the cobbles: it was found that the chassis couldn't withstand the stress, it tended to flex and therefore needed to be modified and strengthened. That was the verdict that definitively ended the project. Among the engines we tested but never made it into production was the 2-liter, 16-valve, 4-cylinder engine of the Alfetta GTV. It was an excellent engine, Alfa Romeo's first production engine with 4 valves per cylinder. It generated over 150 hp and was responsive, but for some reason, it was decided not to continue its development. Another engine we tested in our cars was the Wankel, also being developed by NSU and Mazda at the time: I don't remember if that was one of the rotary prototypes produced at Arese or if it was of Mazda origin. The engine was powerful, but we immediately saw that in terms of noise, fuel consumption, and reliability, it was a step backward rather than forward. Moreover, it had another serious flaw, the lack of engine braking, which put a strain on the braking system and did not provide confidence when driving at the limit. MS: So we come to the end of 1977, when you decided to start racing. What happened? Who helped you, who gave you the car? LP: Actually, I had already done a few races in '75 and '76, but in rallycross with the 2 CV. The first year had few races and many breakdowns, but by the end of the second year, I was in contention until the last race to win the Italian championship, but I came second. Almost everyone at Balocco knew about my desire to race, including Giorgio Francia who in '77, in addition to competing in the World Championship for Makes with the 33 TT/12, had been hired as a tester for Autodelta. We often met during breaks at Balocco. That's how he said to me, almost jokingly, "But didn't you want to be a driver?" Without hesitation, I replied, "Where? With whom? With what?" He told me that the SPECAR dealership in La Spezia had a car for the Trophy but wasn't satisfied with its driver and was looking for a new one. So if I wanted to try... MS: Speaking of Autodelta, the Alfa Romeo cars prepared for racing, including the F.1 and the 33 for the World Championship for Makes designed by engineer Chiti, were often tested at Balocco. Did you ever manage to try them? LP: I would have liked to, indeed! But, for some reason, I was never in the good graces of Teodoro Zeccoli, the head of Autodelta's testers, and I never managed to get close to those cars. In fact, once, in 1980, Zeccoli, acting as a technical commissioner at the Imola track, did me a disservice by disqualifying me for a minor irregularity, which seemed deliberately done to diminish my championship victory. But that's another story.. Actually, once, in the absence of Zeccoli and Chiti, who would never have given permission despite my successes with the Alfasud, I managed to convince Manfredini, the head mechanic at Autodelta, to let me try the F.1. It was Giacomelli's Alfa 179 race car, and a few days later, there was the French Grand Prix at Le Castellet. They let me do three laps, but... if I had broken something, I wouldn't have been able to set foot in Balocco or Alfa Romeo again! It was a mix of joy and fear! At 160 mph on the straight, if you accelerated a bit too much, you felt all 500 hp of the naturally aspirated V12 unloading onto the rear, causing it to hint at slipping, while in the corners, it felt like being on a rail, but only up to the limit I had set for myself to reach. After that, it's better not to know. MS: So you made it to Formula 1, congratulations! Even if it was just for three laps! But let's go back to the beginning of your career when you had your first test with the Alfasud Trophy. LP: The pivotal moment of my career was at the Varano racetrack, where the dealer Piero Simoncini had decided to assess my skills, given that I had never been on a track and had never driven a race car. I didn't know Varano or the Trofeo, but despite that, I wasn't worried at all; I was truly confident in my driving abilities! MS: And how did it go? LP: Simoncini and his workshop manager were satisfied with the performance and said to me, "Okay, let's go, if you agree." I replied, "For me, that's fine, as long as I don't have to incur any expenses because I really wouldn't know how to manage." For this reason, we didn't have any other winter tests until the beginning of the Trophy, and we had to skip some races during the season, including the first one at Mugello. So, here we were at Monza, on April 23, 1978, for the debut, and it was a debut with a "bang"... in every sense of the word! MS: What happened? LP: We arrived at Monza with all the top teams who had already tested extensively on that track, which I didn't know, and at the end of the official practices, I was in the top five, just 17 hundredths off the pole position. Some of the more established drivers started wondering, "Who's that guy, never heard of him, and he comes in and goes faster than us who have been racing in the Trophy for two years!" Meanwhile, Autosprint’s headline the following Monday read, "An Alfa Tester Unleashed." On race day, my first impression, at the start, was, "are these guys all crazy?" I didn't know where to look; I was in the middle of a real "battle," with cars touching, pushing, and banging doors. When we got to the first chicane, I said to myself, "well, if that's how it is, I'll play the fool too," and I threw myself into the mix: and so began my racing career. In the heat, after starting on the front row, I was leading the race in the penultimate lap when I was overtaken by two other Alfasuds. They collided at Ascari and spun right in front of me: I couldn't do anything but hit them, and so, after turning the nose of my Trofeo into a "wedge," I had to retire. Fortunately, the dealer understood that it wasn't my fault, and since I also set the fastest overall lap time among the Alfasuds, he said to me, "It's not a problem, let's continue!" MS: And did it go better at the second race? LP: Not entirely. We were at Varano in May, and there too, I was among the best in practice. I started on pole in my heat, but on the first lap, I was pushed from behind, sending me into a spin: I hit a couple of Alfasuds, and so I found myself off the track, stopped in the middle of the grass. I unbuckled my seat belts and tried to get out to see the damage to the car, but the door wouldn't open. So, I buckled up again and... I restarted like a madman! I set the fastest lap time, and at the end of the heat, I was fourth, qualifying for the final! In the final, I then achieved my best result of the debut season, finishing fifth. MS: So the rest of the season didn't go as you hoped? LP: Actually, we only planned to compete in five or six races, and even though I didn't achieve any other results, I managed to gain some satisfaction. In the second race at Varano in June, I won my heat, setting the fastest lap time. At Misano, I secured pole position in the official practices, while in the only race of the Trofeo Europa that I participated in at Le Castellet, I qualified sixth and finished the race in fifteenth place. MS: Not bad for a rookie. So, were you able to get an Alfasud Trofeo for the 1979 championship? LP: Yes, SPECAR dealership confirmed me, and finally, the first victory came at Monza in my seasonal debut, in the third race of the Trophy! It was a head-to-head battle with Sigala which finished in a sprint finish – a win by just a few centimeters! During the championship, I won my heat at Varano, Misano, and Mugello, but due to several retirements and skipping some races, I didn't go beyond fourteenth place in the Trophy standings. However, the tuner Bigazzi, who assisted my car and Bertolini's, managed to win the preparers' cup. MS: So, we come to 1980, the year of the championship victory. Was it all easy? LP: Almost, although there were some problems and mishaps. The car, always prepared by Bigazzi, was perfect at the beginning of the championship, so much so that I won the first four races of the championship. But at Mugello, it didn't seem the same anymore, while my teammate Bertolini's car was flying. We had this feeling or impression that the tuner favored him, so the owner of the SPECAR dealership for which I raced decided to leave Bigazzi and switch to another team, Luicar. Immediately, things returned to normal. With two more victories at Magione and Misano: the Trofeo Alfasud was mine! But at Magione, a couple of incidents made me think that someone wanted to prevent me from winning: leaving the car in a workshop the night before the race, we found it with a loosened cylinder head cap, as if they had tried to make the engine run out of water during the race. Fortunately, we noticed the ‘sabotage’, and in the final, after winning the heat, I found myself with a significant lead in the last lap. It seemed done, but a backmarker cut me off and gave me a push that almost sent me spinning. I managed to keep the car in control somehow and finished the race more than 5 seconds ahead of Calamai. Was it the backmarker's mistake or a deliberate maneuver? I'm still wondering. MS: In 1981, the national championships gave way to the Trofeo Europa, which was even more thrilling with 10 races, half of which were concurrent with the Formula 1 Grand Prix. How did it go? LP: Well, I can tell you that I finished ahead of Gerhard Berger in the championship that year, as he began his leap into Formula 1 and Ferrari. I, always racing for Luicar, won at Imola, and he won at Zeltweg, but the season's dominant driver was Rinaldo Drovandi. We only finished sixth and seventh. Ahead of us was also a young man from Ferrara, Renato Croce, who could have really made it to Formula 1. But instead... At Monza, in the final race, he won, racing alongside Drovandi with the Alfasud prepared by Bigazzi for Autolodi. The owners of the Lodi dealership called me at the end of the season to offer me a car for the 1982 Trophy, which would no longer be contested with the Alfasud but with the Alfa Sprint. However, there was a big problem: my departure from the Bigazzi team in 1980. It hadn't gone down well with the Tuscan tuner, and he immediately demanded my apologies for doubting his integrity. MS: So, did you "apologize" and manage to join the strongest team in the Trophy? LP: Needless to say, I apologized to Bigazzi for ‘thinking badly’, but in reality, some doubts always remained… His team was indeed the strongest. Besides me and Croce for Autolodi, the Bigazzi team fielded three Alfa Sprints for the Spaniards Villamil, Emilio Zapico, and Luis Perez Sala, another guy who managed to make it to Formula 1. It was an exciting Trophy: just over halfway through the season, Croce and I were leading with two victories each, but despite this and the many battles we had on the track, there was a good relationship – respect in the race and friendship in life, even though he often said to me, "You're not Leone, you're a Volpone." So we arrived at the last two races with almost the same points. At Monza, I won, after risking going off the track several times. Meanwhile, Croce, after colliding with Drovandi, driving the third car fielded by Autolodi, damaged his Alfa Sprint and lost many positions. Then he went off the track trying to get back to the front of the race. That incident, which I believe was entirely unintentional however, marked Renato Croce's fate. He felt like a victim of a plot and suffered dramatically from the so-called ‘injustice’ he’d been dealt. There was still one race to go, and everything was still to be decided. Croce and I were the favorites, but the Spaniard Emilio Zapico was right behind us. And we were racing in Spain, where a real bullfight awaited us. A bullfight indeed. It began right away, with Renato Croce getting involved in the starting melee and finding himself at the back of the pack. He launched an incredible comeback, gaining fifteen positions, but he couldn't do better than eighth place. I, as Croce would have said, like a true "fox," focused mainly on securing the result, I didn't attempt any heart-stopping overtakes and settled for third place. But the victory in the Trofeo Europa was mine! MS: For the winner of the Trophy, the Alfetta GTV 6 2.5 was at stake, which was worth almost 30 million lire. Didn't you think about racing in F.3 with the winnings? LP: Actually, the GTV went to Autolodi and the team. I was left with just a ‘tip’! The agreement was that I wouldn't have any expenses, but all the prizes went to the team, except for some ‘pocket money’ for me. I didn't have the economic means to move up to a formula car, while the Trophy I was asked to leave unless I wanted to lose the chance to continue working in Alfa Romeo's sports activities. The desire to race was still strong, but I had to let reason win over passion. MS: So, did you hang up your helmet for good? And what happened to Croce, your great rival that year? LP: Yes, I hung up the helmet, but not forever. Ten years passed, and at 45 I returned to the track with the Alfa 33 Group A, immediately winning the first race at Misano. From '92 to 2000, I competed in many touring car races in Group A and N championships and returned to win several times. But if I won the lottery today, I'd return to the track immediately, and I'm sure many wouldn't be ahead of me. Renato Croce, on the other hand, in the winter of '82 tried the Alfa Romeo-powered F.3, but he also decided to return to racing with the Sprint in 1983. He arrived at Imola for the trials of the first Trophy race, which was won by Calamai ahead of Sala. But something had changed in him. Partly due to the disappointment of the previous year, but above all it was because of a parasite that had begun growing in him – drugs. Unfortunately, he didn't even start the race at Imola, and a few months later he lost his most important race – the one for life. About the author, Mario Simoni. Cars, racing, and journalism have always been among my passions. I am among the few fortunate ones to have turned my passions into a lifelong career. And all this almost by chance, through a series of fortunate circumstances that have led me to write these pages about the life of a driver and tester like Leone Pelachin. I also began my career as a driver, but at 23, competing for two seasons in the Renault 5 Cup. However, while my financial resources were similar to those of the "Champion Without a Suitcase", my driving abilities were evidently different. Thus, after a couple of spectacular accidents and no significant results, I hung up my helmet... but not forever. It was Alfa Romeo itself that called me back to the track, at Imola in 1982, to compete in a race of the Alfa Sprint Trophy, the one won by Pelachin in a photo finish against Renato Croce. In reality, I had been called not so much as a driver but as a journalist, to recount to Autosprint readers the thrills, emotions, and driving sensations behind the wheel of the Sprint Trophy. But let's take a step back: at the end of the seventies, I began my career as a journalist in the automotive sector for a minor magazine, until in 1981 I started collaborating with Autosprint, writing among other things about promotional championships, such as the Alfasud Trophy. An undeniable passion for Alfa also led me to propose a competition in Autosprint to entrust a young driver with a Sprint Trophy for the '82 season: and the main selector in the final test at the Balocco track naturally had to be Leone Pelachin. In those two unforgettable seasons with the Sprint, I admired and recounted all the duels and battles on European tracks, becoming friends with almost all the protagonists of the Trophy. My career then continued, leaving racing to move on to production cars in the editorial staff of the monthly magazine Auto, where for almost thirty years I tested every type of car and authored investigations, tests, travel stories, and scoops on upcoming releases from automotive manufacturers. In the meantime, I also wrote a book about Alfa Romeo spiders and two about another of my life's passions, Cisitalia.

Several years ago, I was at a major automotive event watching a lot of famous, big-name builders greet their adoring public and show off their latest builds. As is often the case I was in the back of the crowd studying the events at hand looking for photo opportunities that caught my eye. Standing a few feet from me was a man who was also watching, and he caught my attention. Something about the confidence with which he stood there and the seemingly kind and genuine aura he radiated made me notice. Words & Photography by Tim Scott (IG: Scott Photo Co.) I remembered seeing him a couple of times previously though I couldn’t recall exactly where, so I went up and introduced myself. His handshake was firm and confident, and he said that his name was Lynn Park. I really had no idea who I had just met but I was sure that there was something interesting to this man’s story. It was only years later that I would come to learn that Lynn Park was known worldwide as Mr. Cobra and had been deeply involved with the Cobra story, almost since the beginning, and was a friend and confidant of legendary men like Peter Brock, Mike McCluskey and even Mr. Carroll Shelby himself. This is a story of a man with a love and passion for the iconic Cobra that has lasted more than 60 years and is still going strong. Lynn Park grew up in Southern California during a time of immense optimism and prosperity following the darkness of WWII. Working at a service station meant that Lynn had to learn about cars, as in those days’ “service” meant more than just putting gas into cars. From fluids to tires to engines, Lynn was building the foundation of knowledge that would serve him for the rest of his life. When he got his driver’s license in 1959 his mom gifted him the ’56 Ford Mainline that had been her daily driver. With gearhead blood already flowing through his veins he went down to the local scrapyard and bought a 410 cubic inch Edsel motor to put in the underpowered Ford. Everyday he learned more about his automobiles as he and his friends worked to make them nicer, faster, and more fun. Soon he discovered that he could buy stripped and totaled cars from the same scrapyard, often very clean cars simply missing an engine or an interior or needing basic body work to make them road worthy again. He would buy, repair, and then sell them to fund his growing love for cars and was soon driving very nice cars himself. Lynn’s sister’s boyfriend, Joe, was also into cars at this time and owned a Lotus. Of course, this led to many spirited discussions about horsepower versus handling. One fateful day Joe brought the September 1962 issue of Road & Track magazine that had this new “Shelby AC Cobra” on the cover. A sleek, curvaceous, sexy body with V8 power? This one moment and photograph lit a spark in Lynn that was to become a lifelong passion. With curiosity overflowing Lynn drove down to Venice where the Shelby “factory” was at the time. By this point, after flipping many cars, he was able to drive a really nice automobile so when he drove up, they assumed that he could actually afford one of these hot, new sports cars. Carroll Shelby did his best to sell him one not knowing that he was unable to afford one. While Lynn didn’t buy a Cobra then, Carroll and the staff at the Cobra factory were so nice to him that he just started coming back time and time again. He befriended many of the people there and before long most people just assumed he worked there. Lynn really wanted a Cobra but couldn’t afford one, so he bought an AC, put a V8 in it and made, perhaps, the very first Cobra replica ever. From 1963-1967 Lynn raced his home-made “Cobra”, attended college at UCLA and enjoyed life in Southern California. In 1967 Lynn joined the Army and was honorably discharged in late 1969. It was now 1972, and Lynn was determined to get his first “real” Cobra. He found a wrecked one for $2,100, ordered parts directly from AC and started the rebuild. Before his first Cobra was even finished, he found another Cobra, the 10th ever built, which had also been wrecked and was now in parts. He purchased this one for $2,000. As was the norm for the time he bought a new, original AC body and completely rebuilt the car. This was just the beginning as he started buying every Cobra he could find. Working on his Cobras alongside a legend himself, Mike McCluskey, who has done all of the paint and body work on Lynn’s Cobras from day one, Lynn has learned every little detail of his cars with his own hands building priceless experience for use for the next 50+ years. L.P. "The yellow car is a 1963 Cobra. It’s the car that my wife and I have taken on thirty “Cobra 1000” tours over the years. I put a Tremec 3550 five speed transmission in it to reduce the RPMs during the long road trips. Otherwise, the car is very original and is a fun car to drive.” Lynn continued buying, repairing, and driving Cobras from that time on supporting his habit while running several successful businesses. He has never approached buying Cobras as an investment and will quickly caution would-be buyers against doing so. L.P. “I don’t look at them as money-makers or an investment. Don’t buy a car thinking of it as an investment. That means that you’re not going to use it. You’re going to park it and wait for the opportune time to sell it.” Lynn drives all of his cars. Some are street cars, and some are race cars. With many, many Cobras passing through his hands through the years, he currently owns 10 “real” Cobras, 10 replicas and 6 of them are race cars. Every single one has its own personality, patina and story and is “perfect”, to him. He explained to me that cars that are banged up often have more personality than a “perfect” car (ask him about his Cobra that he’s affectionately named “Dirtbag”). L.P. “The #12 Cobra is one of the five FIA Cobras that Shelby built to race in Europe.  It has been vintage raced since the early 1980s by a good friend of mine who sold the car to me about a year ago. As you can see it’s got a lot of “Patina” but to me that’s part of the charm of this car. No one mistakes the car for a replica, that’s for sure. In addition to being raced for so many years it has participated in the famous “Cobra 1000” tour for ten years or more.” To be clear, Lynn has no issue with replicas. Proof-in-point, he owns ten. Shelby officially stopped production of “real” Cobras in 1967 only to return years later and make replicas himself. The good thing with replicas available is that you can still get parts, which would likely be nearly impossible to come by otherwise. Having more Cobras out there allows more people to see and appreciate their beauty and uniqueness. “Real” or “replica”, these cars are meant to drive. Lynn and his family and friends have been vintage racing his Cobras since 1982, racing all over the country at tracks from Monterey to Willow Springs, to Lime Rock, to Watkins Glenn, to Kansas City and St. Louis, to Road America and more. To this day, Lynn and his sons, Steve, and Tim, race their Cobras twice a year at Willow Springs. They would often take “Cobra 1000” trips – 1,000-mile trips driving with a group of Cobras to destinations across the country. Just because “driving a Cobra is fun!” This brings us back to the big question of why Cobra? L.P. “You know what’s fun about Cobras? You meet the people that own them and almost without exception they’re nice people.” The more Lynn talked about his years with his Cobras the more it sounded like a family. His entire family was involved from the early days – from making 1,000-mile trips, to racing with his sons – to this day the Cobras are a family affair. Beyond that there is an entire extended family and close community built around the love for the Cobra – a community of friends built over the past 50 years that still gathers as friends, brought together and united by this car. L.P. "The maroon coupe is a 1959 AC Aceca. I have owned it since 1985 and it reminds me of the Aceca that I bought in 1963 when I couldn’t afford a Cobra. The Cobra was $6000 and the Aceca was $1500. I promptly swapped the original six-cylinder engine for a 289, added a four-speed transmission and had my own Cobra. When I bought this particular car, it had no engine or transmission so the decision to put a 289 in it was an easy one. This car has Cobra disc brakes all around, Cobra rack-and-pinion steering and Cobra suspension so it’s basically a 289 Cobra with an Aceca body. There were only 350 or so of these cars built and even fewer than that in the U.S. which makes it virtually unknown to anyone but an AC enthusiast." The Cobra has lived and thrived well beyond its relatively short manufacture period. Its essence is so much more about the car and the experience than some kind of perceived “status”. It’s a different kind of supercar. Even Carroll Shelby himself, while bold and larger than life, was always about the car and the people that loved it. Whenever there was a Cobra event, Shelby would show up. He was kind and accommodating to the crowds, signing autographs, and talking to them about the cars. A kind and genuine person attracting other kind and genuine people that would become part of the Cobra family. For many years the Cobra was the epitome of a performance car. It was doing everything better than what was being offered at the time. It’s noisy, it’s hot, it’s cold, it’s open to the elements and that’s part of what makes it special. When you drive a Cobra, you experience the world in a more immersive and memorable way. When is the last time you remember fondly driving your perfectly comfortable, soundproofed, fully enclosed car? This is a car for the pure joy of driving, for experiencing your journey in a way that no other can offer. It’s not for everyone and you may have to make time to wave and talk to complete strangers who may or may not know just how valuable and special this car is. L.P. “The silver 427 is a Kirkham replica. It was built by Mike McCluskey roughly thirty years ago.  It has a 427 engine and a top loader transmission and is as accurate in every aspect to an original 427 SC.  With its big tires and loads of power it is a ball to drive.” But to Mr. Cobra, the true value has always been in the friends he has made, the experiences he has lived and the joy of sharing that love and passion with all who will listen. Even with so many years of owning, driving and being involved with Cobras you can still see the smile on his face and hear the passion in his voice as he talks about his family of Cobras and friends. In his words, “Someone my age has grown up with the best 80 years of American history”. These days Mr. Cobra still drives each and every one of his cars. Whether on the track, or even just an 8 mile drive up the beautiful Angeles Crest Highway, these cars are loved and driven. People like Louis Hamilton, Jay Leno, Ashton Kutcher, and so many others from all over the world call him for information and his expertise – and of course, advice on buying a Cobra. The next time you are at a car event take a moment to look to see if there is a quiet, unassuming gentlemen in the back wearing perhaps a hat or shirt with a Cobra logo. If you see him, say hello, ask him about Cobra and enjoy some wonderful stories from a wonderful man. This is what the Cobra family is all about.

When he invented the Magicflash in 1983, the world of automotive photography was changed forever. But this futuristic invention was only one way in which the German photographer innovated his way to the top of his craft, making his name shooting Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, among many others, along the way. In an exclusive interview with SpeedHolics, the celebrated photographer and founder of Staud Studios tells us tales of fortune, ingenuity, and relentless ambition Words Sean Campbell Photography René Staud Fuerteventura, Spain, 1972. A 21 year old René Staud is standing on a sand dune on the undeveloped, unfrequented island of Fuerteventura. He was about to take the photograph that would launch a tourism boom. Set against the glittering Atlantic ocean backdrop, a dune buggy launching off the ridge,  front wheels mid-air, the rear pair just grazing the surface of the sand. “The Leap over the Dune” sparked a sense of adventure and ignited the first major influx of international travelers to the now popular Canary Island. Just a day or two prior however, Staud was little more than a clerk in a photography shop in Stuttgart. Freshly trained as a photographer, he was making ends meet at Foto Krauss, when an ambitious real estate developer walked in. He boldly asked for the most expensive camera available. When Staud showed up to the man’s office that afternoon to deliver the camera, a chain of events were set in motion that would kickstart his career. Around a decade later, his invention of the Magicflash propelled Staud into the higher echelons of automotive imagery, and led to him becoming one of the most influential and important car photographers in history. But let’s go back to the beginning... “I came from an artistic family. My father was a wood sculptor. But this was post World War II  Germany, so there wasn’t a good income,” Staud offers. “He sold some small works from time to time, but there was a problem. When he sold a piece, he would have to describe it in words to the next potential customer. He had no pictures.” It was this necessity that led a ten year old Staud to pick up a camera for the first time. Even in those first moments, he had a fascination with lighting. “He bought a film roll and lent me his camera. I decided to make these offset images, contrasting light and dark effects. We used these images to sell works within weeks. That's when I realized you could use pictures to communicate or even sell. Over the next few years I became the photographer for all the makers and artisans on my street.” By the time he was 14, Staud had won his first photography awards. “There was a competition at my local youth center, where we went to learn about music and art, and in my case photography. Kodak had sponsored this competition to promote the new Instamatic camera, the first camera with a film roll, ready to shoot. 50 of us had to go out and shoot in one day – whatever we wanted, houses, people, etcetera.” “My theme was ‘industrial dynamic’. I took pictures on the street and at the station of trains passing by. I had no idea what I was shooting because we just handed the cameras back at the end. A few weeks later I learned that three of my images finished in the top 5. I came first, second, and fifth!” With his prizes, Staud showed his first flair for business and investment. “I traded the three small cameras I won for one SLR (single-lens reflex) camera.” And so René Staud the photographer was born. The conditions in which Staud grew up allowed him, or perhaps forced him, to pick up skills quickly, “Being born into this handcraft-oriented family, and in my neighborhood, where wood and steel and such things abounded, I had to learn things quickly. I used all the lessons at the youth center to get better. I built my own black and white lab at home – it was half a washroom and half a darkroom!” Armed with his trusty SLR and a place to develop his work, the teenage Staud began to seek an income from his passion. “There were these dance clubs every Wednesday and Saturday for young people. I went and took pictures every Wednesday. Then I’d develop them at home, and go back to sell them on Saturdays and take more to sell Wednesday again! It was great for me but not great for my school results.” It didn’t take long for Staud to meet his first challenge as a young semi-pro photographer – color images. One of the markers of his career is how he’s always managed to get ahead of the game and invest in the future, and it was the same in the late 1960s. “Color prints were now in big demand, so I needed a place to develop my images. This was the beginning of a good friendship with a local photo store I’d go to to develop in color. And this was how after school, I got my first job. The photographer in the store had fallen in love with this beautiful dancer who was moving to Melbourne, and he was set on following her! When I showed up on my last day of school, the owner said ‘You’re here early. Shouldn’t you be in school? I just told him ‘No more school. Forever’! Right then and there he offered me the photographer’s job, but only taking passport photos and things like that. I started a few weeks after that and started to do my photography training. He paid me very little but it was work, and I still shot parties on weekends.” The next few years saw Staud go on something of an early career odyssey which would bring him through the automotive world and right back to photography. Because of the low pay at the shop and the financial demands of his training, he took up a job at a friend's gas station, pumping fuel, cleaning cars and doing handiwork on cars. One gas station job led to another – one which was often frequented by VIPs. “I got great tips from them, but I worked all day and came home late at night tired and covered in oil. I went there for the money but I lost a lot of friendships because I couldn’t go out.” Tired of the lifestyle, Staud took his newly earned photography diploma and got a job at Foto Krauss, where this story began. “Just a few days after I started, that businessman – the Fuerteventura property developer – walked in.” In his personal essay “My First Car Shoot” which details his meeting with the developer and delivering the camera to his office, Staud writes: “As I sat there in the secretary’s office and the minutes ticked by, I was starting to sweat… after an hour, the man came out of his board office and just said in passing, ‘Oh, you’re still sitting there. I don’t have time now… come down to the car with me quickly.’ And I ran down beside him into the garage and was suddenly sitting in his Opel V8 Diplomat with all the cardboard crap on my lap, and he said, “Please don’t try to explain the camera to me now, I still have calls to make… Twenty minutes later we were standing at the airport, a barrier went up in front of us, and there I am looking up at this giant plane, his private jet… I don’t know how it happened, anyway, at some point the doors are closed, the engines start, the plane takes off, and four hours later we land somewhere in the Atlantic on an island that nobody in Germany knew about… I never went back to the camera store. Over the coming months, Staud spent time coming and going from Fuerteventura, photographing marketing materials for the developer’s company as he turned the deserted island into a powerful tourism hot spot. The most historic of these is the “Leap over the Dune”. Now a made-it, professional photographer, Staud spent the 1970s carving out a niche for himself shooting product images for a range of high end companies, but he was quickly becoming more and more interested in cars. “I had a Porsche and a Mercedes-Benz S Class. But back then, there wasn’t much really good marketing for these brands. It wasn’t until the post war recovery was almost complete that they really started to think about better advertising materials. So in 1982, I started to think about how I could make money in cars. These car companies now had huge campaign budgets – no questions asked, big money. But here is the problem I noticed: When you shot a car in the street or in the garage, it looked like anyone could do it. What style of photography could make cars so unique and sexy? I had to shoot cars like they were jewels. No more street, no more forest, no more supermarket family friendly.” This realization marked the beginning of a period of experimentation that would eventually lead to the invention of the technology that would take Staud into the stratosphere — the Magicflash. “I began studying with small scale models of cars, experiment with light effects. No spotlights or light cubes worked on reflective cars. The sexy, glossy look you can only create with very smooth, very direct light. You need a lightbox. The first one I made with a shoebox. I illuminated car models with it and it worked. But then I needed to adapt this in large size. And I would need one hundred thousand lights in my box! I was told I was crazy – that I’d use it two days a year only and go bankrupt. But if I wanted to follow my passion, I had to find a style that made me unique. That would give me access to the very best clients.” So Staud borrowed and invested in a huge lightbox that would put that now ubiquitous sheen on a car in the studio. This was the Magicflash. Staud was convinced that his invention would cause a huge stir, that it would excite people and make him a star in the industry. In 1982, he decided to throw a huge launch party for the Magicflash, forking out on catering, entertainment, VIP treatment. “Six weeks before the launch I met a videographer who wanted to shoot a whole film for big screens to showcase the Magicflash. I was sold, and ended up buying out five parking areas nearby, and screens on the street. I thought we could get 2,000 people to join! … In the end, 20 people came… It was a catastrophe. More screens on the street than people in the audience. I had catered for at least 600! I went to the office and shut myself away, deciding to quit this dream.” While Staud was laying low, hiding his shame and embarrassment, there came a knock on the door from an unexpected guest. “It was the marketing manager for Mercedes Benz. He asked me if he could book me for 80 days that year, and 250 days the next.” While virtually nobody had come to the party, the right people had come. It wasn’t only the Mercedes-Benz leaders that had come either…“30 minutes later, a similar guy came from Porsche.” With that, Staud was the photographer for the country’s greatest car manufacturers. Staud found himself in such high demand through the mid 1980s that he was barely able to keep up with his schedule. “In 1986 I had 1,000 shooting days in a year! How was this possible?” Staud had to get creative to meet demand, creating better workflows and being more efficient than any other photographer had ever been. “I needed a new studio. My architect came to watch me work for a few weeks and came up with his plan. We built Staud Studios in 1985 and opened in 1986. It was hard work. 12 hours shooting, six hours creating and developing, six hours planning the studio and directing the build.” “I thought I’d need four people to work there, but in the end I needed more than thirty! The only way I managed was to set up more workstations and break down the shots into different flows andsetups. I mean, BMW gave me 28 cars at once! How could we do this? So I set up these different stations and focused on different things – in this corner we’d shoot the dashboard, over there the front, over there the wheels and so on. We worked all day and night. In daytime we’d make the beauty shots, and at night we’d bring in junior staff and freelancers and go right through the night on the nitty gritty.” While Staud is most famous for inventing the Magicflash, a lesser known fact is that he was one of the first commercial photographers – if not the first – to embrace retouching and editing technology in his work, and at scale. What this meant for this work turnover was mega efficiency, mega scalability, and mega success. “In 1998 I was at Photokina (the world’s largest photography and imaging industries trade fair). I was asked what I thought the most important development or instrument was going to be in the industry. I said retouching technology – and nobody agreed with me. They all said it was too expensive to buy the machines, that it was a poor investment.” Just like he’d done before, Staud went against the grain and followed his instincts. “After six months I owned three machines and had nine people working them. My turnover was incredible.” What this retouching technology gifted Staud Studios more than anything else, was time, and as a result, access to volume. “There was a shoot I did for the S Class. 500 shots. But there was a mistake! The wrong grill had been installed on the model I’d shot, and this made it look like an E Class. Anyone else would have to go back and shoot the whole thing again – months and months of work. But we were able to retouch them and stay on track, while I prepared the next batch of work.” Staud Studios has kept up with, or stayed ahead of, the times, to the point where it is still one of Europe’s most respected studios, and Staud is still known as a legend in the field of automotive photography. His sons have taken over the majority of business operations, and the company has recently merged with the celebrated global creative production company Mediamonks. But Staud now has all the time in the world for shooting as a passion. Before we get off our call, he shows me what he’s up to today. A gorgeous Porsche 917 – the car that dominated sports car racing in the early 70s, including wins and Le Mans in 1970 and 71. Still fascinated by classic cars (like ourselves here at SpeedHolics, and our readers), I ask for one more minute of his time. I’m keen to hear his thoughts on classic race car culture, and how it stacks up against modern car manufacturing. “Nowadays everything is overdone,” He affirms,”The best period was in the 70s, when cars often had maximum 200hp. This was pure driving. The development back then was immense.” He wraps things up by explaining his gripe with modern cars. “They’re not so much fun. Cars today have everything, but they don't have identity. You can’t control a 1,000 hp car – it controls you. That’s why we’re so into classic cars. For mass mobility, more safety was a good thing. But for fun, it was bad.” We’re on the same page then.

Prof. Grandi looks back over the style genesis of the three prototypes that Franco Scaglione made for Bertone on the 1900C chassis. The aim was to amaze the motor show audience and the Alfa Romeo management with solutions born from the Tuscan designer’s simple mathematical application of principles and solutions to reduce aerodynamic drag Words and Drawings Massimo Grandi In 1950, Alfa Romeo made its début with the 1900, a four-door sedan. This was a milestone in the Milan-based company’s history, as it was the first Alfa Romeo mass produced on an assembly line, the first Alfa Romeo ‘unibody’ and the first Alfa Romeo with standard left-hand drive. The car met with some success among the specialised press, but some of the Alfa customers wanted more power and the gear lever on the floor. On the other hand, the coachbuilders complained that it was impossible to fit out custom builds because of the unibody frame. Finally, neither coupé nor cabriolet versions were planned. And so, to meet these needs, less than a year after its launch Alfa Romeo presented the 1900C chassis (the C stands for "Carrozzieri", “coachbuilders”) on which Touring and Pinin Farina built the coupé and the cabriolet which were added to the price list and sold directly by the network of Alfa Romeo dealers, called the 1900C Sprint and 1900C Cabriolet. The same chassis was rebodied by many other coachbuilders, more or less successfully. The wheelbase on the 1900C was shortened by 130 mm, from 2630 to 2500 mm, and the 1884 cc engine was fitted with a Weber 40 DCA3 dual-body carburettor, larger intake and discharge valves, respectively from 38 to 41 mm and from 34 to 36,5 mm, with the compression ratio increased from 7.5:1 to 7.75:1 to reach 100 HP at 5500 rpm. Axle tracks: front 1320 - rear 1320 mm. Bertone also worked on the new 1900C chassis, asking Franco Scaglione to design a car on which to experiment new solutions aiming to minimise aerodynamic drag while amazing the motor show audiences, and especially the Alfa Romeo management, with his pioneering design. Scaglione was an enthusiastic aerodynamic scholar, and his designs were always based on the application of aerodynamic solutions and principles, and here Scaglione’s mathematical approach to design is similar to other great designers of the past, including Jaray, Komenda, Sayer and Savonuzzi. And thus, the first of three cars marking car design and car history was born, the B.A.T. 5 (Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica no. 5). The B.A.T. 5 was a revolutionary car, the result of Scaglione’s talent: under the supervision of Ezio Cingolani, head of design development and production, he perfected the concepts inherited from aeronautics that he had previously expressed on the Abarth 1500 Biposto. This car, presented at the Turin Motor Show in 1953, aroused the wonder and curiosity of all the visitors. In fact, it was an authentic mobile experimental laboratory, its fantastic forms being none other than Scaglione’s mathematical application of aerodynamic principles and solutions. No element of its design was a self-referential end unto itself, there was a reason and function for everything in terms of aerodynamic performance. Starting from the main lines marking its side profile, designed based on geometric patterns including ellipsis, parabola and hyperbole, mathematical solutions responding to precise needs of maximum penetration and minimum drag. But Scaglione’s solutions were already applied to the bonnet design and modelling, characterised by a large double air intake between the extended bumpers, without the typical triangular Alfa Romeo grille, replaced by a metal "nose" built into the body. Here we see the upturned W solution, previously experimented and applied to the Fiat-Abarth 1500. In front-engine cars, the air for cooling the radiator water is forced to pass through the grille, filtering through the very narrow gaps in the radiator to be centrifuged by the fan, when forced around all the elements and protrusions in the engine compartment and colliding with the rear bulkhead, leaving through the only exit point at the bottom between the bulkhead and the engine. The upturned W design responded to the need to rationally convey the huge flow of intake air in the engine compartment to minimise the turbulence on the front and inside the engine compartment, also through the large air discharge apertures behind the front wheel arch. A similar solution would also be applied by Scaglione to his Ferrari-Abarth 166 built by Scuderia Guastalla. In the B.A.T. 5, the central headlight of the Fiat-Abarth replaced a “nose”, but the design was identical and this arrangement could later be seen in the 1961 Ferrari 246 P and 156 F1 and again in the 2013 Ferrari “La Ferrari”. The most eye-catching part, however, which captured the public’s imagination, is certainly the tail, which has a huge window divided into two parts by a thin metal strip, a concept later borrowed by the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. And especially the two large fins almost as high as the roof, each with a slit and curving inwards. In fact, these fins were far from sci-fi or pure fantasy, they were the result of a strict, thorough aerodynamic research. To understand this, we have to start from the beginning, that theoretical shape with CX equal to 0.0, the so-called “ elongated drop”. This solid allowed the fluid stream to flow perfectly adhering to the surface, without creating any turbulence. The problem of practically applying this shape to a car lies in its proportions, which require a length around five times the width. Starting from the minimum width of a two-seater car, the final length of the car would be at least seven metres. The engineer Kamm had solved this problem if only in part using the famous K-tail, while Scaglione sought a solution for the pavilion of his B.A.T. 5 using these large fins. In this drawing we can see how the pavilion of the B.A.T. is shorter than the virtual pavilion (in red), causing the fluid stream to become detached more or less at the height of the rear pillars. Introducing these large concave fins, the fluid stream was forced to realign to the virtual profile of the elongated drop. The operational diagram of these fins is even clearer in the second drawing. So these amazing lines and shapes were merely the result of an aerodynamic solution that obtained a Cx of 0.23, which allowed the car to reach a maximum speed of 200 km/h, over 30 km/h more than the 1900 C SS with the same 100 hp engine. At that time, Bertone didn’t have a wind tunnel, and to obtain the precious aerodynamic information necessary for the design, they used a system commonly used at the time based on some woollen yarns. These were applied to the bodywork of the cars driven on the road at different speeds and photographed by another car driving alongside to observe the movements of the woollen yarns in the wind. In the second experimental car, the B.A.T. 7, the solutions adopted in the B.A.T. 5 were developed further. In the B.A.T. 7, the general profiling of the whole front part was further extended and lowered by 70 mm. Here too we see the double front air intake which had the task of “guiding” the air flows in the engine compartment in a more regular manner. As seen for the B.A.T. 5, the air flows have an escape route through two apertures on the sides of the car just behind the wheel housings and in front of the rear bulkhead. In the B.A.T. 7, having eliminated the fan, given the exceptional nature of the car, Scaglione adopted two continuous tunnels running from the front air intake to the side discharge vents. The radiators were placed in the tunnel in order to avoid parasite turbulence in the engine compartment. As with the B.A.T. 5, the four wheels were completely faired, the finned air vents of the radiator cooling tunnels were integrated into the front casings, while those in the rear had the profiled shape of the air intakes for the brakes. As concerns the design of the side of the B.A.T.  7, with the casing integrated flush to the body, the inevitable “weight” of the side panel is resolved exceptionally by a balance of solids and voids, a perfect hyperbole drawing the finned air vent of the radiator cooling tunnel here too, a hyperbole that splits into smaller parts in the shaped profile of the rear air intake for the brakes. The upper arm of the first hyperbole runs perfectly horizontally along the whole length of the door, recalling the horizontal arm of the smaller hyperbole running along the rear mudguard to draw another hyperbole represented by the opening for the exhaust pipe. The curved design of the large windscreen is also very interesting, joining the 45° angle of the side windows to the 30° inclination of its midline. Also in the B.A.T. 7, the most eye-catching part is the rear, where the concave fins are even larger and rounded, indeed in the collective imagination they are reminiscent of the huge wings of the manta ray. In fact, the increase in surface area and therefore the size of the fin terminals is due to the fact that, increasing in height in the front, these had unwillingly moved the centre of pressure forwards, and this could only be compensated by increasing the rear surface area; in any case, in the B.A.T. 7, the function of the fins in the reconstruction of the virtual elongated drop was even more evident, and this further aerodynamic development of the rear fins gave it the lowest Cx value of the B.A.T. series, 0.19. The B.A.T. 7 was presented at the 1954 Turin Motor Show, and like the B.A.T. 5 it aroused great amazement and admiration. Two years after the B.A.T. 5 and one after the B.A.T. 7, the 1955 Turin Motor Show saw the launch of the B.A.T. 9. For this car, Nuccio Bertone asked Franco Scaglione to develop the aesthetic concepts of the B.A.T. 5 and 7, again on the Alfa Romeo 1900C chassis, to try to make it more similar to a car suitable for mass production, without however ceasing to amaze the motor show audiences and Alfa Romeo, which that year had planned to launch the Giulietta sedan and had begun working with Bertone to build the Giulietta Sprint bodies. The B.A.T. 9 of 1955 was in some way different from the formal and conceptual path of the previous models. Here too, due to the direct intervention of Nuccio Bertone, the project aimed mainly to show how the developments of the B.A.T. project could lead to large-scale car production. Although developing the style code of the previous models, the B.A.T. 9 had far more subtle lines, just think of the rear fins: on the B.A.T. 5 and B.A.T. 7, these were very large and ostentatious, while here they were reduced to two far more discreet metal strips. Bertone abandoned all the most extreme features of the previous two cars, turning them into features that were more suited to normal road use: the non-retracting front headlights were now located on the bumpers. For the first time, the classic Alfa Romeo badge adorned the front of the car. It is important to underline this “diversity of intentions” to better understand the formal solutions of the three cars in a comparative analysis. In the B.A.T. 9 we find all the elements characterising the two previous models, but in a more reduced form. The rear ellipsis is more open, and the shorter side profiles, originating from the rear cut of the door and with a constant progression parallel to the belt line. A particular feature of the B.A.T. 9 is the ribbing and beading running along the whole side of the car, at the rear maintaining a straight horizontal line deviating from the narrow profile of the fairing, almost as if forming other horizontal fins. Setting out to maintain a low aerodynamic drag, the bodywork kept the large front and rear overhangs, faired wheels (only at the front), a very sleek “drop-shaped” passenger compartment with less angled side windows compared to the body and a large panoramic windscreen with an upturned pillar integrated perfectly into the almost-flat pavilion. The large air vents behind the front wheel arches also disappeared. One curious thing about this car was Bertone and Scaglione’s decision to eliminate the fairing on the rear wheels but not the front ones. In fact, doing the opposite would have significantly narrowed the front of the car where the fairing, having to leave room for the wheel movements on the vertical axis, caused an inevitable swelling. The two solutions are compared in this drawing. Of course, there must have been objective reasons for this peculiar solution, but to be honest I have no idea what they might have been. At this point we can look at these B.A.T.s for a comparison of their similarities and differences. We have already examined the more general aspects the three models have or do not have in common, but it is perhaps interesting to underline the different solutions Scaglione applied to the front headlights. Aiming to eliminate sources of air flow disturbance at the front of the car, in the B.A.T. 5 and 7 the headlights are fully retracting in the B.A.T. 5, incorporated in the internal face of the bumpers. In the B.A.T. 7 they are again retracting, but are placed inside the two air intakes near the central “nose”. In the B.A.T. 9 on the other hand, the headlights are fixed and on show, but integrated into the bumper profile with a Plexiglas casing. Another special aspect marking the three designs is the pavilion. Talking about the pavilion design, Scaglione stated, “It is certainly the hardest part, both due to the insufficient elongation ratios and the interference that this creates in the fluid stream on the main fairing”. The solutions on the rear of the pavilion are particularly interesting, with the window and the central stabilizer fin with a different design for each of the three cars. As with the Fiat-Abarth 1500, the window is again very wide and divided into two parts. In the BAT5, the rear pavilion is particularly long, and tapers to create a kind of thick central fin with the two parts of the rear window running from the rear pillars almost to the top of the pavilion. In the BAT7, on the other hand, also in the longitudinal section the pavilion forms a more specific drop shape, connecting to the main fairing with a concave profile that continues onto two large curved fins which, separating the two parts of the rear window, create a thin yet evident central crested fin, limiting the formation of parasite turbulence created by the meeting of the two masses of air running along the sides of the pavilion as far as possible. In the BAT9, these forms are “normalised”, recalling more the BAT5 solution but in a smaller size. The pavilion follows the drop shape to the rear, regularly tapering into a just-hinted thin fin shape, with the two trapezoidal rear windows on the two sides. As explained above, the drop-shaped pavilion requires rear fins to overcome the insufficient length of the pavilion. As we can see, this special function of the fin requires that it be located in the point in which the fluid stream becomes detached from the curve of the pavilion, but in fact it is also necessary for the fin to be progressively aligned along the side of the pavilion both before and after the point in which the stream becomes detached. These aspects can be perceived immediately when looking particularly at the B.A.T. 5 and 7. In both profiles, the fins start at the height of the front edge of the door, rising progressively and following the sides of the cars and ending on the edge of the rear coupling. The concave-convex section of the fins creates a channel between the fins and the sides of the pavilion, drawing a kind of open ellipsis at their ends, which in the specific case of the B.A.T. 7, seems almost to close definitively. In the B.A.T. 9 we find all these elements, yet in a reduced form. The rear ellipsis is more open, and the shorter side profiles, originating from the rear cut of the door and with a constant progression parallel to the belt line. So, as we have seen, while the B.A.T. 5 and 7 seemed to be two authentic mobile experimental laboratories, with the B.A.T. 9 the designers attempted to translate these experimental elements into a formal synthesis suited for a car produced on an industrial scale. Clearly an experiment, the B.A.T. 9 was never produced in series, but overall these three technical aerodynamic berlinettas contributed enormously to aerodynamic studies applied to cars, and the ability of these applications to generate new and advanced formal languages, as all Franco Scaglione’s works demonstrated to the full. -- Massimo Grandi, architect and designer, previously director of the Car Design laboratory at the Design Campus of the Department of Architecture at the University of Florence. Member of the ASI Culture Commission. Among his published works: “La forma della memoria: il progetto della Ferrari Alaspessa”, “Car design workshop”, “Dreaming American Cars”, “Ferrari 550 Alaspessa: dall’idea al progetto”, “Quando le disegnava il vento”, “Il paradigma Scaglione”, “La più veloce: breve storia dei record mondiali di velocità su strada” (with others).

This time, Luigi Marmiroli’s memoirs look back on the times when Lamborghini’s path met that of the “Designer of the Century”, leading to the style proposal of the first P132, the future Diablo, and the creation of the Calà prototype Words Luigi Marmiroli Photography Courtesy of Luigi Marmiroli Archive Among the many people I met during my professional life in the car world, and with whom I had the opportunity to work, Giorgetto Giugiaro occupies an important place. Not only ironically, he always referred to himself as an honest “pencil pusher”, and, as he started to work at Fiat at the tender age of 14, I think he must have consumed thousands of pencils during his career. These pencils helped him to influence the shape of cars in the last sixty years, and rightly so he entered the Hall of Fame of the Motor Shows in Geneva and Detroit. This article helps me to dust down my memory of when I worked with him on two projects during my time as Technical Director of Automobili Lamborghini. I refer precisely to the style proposal for the P132, the future Diablo, and the Calà prototype, which also had the support of his son Fabrizio. The P132 project was the first of the future Lamborghini car range to replace the Countach. I submitted a preliminary layout of the mechanics to Giorgetto Giugiaro's company Italdesign, and immediately he developed an original bodywork to go round it. We worked continuously with him and his engineers. I remember that we agreed to integrate a spoiler into the front of the car, with two functions: one linked to aerodynamics, to increase the car’s down force, and the other structural, to meet the US type-approval requirements in the crash test. Even the pole test, during which the mid-line of the car hit a vertical pole at high speed, would certainly not have caused any harm to the driver or passenger. Giugiaro produced a whole series of renderings and gave an original presentation to the managers at Lamborghini. He rested a full-scale cardboard cut-out of the car against the wall. Facing the wall as we listened to his learned presentation, I heard Patrick Mimran, the young Lamborghini shareholder who also owned his own splendid Countach, mumble to himself that he didn’t like it. I must admit that, while admiring the style proposal, I too felt it was closer to the philosophy of British sports cars than to the Lamborghini style code. Although it was thought that the project could have obtained the same commercial success as many of Giugiaro’s other works, nothing ever came of it. Exactly 10 years later, in 1995 and after many other not entirely positive adventures with Automobili Lamborghini, Giugiaro presented the Calà at the International Motor Show in Geneva. Like all the Italdesign prototypes, to demonstrate that their proposals were not merely inert models, the Calà was driven onto the stand. The Calà was presented as a research prototype, a 2+2 coupé that could be turned into a Targa top car simply by removing the roof. Designed for everyday use and therefore far more comfortable and functional than the supercars, the Calà was higher than all the other Lamborghini cars of the past. The bodywork was similar to a people carrier, although the effect at the rear was more one of a two-volume car with a short tail and a spoiler with high visual impact. The style was marked by an unusual windscreen that ran into the roof, with two grooves lying above the heads of the driver and the passenger. This solution brought more light into the passenger compartment, which could comfortably hold two adults, and two children on the rear seat. The original dashboard had a rounded ergonomic profile that  protruded towards the driver. The seats were hand stitched and, like all the panel work, were covered in an original and almost shocking bordeaux suede. I was personally very excited about the possibility to dust off the mechanics of the P140 with a design solution by Giorgetto Giugiaro. The chassis mechanics were in fact based on the ashes of the P140 project which should have become the successor to the Diablo. Unfortunately, after prototyping and even industrialisation involving international partners, the US Chrysler, shareholder from 1987, due to internal problems the project was aborted and even Lamborghini was sold to the Indonesian company Megateck. In any case, following the success of the Calà at the Geneva Motor Show, Mantovani, Giugiaro’s technical partner at Italdesign, sent Lamborghini a quote for the supply of the industrialised bodywork, complete with interiors and installations, to be sent to Lamborghini to assemble the mechanics and for the delivering. The proposal included the fitting out of 13 prototypes and, after the tests, the supply of 5 cars a day for a total of 4000 cars. The disappointment when the programme was not accepted by the new Indonesian shareholders was huge. Whenever I climb into the classic Panda designed by Giugiaro, which I keep in my garage, I am filled with nostalgia for this wonderful design that was not-to-be. -- Luigi Marmiroli was born in Fiorano Modenese in 1945. After graduating in mechanical engineering at the University of Padua, in 1970 he was hired by Ferrari to introduce electronic computing to Maranello for the first time. In 1976 he founded Fly Studio with Giacomo Caliri, designing and managing competition cars on international circuits. Their main works were for Fittipaldi Copersucar, Autodelta, ATS and Minardi, with whom they joined forces. The developments in the partnership with Autodelta led Marmiroli to manage the technical unit of the Euroracing team in 1983. Two years later he was hired by Lamborghini to design the heir of the Countach. Other projects came after the 17 versions of the Diablo, though due to the continuing changes of ownership of the Sant’Agata based company, they were never put into production. Marmiroli relaunched Fly Studio in 1997, providing consulting services. One of the projects of the last few years is the development of microcars, quadbikes and commercial vehicles, including electric versions.

The initials MC mean “Maserati Corse”, while the number indicates the number of cylinders hidden under the bonnet: twelve. In the plan to relaunch the historical Modena-based brand, the then-management of Ferrari decided unconditionally to focus on a prestigious project, in line with the Trident traditions: the GT1 series. A “monster” car came from a team effort that also involved Dallara: this is the story of the car and the men that created it Words Alessandro Giudice Photography Paolo Carlini Anyone who loves racing cars will not only have memories but also emotions linked to a series of sensations that sometimes they are not even aware of. And so the sound of a far-off engine or the smell of petrol or sharp braking, or why not, some music, a word, a special light instantly takes us back to a moment in our lives buried who knows where, surprising us with all its strength. When in 2003 Giampaolo Dallara was asked to work on the aerodynamics of the racing Maserati MC12, he probably just had to hear the name to take a step back 60 years in time. He did this reliving all the emotions he felt back in 1961 from behind the walls of the pits in Sebring, Florida, when, aged 25, a young, enthusiastic yet inexperienced engineer, he was catapulted into the USA as sporting director of the Maserati Birdcage with Bruce McLaren, Walt Hansgen and Stirling Moss. And here he is, many years later with an extraordinary reputation in competition car design, dusting off his youthful enthusiasm to bring his extensive experience to the development of a name which, for him, meant fascination, pride and opportunity. In 2002, Luca di Montezemolo, then-chairman and managing director of Ferrari, after the Maranello-based company had bought out the Trident in 1997, set up Maserati Corse which, led by Claudio Berro with the technical management of Giorgio Ascanelli - former F1 track engineer with Berger, Piquet and Senna - intended to help relaunch the brand image with a focus on sport: the racing tradition that had created the Maserati legend, but which the company had abandoned in the 1960s with the Birdcage, the nickname given to the car because of the tight mesh of aluminium pipes typical of the sports prototypes 60, 61 and 63. While the small committee including Montezemolo, Jean Todt, the engineer Amedeo Felisa, then-general director of Ferrari Granturismo, Berro and, on demand, Ascanelli, decided that the Maserati Vodafone Trophy - the single-brand championship fought with the GranSport coupé - would launch the new sporting season, everyone realised that the Modena-based brand needed a more prestigious stage, in line with its history. And so, among the various alternatives offered by the Motorsports panorama, the GT1 series was chosen, as it was thought that this would soon become a world championship. Montezemolo wanted to design a limited edition of a Maserati supercar, based on the contemporary Ferrari Enzo model but with a spider set-up. And this is where the MC12 adventure starts. The name not only includes the initials of the Maserati Corse, but also identifies the number of engine cylinders, the 6-litre V12 taken from the Ferrari Enzo, catalogued in Maranello with code F140. The MC12 also had the Enzo chassis, although during the design phase this was extended by 150 mm. The underlying idea was to build a road car but which could also be used for racing. Thanks to the personal relationship between Claudio Berro and Fabrizio Giugiaro, the Turin-based designer was asked to produce what was known as an artist’s impression, a sketch of how he would have interpreted the car, the only rule to respect being the measurements and sizes set by the FIA for GT cars: “Because there was no point working twice on a car that would be raced on the track: I might as well have set it up right from the start of the project,” Ascanelli says. The young Giugiaro was the right man for this kind of advice, as he had already been involved in the production of the Saleen S7, the American car that successfully raced in the GT championship. This was the style basis that came to Dallara and on which the team, with Luca Pignacca and Dialma Zinelli, in their respective roles as project manager and aerodynamics manager, worked, supported from the very beginning by Giorgio Ascanelli. And these were the last two who began to adapt the model to the technical and aerodynamic needs of the wind tunnel: “As I didn't how to draw, so I gave Dialma the instructions: ‘put an air intake there, lower the front, a bit wider, a bit narrower’,” - Ascanelli recalls, “and that’s how we managed to defined the car. It was great fun.” So the technical surface we had to work on was ready, including the “Targa” style solution of the road version which turned the car into a spider, with a detachable roof between the roll-bar and the windscreen rim, both in carbon. Pignacca says: “The chassis, engine and Enzo gearbox had come from Maserati. Everything else we made ourselves: the suspension arms, pedals, radiators, the tank. Even the steering box, which we fitted a different pump to.” The body was the Enzo carbon chassis, which we extended by 150 mm for sporting needs: “Extending the chassis was practical for eliminating the front wheel vortices. Because if you have to position a 12-cylinder engine longitudinally, with the straight gearbox and the boot, which was required for both road and racing cars by the regulations, you certainly couldn’t have a short tail,” Ascanelli confirms. And, talking about the engine, the F140 65° V12 had been turned into a dry sump engine with a different timing gear, heads and crankcase. All that remained of the original were the cylinders, pistons, camshaft, connecting rods and crankshaft. It was then depowered, with smaller intake ducts, probably as the MC12 could not be faster than the Ferrari Enzo, which had forty or so more HP. These strategic positioning issues did not however affect the clear success - in commercial and image terms even before its sporting success -, in the slightest. When Zinelli and Ascanelli had developed a shape that considered all the aerodynamic needs of the MC12, at Dallara and directly at Ferrari, in charge of the style, along came Frank Stephenson, a talented designer who, among others, had created the BMW-era Mini. “He came to Varano and we spent a few days together, him working on the details of the MC12 to remove all the rough and overly “tracky” features of the the car, seeing as it had started out as the design of a technical surface,” Dialma Zinelli says. Adding: “One curious thing was that, due to the origin of the MC12 project and the long and close friendship between him and Dallara, Piero Ferrari brought us his own personal Enzo and left it in the workshop for a couple of months, and we dismantled it to study all the solutions that had been adopted.” Stephenson’s job was to make the car type-approved for road use: “For instance, by shielding the large air vents on the front bonnet with longitudinal strips (one of the style features of the MC12, ndr), which were necessary, in the event of collision with a pedestrian, to prevent a ball the size of a child’s head from getting inside. And then the narrow front with rounded corners, similar to the oval “mouth” of the historical Maserati Sports like the 200S and, of course, the shape of the front headlights, the position of the rear lights and so on.” These changes were far from marginal, and were what made Stephenson say that the MC12 was “the car I had most fun designing”; the only compromise on the Enzo style he had accepted was the shape of the roof. Giorgio Ascanelli comments on the shape and size of the car: “It’s hard to pinpoint the paternity of the MC12 style: what with Fabrizio Giugiaro's very immature initial sketches, and the aerodynamic improvements made with Zinelli, I think that Frank Stephenson’s work was decisive in adding grace to the design of this large car". "In any case, when Sergio Marchionne, who liked the MC12 so much that he bought one, asked me who had designed it, I told him, it was the wind." Even though a few “stolen” pictures were making the rounds and a racing preview had been seen on the track in Fiorano, both the road and the racing versions of the MC12 were presented at the Geneva Motor Show in February 2004. The road version had been announced to dealers the previous September, and when the sales opened in early November Maserati instantly received 174 bookings and as many deposits for a car that hadn’t been seen and which at the time cost 720,000 Euros. When it was confirmed that only 50 cars would be produced (25 in 2004 and as many again the following year), the company was forced to refund most of the advance payments, even though this did not stop the constant flow of purchase requests from all over the world. It had a huge impact on both the public and insiders, also on the brands racing in the GT championship, who were worried about the entrance of a top-level competitor. Smiling, Ascanelli recalls: “When I met my German colleagues, everyone asked me what kind of monster we were building in Modena!” A “monster” that began to cover miles and miles driven by another key name in this project, Andrea Bertolini, test driver and symbol of a car that he was able to develop into an absolute GT benchmark. Bertolini’s adventures in and around Modena began way back in 1992, when, aged 19, he was hired to test GT cars in Maranello. In 2002, the engineer Amedeo Felisa assigned him to the new “Corse Clienti” department, developing competition cars like the 360 GTC, in partnership with Michelotto and in which Bertolini ran a few races. In late 2003, Todt and Michael Schumacher saw him on the track in Fiorano, and Todt called him into the office: “From next year you will also be testing the F1 single-seater.” “They told me that Michael had strongly supported this choice. 2004 was really tough, it was tiring work but really great,” Bertolini states. “In the first part of the year I only worked on the MC12 tests. Twice a month we did four test drives a week, and when I wasn’t working on the MC12, I was on the track with the F1.” Ascanelli confirms: “Bertolini and I went out at night to find the most winding routes, to see if and how the MC12 handled the road; after a few tests he told me that he thought we were 4-5 years ahead of the competition, thanks to the great work that had been done on the handling, balancing and traction.” Bertolini tested everything, even sitting in the internal scale model to check the arrangement of the controls and the driving position. At least until the first shake-down of the racing car, in Fiorano on 12 January 2004. Ascanelli tells how the début went: “We didn’t make a very good impression. After a lap and a half we had to stop because of a design error, the drive shaft was too short. The whole world was at the track to see the début of the much-awaited Maserati, and we were embarrassed. We sorted everything out and it was already evening when we went back onto the track, also to test the headlights. At 4 in the morning I told the guys to go have a shower, and we would meet again at 8, and one of them said: ‘Who cares about a shower, men have to stink!” Everyone laughed, and we all got back to work.” Schumacher also tried out the car on the track, and Prost too, for a couple of days: “I got on well with him, he was one of my Formula 1 idols as a teenager, and I wanted to know as much as possible about how he worked, and I did that with Michael too. From Alain I learned how to check the worthiness of the technical works: for example, how the bars had to be adjusted, repeating tests over and over with and without the changes, in order to be fully aware of the differences." "From Michael I learned the importance of attention to detail, even in the passenger compartment, and I applied this immediately to the MC12: starting from putting the switches in the right place so that they could be found intuitively. One indispensable thing about a racing car: if the race conditions change, such as rain, the controls needed couldn’t be all over the place on the dashboard. Michael was very firm about this: the switches for a given function all had to be aligned and the same colour.” Mika Salo started to work with Bertolini on the MC12’s track début in 2004. After the tests that had kept the whole team busy from January to July, in September the Maserati finally got on the track in Imola, taking part with two cars (Salo-Bertolini and Herbert-De Simone) in one of the last championship races, but out of classification as it was not type-approved yet: “It took the FIA three races to judge whether the car was a real GT or rather a monster that would have killed the series,” Ascanelli says. The result was in any case excellent, with the two cars finishing in second and third place. The next two races in Oschersleben, Germany, and Zhuhai, China, went even better, with Salo-Bertolini winning twice. Type-approved at last, the participation in the 2005 season marked the start of the MC12’s extraordinary career, which began precisely by winning its début championship. To celebrate its success in one of the most important races of that year, the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, which the MC12 won twice more in its career, in 2006 Maserati released a limited edition of the car called the “Corsa”, reserved for the most enthusiastic - and wealthy - clients, seeing as it cost a million Euros. Only 12 cars plus a prototype, shown here, were produced. The car was based directly on the racing MC12 and was designed exclusively for non-competitive use on the track. As it wasn’t type-approved for road use, nor subject to the restrictions of the GT technical regulations, the car was the purest expression of the MC12, in terms of both performance and aerodynamics. In the following years, the MC12 won 22 races and 14 Driver, Manufacturer and Team titles, with the crew members Andrea Bertolini-Michael Bartels winning the drivers titles in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010, the latter having become the FIA GT1 World Championship in the meantime. The only regret was that the 12-cylinder never had the chance to take part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. “That was a shame,” Giorgio Ascanelli states, “because the MC12 had all that it took to win. Unfortunately, the ACO (Automobile Club de l’Ouest) which organised the race, decided to spoil things for an FIA GT World Championship winner by increasing the minimum number of road cars built on the basis of the GT model from 50 to 100, so the MC12 was left out. It was a political issue, but that was the result.” Andrea Bertolini reckons that, in his day, the road version of the MC12 was the best super sports car on the market for easy driving, predictability and performance: “We always made the difference in terms of pace on the track, the tyres had the best performance throughout the race.” And he continues: “I remember everything about the MC12, as if it were yesterday. It’s the one car that personally changed me, my own progress and my career, it was a tailored suit that helped me win a lot of races. It was the central focus of a close-knit group of people: I remember all the mechanics one by one, all really motivated guys.” For him, the most thrilling win was the 2010 World Championship in Argentina: “It was my fourth title and we all knew that the MC12 adventure was over. We had already announced that Maserati was withdrawing from racing and wouldn’t be taking part in the 2011 championship. It was the end of an extraordinary run, after seven years, with a great car still leading the field". "I often think of Michael Schumacher and when he tested it. He complimented me on the work done, and said: ‘Andrea, you're going to have fun with this car.’ He couldn’t have been more right.”

Tracing the Journey of a Motorsport Icon: The Chassis number 11431954 OSCA MT4's Epic Tale from Italian Tracks to Classic Car Renaissance - A Story of Speed, Triumph, and Timeless Restoration. Photography by Jeroen Vink (IG: @jeroenvinkphotography) From an interview with Alex von Mozer VSOC. The 1954 OSCA MT4 stands as a testament to the craftsmanship of the Maserati brothers, who in 1947 had founded the Officine Specializzate Costruzioni Automobili, or OSCA, which specialized in competition sports cars. Born in Bologna, this iconic sports racing car wasn't just a machine; its low weight and high power rendered it a symphony of speed and ferocious tenacity – one which would etch its legacy on the tracks of Italy and beyond. Having been entered in almost 70 official races between 1954 and 1962, chassis number 1143 is a thoroughbred racer – indeed this was the most frequently raced of all OSCA MT4s. Francesco Giardini, the first custodian of this speed demon, wasted no time unleashing its potential. The year was 1954, and Giardini hurled the OSCA into the crucible of motorsport glory – the Mille Miglia, as well as the 1000km Eifelrennen at the Nürburgring, and the hallowed asphalt of Le Mans with #42 emblazoned on its frame. After conquering this trio of behemoth races, Giardini's journey with the OSCA continued with a dozen Italian hill-climbs and circuit races. In 1954, he etched his name in the annals of racing history by clinching the Italian Championship in the 1.100cc Sport class, securing four overall wins and five class victories. As the seasons changed, so did the hands that gripped the steering wheel of #1143. Attilio Brandi of Florence took the wheel, entering the OSCA into an impressive 37 races over three exhilarating years. He claimed 10 class wins and 10 second places with the OSCA. One of his major results was his class win in the 1.100cc Sport category in the 1956 Mille Miglia. Brandi also claimed second place in the Italian 1.100cc Sport championship in 1955, and was the overall winner of the Italian Mountain Championship in the 1.100cc Sport category in both 1956 and 1957. The OSCA’s pedigree shows that this was more than a race car; it was a perpetual contender, a constant force in the Italian racing scene. It tasted the asphalt of the Targa Florio four times from 1958 to 1961, leaving its mark on the historic circuit. In 1962, the curtain closed on the racing career of #1143 after a handful of Sicilian hill-climbs, and it found its way into the hands of a now unknown Sicilian racing driver. There, it faded into obscurity and sadly, some disrepair, until the 1980s. Alfonso Merendino, the winner of the 1977 Targa Florio, discovered the battered relic in an underground car park, awaiting rescue. The restoration, completed in 1997, breathed new life into #1143, and Merendino sold it to Alexander Fyshe, the long-time president of the Maserati Club UK. For over 15 years, he reveled in its timeless beauty and historic significance. The torch was eventually passed to the current owner through Netherlands-based VSOC, and the OSCA MT4 once again graced the tracks, participating in the commemorative editions of the Mille Miglia and Le Mans in 2023. A third-place finish in the latter race signaled that the old stallion still had plenty of fight left in her.As plans take shape for future classic events, the OSCA MT4, with its rich history of adventure and victory, continues to captivate hearts and minds. Alex von Mózer MsC is a lifelong car enthusiast and owner of VSOC. Grew up with fast cars and clearly remembers seeing his first Ferrari Dino 246 GT in Italy when he was only 4 years old. Father of 2 lovely girls. Always very busy with the client in mind. Enjoys sports, racing and rallying. Photographer Jeroen Vink is a highly skilled professional photographer residing near Amsterdam, Netherlands. With a diverse range of interests and talents, he is not only an accomplished photographer but also an engineer with a profound fascination for vintage cars and exquisite timepieces. His expertise lies in the realm of automotive and product photography, particularly in the captivating domains of jewelry and watches. Throughout his career, he has curated an awe-inspiring portfolio, attracting esteemed clients such as Stellantis, Renault, Fiat Professional, Watchtime magazine, and Hodinkee.

From Dafs to Ferraris, passing through microcars and futuristic prototypes: his pencil moved in all the car fields you can possibly imagine, with unmatched creative flair. He drew so many cars that still today it’s impossible to draw up a detailed list of them all, as many of his designs were not signed. His son Edgardo has been trying to put some order into the huge heritage of his father’s works since 1989, firstly by setting up a Historical Register and then creating an archive, which however is still incomplete. Out of the around 30,000 drawings Giovanni Michelotti is thought to have done in over 30 years of activity, he has kept and catalogued almost six thousand. For now Words & Photography Gilberto Milano Archive Courtesy of Archivio Storico Michelotti “He drew, drew, drew, all the time. Day and night. Ultimately, I don't think my father ever actually worked, I think he just really enjoyed drawing cars.” These are the words of Edgardo Michelotti, Giovanni’s seventy-one-year-old son, who opened the doors to his father’s precious archives kept in a former workshop just outside the centre of Turin. Edgardo was completing a degree in architecture when Giovanni died in January 1980, and since then his son has been trying to assure the fair recognition of his father’s work by saving as much of it as possible. The story of Giovanni Michelotti is indeed unique in the history of car design, in Italy and beyond. No other stylist whose genius has illuminated this sector thus far can boast such a broad and varied production of designs as those created by Giovanni Michelotti from 1949 onwards, until his premature death aged 58. Yet at the same time, nobody has ever suffered the kind of “oblivion” that has afflicted the work of this humble and prolific car creator. Still today he is unknown to most people and little celebrated compared to other legends who have – rightly so – been awarded with prizes and honorary degrees. How can a stylist who, in his short career, drew over one thousand cars, working with all the coachbuilders in Turin (aside from one), the only person to hold the record of 40 cars on show at a motor show (Turin 1954, most of which undeclared) still be considered a minor stylist? There are many reasons. Michelotti was first and foremost a great car enthusiast, and then a businessman. “I’m not a good speaker, but if they make me draw I’m happy to do so,” he said, talking about his work at an Italian Coachbuilding conference in 1978. “For me, what counts in a car is style, and style is also what brings it all together for sales. The stylist’s task is a very delicate one. They have to dress up a car, and a car is always made of four wheels, a steering wheel and an engine. You have to know what goes round these parts to create a car that must be acceptable to the general public, the retailers and the technicians.” And he went round these parts a lot. “He never said no to anyone, and never pulled out when faced with difficulties. And yet he only ever put his name on a design when the client said he could. And above all, he never had anyone to promote his image, a “service” that other coachbuilders had,” his son Edgardo explains. It’s impossible to say how many cars Michelotti actually designed. Edgardo reckons around 1,200-1,300 cars that were actually produced and many others that weren't, perhaps around 30,000 drawings and designs. Quite an incredible number. “Dad was very prolific, but also incredibly fast. In one night, with a sandwich, some good wine, a pack of cigarettes and the radio blasting, he could produce a 1:1 scale drawing of a new model, showing all the measurements and details, ready to be made,” Edgardo recalls. “Apparently he made a thousand models from the early Fifties to 1961. For Vignale alone he drew 311 cars, of which 150 Ferraris, which all went into production. He didn’t feel the need to sign off on them all, he loved his work: he was paid just for the design, and even then not much. Perhaps even just the full-size drawing.” Michelotti began drawing at a young age, seven or eight years old, passing the time he spent in bed – six months – suffering from a chronic inflammatory disease affecting both hip joints, bilateral coxarthrosis. At the time, the only cure was quinine and absolute rest. That was when he realised he could draw. He drew everything. And this disease revealed a talent. His father gave him the idea of cars, when he saw that a coachbuilder was looking for an apprentice. Not just any old coachbuilder, but Stabilimenti Farina, the largest coachbuilder in Turin. It was run by Giovanni Farina and his two sons: Nino, a future Formula 1 world champion with Alfa Romeo in 1950, and Attilio (Giovanni Battista was Giovanni’s younger brother, who set up Pininfarina). Michelotti was 16 when he was hired. At first he worked under Pietro Frua, a style manager with a tough character. Indeed, Frua was sacked on the spot after an argument with Attilio, and Giovanni Michelotti took his place. He was just 17. And that was when he began to surprise everyone with his creativity. Michelotti stayed at Stabilimenti Farina until 1949, when he opened the first professional car design firm in Italy. A powerhouse of ideas, he drew everything: in particular, small Fiats and Abarths, as well as microcars, beach cars, sports cars, super sports cars (the two Ferraris that won the Mille Miglia in 1951 and 1952 were his), advertising vehicles, buses, tractors, motorboats, scooters and dream prototypes. He worked for many famous coachbuilders, including Allemano, Balbo, Bertone, Vignale, Ghia and Moretti. But never for Pininfarina. “I suppose he had some kind of verbal commitment with Attilio to never work for Pinin,” Edgardo imagines. Although his cars become famous worldwide, little is known of him. Indeed, very few people know that he was the man behind the most original Ferraris of the early Fifties, all the Vignale cars, especially the Ferraris, like the beautiful Vignale Barchetta 166 and 212 Spider, as well as the 1952 Ferrari Berlinetta 340 Mexico Tuboscocca Vignale. Or the 1953 Maserati A6 GCS Spider Vignale; the 1953 Fiat 8V Vignale and 8V Siata; the 1953 Cunningham C3, considered “one of the ten most beautiful contemporary cars”; the Renault Alpine built by Allemano in 1954 based on one of his drawings. And also, the spectacular Demon Rouge built on a Fiat 8V chassis in 1955, the first to use a hidden handle in the door pillar; the 1958 Lotus Eleven Ghia Eagle; the futuristic Lancia Nardi Raggio Azzurro of 1955 and 1958; the 1961 Giulietta SV Conrero Goccia and many others besides. In 1958 he was the first Italian designer to work with the Japanese (Hino Contessa) and in 1959 his first BMW and Triumph creations, further developed in the ‘60s, were produced. The lines were completely different even though they were all designed by the same person in the same period. Among his many stylistic innovations, we may recall the 1960 “pagoda-style roof”, which added greater side visibility (the sides are higher in the centre) on a more compact car. This solution was later adopted by Mercedes for the 230 SL and Lancia for the Fulvia HF. Or the egg-shaped frame with a square grille, which became a style feature of Ferraris in the 1950s. “He had clear ideas, when he drew he rarely rubbed anything out and corrected it. Sometimes he didn't even do the 1:10 scale drawings. He didn't do any sketches, he just started creating the car he had in mind in scale 1:1,” Edgardo states. “His speciality was three-quarter views, which were the most spectacular and effective for impressing the clients, and these took him just a few minutes. He was also a maniac for safety, and his technical and marketing background allowed him to understand the needs of the clientele according to their origin: French, English, German, Japanese. He thought of everything in advance, and delivered projects that were 90% feasible.” “He had learned that aerodynamics is important in the first two thirds of the car, safety is fundamental for the people in the centre and once you get to the back you can concentrate on saving weight,” the journalist Gianni Rogliatti said of him in 1964. Of his production in the 1970s, we should remember the Matra Laser (1971) with its wedge-shaped profile; the Fiat 128 Pulsar (1972), the world’s first car to adopt impact-absorbing polyurethane bumpers; the Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Nart commissioned by Luigi Chinetti in 1978, with a far more streamlined front than the Pininfarina Daytona; the Lancia Mizar, still today the only car built with four gull-wing doors, and the BMW 2002 Turbo, all between 1972 and 1974. “He was a man of contradictions: a classically trained designer who became an iconoclastic stylist, a great car communicator in the sense of the poetic metaphor of escapism. But when appropriate, he was perfectly able to work with more restrained models. This is demonstrated by the Triumph TR4 and Spitfire spiders, evergreen forms of majestic simplicity,” the car historian Angelo Tito Anselmi wrote. Edgardo took over the company when he was just 26, with little experience. He studied architecture, and in the company he was just one of the draughtsmen, an employee like all the others. With twenty or so staff, draughtsmen and workers, he continued until 1991 when he was forced to surrender to the new reality of the car manufacturers’ in-house style centres. “Other coachbuilders had closed, and the atmosphere in Turin had already become tainted. I was 39 years old. We just closed it down, we weren’t even bankrupt,” Edgardo recalls. And the closure was also fatal for setting up the archive. During the final move, many of the drawings that had been kept in the company were stolen overnight. “The person who took them later said they did it to stop them from being destroyed. But then they gave them to collectors or sold them at international auctions,” Edgardo states. “Many of those drawings were certainly the ones of the Triumphs, because I have very few of the Triumph Spitfire, the TR4. The Victoria and Albert Museum bought a lot of them and luckily they at least gave me some high-definition digital copies. I’m still missing a lot of the ones done for the Turin coachbuilders, though I think I have all of the ones for Moretti. And I have lots of the Ghia Aigle ones.” Edgardo has no idea of how many drawings his father did throughout his career. “I have six thousand of them, but I reckon there are between 25 and 30 thousand drawings. Perhaps even more". "Of course, he didn't take away the ones he did when he was at Stabilimenti Farina, and I guess they’ve all been thrown away. That’s what they did at the time. Vignale threw loads of material away, and so did Balbo and Ghia. When they didn't need the drawings any more, they burned them: nobody thought of saving them for posterity at the time. But I think my archive contains the world’s most varied collection of my father’s work. He worked all the time, doing research and designing new things. Some of them were later literally copied by other designers, as Piero Castagnero did at Lancia, he stole some ideas from the Osca 1600, presented in Geneva in 1959, and he made the Fulvia HF, with the pagoda-style roof that was criticised at the time. My archive contains some patents and some contracts he signed with BMW, Triumph, with Siata. And I’ve got tons of correspondence. I think we can say that it’s possible to reconstruct a significant part of motoring history, from the 1950s to the ‘70s.” SpeedHolics would like to thank the Archivio Storico Michelotti for allowing us to publish the drawings illustrating this article - http://www.archiviostoricomichelotti.it/ -- Gilberto Milano, class of 1949, professional journalist, began writing about economics and industry and later turned to motoring. Especially historical motoring, specialising in the investigation of all aspects of collecting. He has written for all major Italian magazines. This is his first article for SpeedHolics.

This is quite the fairy tale, the story of an Argentinian businessman who came to Italy to make his dream come true. Luigi Marmiroli recalls when they were both at Lamborghini, where Horacio took his first steps and immediately demonstrated his tenacity and determination Words Luigi Marmiroli Photography Courtesy of Luigi Marmiroli Archive As our eager readers well know, in my professional life I met and cooperated with many famous people from the leisure, sports and competition fields of the motoring world. I have already talked of Enzo Ferrari, Ferruccio Lamborghini, Carlo Chiti and Clay Regazzoni. There is another person that I am very fond of, as I had the chance to work with him at Lamborghini until he left to doggedly follow his own dream of building his own car. The opportunity to write this article comes from the fact that in May, Pagani Automobili celebrated the 25th anniversary of its foundation. An important celebration: in a lovely square in Modena, twenty-five cars - from the first Zonda to the last Utopia - were put on display all together, thrilling the fans. But here’s where it all began. Horacio Pagani was born in Argentina; his father was a baker. As we know, all the great founders of Modena car companies came from humble backgrounds: the Maserati brothers were two of the seven children of a railway worker; Enzo Ferrari’s father was a blacksmith; Ferruccio Lamborghini came from a family of farmers. In 1983, with a tent and two bicycles, the young Horacio Pagani left his country for Italy, dreaming of pursuing that passion he had developed as a child building model cars. The second bicycle was for Cristina Pérez, whom he married shortly afterwards. He immediately accepted whatever job he could find: from gardener to welder, while his wife worked in a shop. Of course, their means of transport was the bicycle, and the tent their home. Having knocked in vain on the doors of several car manufacturers, finally he managed to join Lamborghini as a level-three worker in the experimental bodywork department. And it was here that, in 1985, I too was hired by Lamborghini Automobili. I met him in a small department, shielded from prying eyes by wooden panels, getting his hands dirty with resin and fibreglass as he built a plastic spoiler for the Countach. Since then, the boy – as they say – has come a long way. Even then, his mind was driven by two guiding stars, one old and one modern. When he was a child, Horacio fell in love with Leonardo Da Vinci and his philosophy, according to which Art and Science can go hand in hand. Not by chance, he called his first son Leonardo. He confessed to me that he often went to visit the town of Vinci, spending hours in the genius’s birth home, as if directly communicating with his spirit through those old walls. The second person is Manuel Fangio, driver, who won the Formula 1 championship several times and is considered one of the best drivers of all time. Fangio took Horacio under his wing, placing his experience and knowledge at his disposal and becoming both friend and mentor. One day, Horacio took him to visit Lamborghini, and there I too had the chance to meet him and, together with Sandro Munari, appreciate his professionalism and innate modesty. Sandro Munari, who was also a famous rally driver, four times world champion, was there in his capacity as newly appointed PR of Lamborghini. Fresh from the competition world, in which they were introducing the first composite material components, I remember then that I felt that the time was ripe for their development and use in the supercar world. When we were designing the Diablo, we were able to introduce a lot of components that were skilfully made by Horacio and his meagre work team. And what’s more, Lamborghini was the first car manufacturer to invest in a new department devoted to the mass production of these components using a large, innovative autoclave. And Horacio was in charge of the department until he decided to leave Lamborghini. Increasingly an expert in composite materials, Pagani also demonstrated major style skills that allowed him to express the best possible design of the components that took shape using this technology. The Countach Evoluzione was the first attempt to produce a chassis in composite materials. In 1988, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the foundation of Automobili Lamborghini, the new Diablo project wasn’t ready yet and the available budget was not very big, so it was decided to create a celebration version of the Countach in-house, developing the style and setting up the modifications. Set this extremely hard task, Horacio Pagani created a special version using solutions that didn’t change the style of the Countach “legend”. The time was exceptionally favourable for supercars, and the Countach 25thAnniversary – as it was called - recorded greater sales than all the other versions of the same car. A few years later, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the foundation in 1993, supported by Italian state funding, now with Horacio working freelance, we worked on another highly innovative project: a precursor of the hypercar, made entirely in carbon fibre, a solution way ahead of all the competitors. The chassis, made of thin carbon fibre walls, was a masterpiece of car engineering. Nothing came of the design, known technically as the L30, but that’s another story… I confess that I still dream of driving this car, recording fantastic performances on a non-existent race track. P.S: At this point, if they wish my readers can return to the cover page and see all the names of the characters written in mysterious Leonardo da Vinci-style mirror writing. This shows how we are still charmed by the genius behind the Mona Lisa… -- Luigi Marmiroli was born in Fiorano Modenese in 1945. After graduating in mechanical engineering at the University of Padua, in 1970 he was hired by Ferrari to introduce electronic computing to Maranello for the first time. In 1976 he founded Fly Studio with Giacomo Caliri, designing and managing competition cars on international circuits. Their main works were for Fittipaldi Copersucar, Autodelta, ATS and Minardi, with whom they joined forces. The developments in the partnership with Autodelta led Marmiroli to manage the technical unit of the Euroracing team in 1983. Two years later he was hired by Lamborghini to design the heir of the Countach. Other projects came after the 17 versions of the Diablo, though due to the continuing changes of ownership of the Sant’Agata based company, they were never put into production. Marmiroli relaunched Fly Studio in 1997, providing consulting services. One of the projects of the last few years is the development of microcars, quadbikes and commercial vehicles, including electric versions.

Preferring ‘carpe diem’ to a constructed scene, she is an artist who captures gestures and expressions rather than having her subjects pose for a portrait. With her uniquely sensitive style, she turns shots of cars and the world around them into delicate, highly romantic photos. Here’s how the British photographer launched her own great little revolution Words by Francesca Rabitti Photography by Amy Shore (IG: @amyshorephotography) Amy Shore is a modern Jane Austen: characters appear from the lens of her camera, creating stories. I would certainly recognise one of her photos among thousands, because nobody can tell a situation that includes a car like she does. Most of her colleagues put cars in the centre of a world that revolves around them, while she defines herself as a photographer of people more than of cars, because a car is just a car, perhaps photographed over a thousand times in the past, while all that surrounds it changes continuously, evolves, and this is why it deserves more attention. And so a white car travelling through the countryside can show us so much more, with a little imagination: escaping from the hustle and bustle of the city, a Barbour jacket protecting from the cold, a pair of wellingtons to walk in a meadow damp with dew, the misty landscape and the sky promising rain that will never come. The damp air that gets inside the bones as soon as you breathe it in. But then this is England, and that’s why I love it. Or again, an empty beach, a distant sea with the cliffs looming above. Two cars parked on the sand, looking towards the horizon, like two friends enjoying a trip to the seaside, or two lovers. There is romanticism in Amy’s photos, perhaps also due to the unmistakeable view that embraces the onlooker. And talking of romanticism, I find out that Amy used to be a wedding photographer, and approached the car world with the same love she would use for the happy couple: warmth and emotion are the feelings she seeks to convey, even though she is the first to admit that it’s not easy working with a modern supercar. Without forgetting spontaneity, something you note straight away; studying the fine details of a set is not part of her work methods, she prefers to seize the moment rather than have creative control over the situation. I remember the first time I saw her Instagram profile, I said: “At last, a woman who sees cars from a different viewpoint.” She made a difference, and in her works I could spot a minor revolution. So I just had to ask her what it means working in such a man’s world. She said that there was still some prejudice, particularly from older people. Recently she was asked if she was a full-time photographer, if it was her only job: having done this for ten years, who knows if people would have asked her the same question if she had been a man. How much longer will she have to keep on showing how good she is? Despite all this, her talent has been her best calling card, and that’s what has allowed her to work for the most prestigious magazines since she first started out. One among all of them: Octane - if you haven’t seen her article on the DeLorean, look for it - which contacted her about a job. She confesses that she felt under a lot of pressure, she was afraid that they wouldn’t like her innovative style. And yet, a little while later and one of her photos was on the cover, on the shelves of all the newsagents. After this she was hired by illustrious clients, including Pirelli and Bentley, while Goodwood wanted her to document its events - just to offer a few examples. But where did her love for photography come? Amy has always loved taking photos: she defines herself as an impatient artist, capturing people and situations is one way of satisfying her restlessness, getting a result in less than a second. When she was at school, she loved artistic subjects the most, and this is why she thought she would become a designer. But cars grabbed her attention only when she passed her driving test: growing up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, having a car meant being free, not having to depend on her parents for everything. When she was 19, her passion for all things beautiful led her to buy a vintage Mini: she wasn’t interested in engines, more in driving and style. It was when she started photographing these cars that she got to know them better, but she confesses that she still has a lot to learn about modern cars. So what does a professional who, despite her young age, has photographed all the cars she has wanted to, from the Ferrari 250 GTO to the Jaguar D-Types, to name but a few, still dream of doing? Certainly, she would like to have some new adventures, the Mille Miglia or Le Mans, or perhaps shooting a road trip in South America or the Norwegian fjords: for work or for pleasure, she would like it to be soon. Talking about unforgettable memories, she has no doubts: the time she flew in an acrobatic plane to photograph another one of the same kind. During a loop, the engine cut out as they were upside down facing the sky, and they had to turn round to face the earth for a couple of seconds in order to switch it back on. That was certainly one of her most memorable shots, even though she hasn’t forgotten the day when she had just 40 minutes to photograph Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc together, standing in front of a Ferrari Monza. Being a photographer on Instagram has its pros and cons. This is one question we just have to ask today of a professional working in this field. The existence of a free platform where you can promote your own work and find inspiration from others is certainly a clear advantage, but Amy mentions some of the down sides, which make me think. First of all, you risk comparing your work to that of your colleagues all the time, seeing which events they have been to and which cameras they have used. Very often there is a very high psychological price to pay. So, is it worth it? Without mentioning the number of “likes”: she switched this option off a while back, as she didn't want other people to see hers, and doesn't want to see those of others. All too often this becomes a yardstick for judging the quality of the work rather than the work itself, and this is very sad. Since Instagram changed its algorithm, only 10% of your followers see the work you publish, and this has led to a sudden drop in engagement, and consequently in self-esteem. One day someone said to her, “We hired you for this job because you have a lot of followers and we expect you to post something about us.” This is the worst kick up the backside you could get, because it means that you don't care about the years of hard work, the sexist comments, the sleepless nights, you just look at the numbers. At the end of the day, Instagram is fantastic, but only if you can cope with the stress and you are able to set limits. In this regard, it springs to mind how Amy is part of a real revolution, one of the first photographers to offer magazines that typical style of social networks in the digital era. She tells me that when she started photographing cars and publishing her work on social media, she was one of the few people who had an interesting style. In her opinion, Laurent Nivalle was the only one doing some innovative work, as he didn't think of cars as superstars in the spotlight, rather as subjects on which the light fell and around which people interacted. Amy was inspired by him, because his lens talks about cars in an interesting way, attracting the attention even of people who aren’t car enthusiasts: in some way, he considers them like people. In addition to Nivalle she mentions Harry Benson, Vivian Maier, Don McCullin, as well as artists like Jack Vettriano and Alvaro Castagnet, the film director Wes Anderson, for their unique way of seeing the light and colours, and how they build their scenes. I’m curious to know what advice she would give to young photographers trying to find their way in the world – because enjoying the fame that Amy does also means being imitated: many times I have seen poor copies of her shots. She offers a lesson she learned from Nivalle: if you copy other people, you will always be one step behind. You have to find your own style. So, there’s no problem taking inspiration from others, but you have to select the right subjects, understand which lenses are right for the best shot, choose the right light, and of course, the best way to edit the shots. Every work has to have the photographer's trademark: that’s the only way to avoid being one of the many. Any art form can be of help: films, music videos, dancers, artists generally, they are all precious sources of inspiration. And talking of work, what are her tools of the trade? Amy never goes anywhere without her two Nikons: a Z9 on her right shoulder and a D6 on her left, with a 35mm f/1.4 lens on one and an 85mm f/1.4 on the other. Recently, she has fallen in love with the Z 50mm f/1.2, that she always takes with her and uses when the situation allows. My chat with Amy Shore has come to an end, but there’s one last thing I want to say to our readers. If you are at a motor event, and you see a girl with a big, genuine smile and round Harry Potter-style glasses taking photos with her beloved Nikons, do me a favour. Don't ask what the hell a woman is doing among all those cars, because in all probability she has a lot to teach you, thanks to her unique way of looking at life as it passes us by and of turning it into pictures. Some people are born for a very specific job. This is one of them. This is the story of Amy the photographer. -- Francesca Rabitti has been looking for stories to read and write since her childhood and today they are still a really important part of her life and work. She writes short stories and some of them have been awarded at International Literary Awards. She's a National Geographic Italia contributor, too: she likes travelling and translating into words her emotions and anecdotes people from all around the world confess to her. That’s what she does for Speedholics: sharing the passion of people, that goes beyond everything and lasts forever.