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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.

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.

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.

As Sporting Director, he won eighteen world titles, and trained least three hundred drivers, many of whom were Italian and many discovered personally by him. He is the man who created the Lancia rally legend, almost managed to bring Ayrton Senna to Ferrari and still today holds the Atlantic crossing record. He agreed to tell his story to us in his farmhouse in Puglia, where he retired twenty years ago Words & Photography by Alessandro Barteletti (IG: @alessandrobarteletti) Video by Andrea Ruggeri (IG: @andrearuggeri.it) As soon as you arrive, the scene is far from what you might expect. Cesare Fiorio is waiting for us at the door of his farmhouse in Puglia, surrounded by dogs that fill you with joy just looking at them. “They’re all strays,” he explains, “they came here of their own initiative, and we adopted them all.” Their names each tell a story: one of them, Virus, is a black Breton who turned up on the doorstep one day during the pandemic. Class of 1939, born in Turin, Fiorio retired here a couple of decades ago. “It all happened when I stopped working on the races, something I had been doing for forty years. One day some friends took me to Puglia. I’d never been here before, and I never left after that: it wasn’t just the place I liked, but the people, their friendliness and hospitality.” After shaking hands, Fiorio accompanies us into what he called the Breakfast Room, but which in fact is more of a museum packed with the memorabilia of a unique and unrepeatable life. He calls it that because this is where guests are served breakfast, all strictly home-made, including the ingredients: Masseria Camarda in Ceglie Messapica is an ‘agriturismo’ but also a farm. We sit beneath what was once the bodywork of the Formula 1 Ferrari in which Nigel Mansell won the Brazilian Grand Prix in 1989, on Fiorio’s début as Sporting Director in Maranello. An extraordinary story, told also by the many photos, trophies and other mementoes around us. [click to watch the video] All things considered, as Lancia and Fiat rally director, Cesare Fiorio won 18 world titles. Looking back over those amazing years, you realise that his greatest achievement was to be able to compete on equal terms with adversaries of the calibre of Porsche and Audi, even when the terms were actually far from equal. Behind this were creativity, improvisation as well as the ability to invent techniques and strategies. And this is what we came to talk about, the Fiorio Method. Racing is part of the Fiorio family DNA: that goes for you, your son Alex, as well as your father Sandro, who raced successfully in a few competitions (including the ‘Mille Miglia’) before getting a job with the Pesenti family’s Lancia. And going with your father to the races, you also met some of the greatest champions of that time. Who was that young Cesare, and what were his dreams and ambitions? I remember Gigi Villoresi, Alberto Ascari… I was very young at the time, and they were very famous. More than meet them, I saw them close-up, but it was enough to make me realise that my own goal was to race cars. Things were different back then, you couldn’t race until you were eighteen, when you could get a driving licence. That was when I began competition racing, and managed to win the Italian GT Championship in 1961 behind the wheel of a Lancia Appia Zagato. That was when you discovered your true vocation: organisational, or as they say today, managerial skills. As I racing driver, I realised that something was always missing. I said: if this thing had been there, or if someone had been there in charge of doing that other thing… it really didn't take much to get better results. And so I began to organise races for others, and that became my speciality. In 1963, with Dante Marengo and Luciano Massoni, you set up something that went on to become the Lancia racing team, today a piece of car racing history: the HF Squadra Corse. What was the intuition behind that success? At the time there was a club you could only join if you had owned at least six Lancia cars. It was called Lancia Hi-Fi, high fidelity, expressing the members’ bond with the brand. I took these two initials - HF - and put them into a racing team. There were three of us at the start, then we took on two mechanics, Luigino Podda and Luigi Gotta. Then Lancia gave us a small - very small - shed, with no equipment, no rooms, not even a hoist. We had the cars prepared externally, by Facetti in Bresso or Bosato in Turin, and we just managed the maintenance. But in our own small way we did things well, and one step at a time we grew and began racing with the cars we had prepared. Few resources, great determination: aside from the race reports, there are many interesting behind-the-scenes episodes. Can you tell us about the first time you met Roger Penske in Daytona? It was 1968, and we decided to race a Fulvia Zagato at the 24 Hours of Daytona. It was our first time in America, and we were facing opponents of the calibre of Porsche, Chevrolet… I remember I arrived three days before the race, trying to get a feel of the place and understand how things worked. One of the things I realised was that the pit position was very important, given the importance and delicacy of the stops in such a long race. I chose mine and told the organisers, who didn't bat an eyelid. A couple of days later, Roger Penske arrived. To be honest I didn't know who he was, but in the States he was already a big name and his team was one of the favourites in the race. He went to the organisers, and they told him that his usual pit had already been taken by Lancia. He came over to me, introduced himself and told me that it was his pit. I answered, “Look, the organisation gave it to us, we’ve already settled in and we’re not going to move now.” His gentle manners became more hostile, and I can still remember the sarcasm in his voice when he looked at our little Fulvia: “Who do you think you are!” But I didn’t budge. In the end he walked off, sending us to hell, and we kept the pit. At the height of the Fulvia’s successes, after winning the RAC in 1969 (another incredible story: the bushing taken off Lampinen’s car to allow Källström’s to get going again and win), Fiat bought Lancia and you were sent packing. And then you met Gianni Agnelli… When Fiat took over the ownership of Lancia, the changes were instant. I was called in by the Personnel Manager who told me they didn't need me anymore. Lancia belonged to Fiat, and Fiat would do the job instead of me: “You’ve got three months to find yourself another job, after that our relationship will come to an end.” So I went to the Turin Motor Show, where all the stars of this world met every year, hoping to find a few good contacts. As I was doing the rounds, I noticed a line of frantic photographers and journalists: behind them was Gianni Agnelli. I didn’t know him personally at the time, but he saw me and recognised me. “Fiorio,” he said, “now you can help us win a bit too!” I looked at him, puzzled, and told him that I would have loved to if his Fiat hadn't just fired me. A week later, the Personnel Manager called me: “You can stay, we would like you to run both the Lancia and the Fiat racing teams.” Let’s talk about the Lancia Stratos: a puzzle-like project, where you managed to put all the pieces together even when it wasn't sure they would fit. I had a very clear idea about what the car should have been like: Bertone supplied the bodywork, we worked on the chassis, Dallara was going to develop the suspensions after that. The problem was the engine. Fiat and Lancia didn't have anything suitable, so one day I took a big risk and went to see Enzo Ferrari in Maranello. He showed great respect for our work, because - as he underlined - we managed to win with very few resources available. I told him about the new project we were working on, describing it as something futuristic that however was missing the most important part: the engine. “My Dino will be perfect on your car,” he said. A one in a million event. And the rest is history. And then, once again, Fiat put a spoke in the wheel: at the height of the Stratos period, the managers in Turin preferred to invest in the 131 Abarth version, with an eye on the commercial returns of the operation. You didn’t lose heart, and turned this umpteenth “incident” into another success story. Then came the Group Bs, and with the rear-wheel drive 037 the world title was yours, to the detriment of Audi and its four-wheel drive. Audi was ruling the world at that time, being the first to introduce four-wheel drives and having gained experience with that technology that we still didn’t have so weren’t familiar with. I knew that our only chance was to build a completely different car from theirs, closer to our own traditions. That’s how the 037 was born: lightweight, a central rear engine and great handling. Surrounded by a team of tireless mechanics, brilliant engineers, great designers and top drivers. A combination that, in 1983, helped us to win, beating the deadly and, until then, unbeaten Audi Quattros. Do you remember any episodes in particular from that time? We had just finished a special stage on a dirt road and we were in the lead. All the teams were lined up along the same road for assistance. The Germans were a few metres ahead of us, but at one point I saw an Audi pull up at full speed and stop in front of us. Their manager got out, panting, and without saying or asking anything threw himself under one of our 037s. He thought he would find out something, but of course we were compliant, there were no hidden secrets under the car. This episode really struck me, as it proved that our ability to react had caught them off-guard. The Group B years were crazy: cars were monsters, and drivers were tamers, not to mention the fans, who literally tried to hug the cars as they flew past in the race, sometimes even touching them. What was it like to be part of that era? There were many, too many accidents, both among the public and the crews. Losing Attilio Bettega in Corsica in 1985 and Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto again in Corsica in 1986, we were also victims of this. It was inevitable that something had to change. I remember when, at the height of the 1986 season, the Federation put an end to Group B, saying that from the following year our cars wouldn’t have been allowed to race. The regulation stated at least two years’ notice, but that was an extraordinary situation. I accepted the decision, even though I knew we didn't have anything ready. The new Group A only accepted cars that were mass-produced with at least 5000 every year. All we could do was look at the cars that were already in our catalogues, and so the choice fell on the Lancia Delta 4WD. A few months later, at the début Rally in Montecarlo for the first race in the Championship, we took a new win home, with Miki Biasion in first place with Tiziano Siviero and Juha Kankkunen with Juha Piironen in second. In spring 1989 the call came from Ferrari, when - we have to admit - Ferrari was a disaster. I was at the Portugal Rally, it was Saturday and we were winning, when I got a completely unexpected phone call. It was Cesare Romiti, the then-Chairman of the whole Fiat Group, and wanted me to come home for a chat. I tried to explain that we were in the middle of a race, but he wouldn’t listen. I left instructions for the team and on Sunday morning I took the first flight from Lisbon to Milan, where Romiti was waiting for me. “We need you at Ferrari, are you on board?” Of course, I told me, without hesitation, explaining that I could have been ready in a few weeks. “You don’t understand, we need you right now,” he said. So the next day I went off to Maranello and that’s how my adventure with Ferrari began. Many years before that, you had already worked at Maranello. That was in 1972, when Enzo Ferrari called me to manage his team for the Targa Florio. “I think you can be of help to us in Sicily,” he said. He thought that the Sicilian race - at that time a very important part of the prestigious Sport Prototypes championship - was closer to a rally in management terms. I agreed, and we won the race with Arturo Merzario and Sandro Munari’s Ferrari 312 PB. In the first Formula 1 season you won three races, the first on your début, as many as Maranello had won in the three previous years. And in 1990 with Alain Prost you just missed the world title. You revolutionised the whole thing, right from the beginning demanding that the design – at that time decentralised to the UK under the management of John Barnard - should return home. It couldn’t work, a series of dynamics had been triggered that for me were unacceptable: when things went well it was thanks to the UK, when things went bad it was Maranello’s fault. I asked Barnard to move to Italy, but he refused so we said goodbye. Is it true that you then asked Giampaolo Dallara to become Technical Director? Looking for someone to replace Barnard, I wondered who was the best, and of course I contacted Dallara, also because of the experiences I had had with him in the past. We had known each other since the Stratos period, and I had put him in charge of the development of all the Lancia cars for the track speed races, from the Beta Montecarlo Turbo to the LC1 and LC2. But Giampaolo was very busy with his company, and thought that accepting Ferrari’s offer would have been a kind of betrayal to his employees who had always believed in him. Seeing where he got today, I think he made the right choice. You also tried to steal Ayrton Senna from McLaren and bring him to Ferrari. It wasn’t hard to see that Ayrton Senna was the man to focus on. In 1990 we already had Prost and Mansell in the team, two brilliant drivers, but bringing Senna to Maranello meant that he would no longer be an opponent. I was really struck by the way Ayrton managed the whole negotiation. Discussing his contract, who his engineers would be, which driver he would be with on the team and all those aspects that have to be clarified in the draft contract, it was just me and him, no manager, no lawyers. We reached an agreement, but then Ferrari put the pressure on and this blew up the whole operation, and ultimately led to the end of my relationship with Maranello. History, and Ayrton’s own history, could have taken a completely different turn. Tell us about your son Alex: what does it mean to be a driver’s dad? My son’s only defect is that he’s called Fiorio. When he started to make his name, it was clear that the kid had talent, and this made me aware of a very difficult situation. It would have been natural to take him on for his skill, but that would have fuelled a whole load of criticism that would have clouded his career. So I made the ethically most correct choice, even though I knew he was a really good driver and deserved better, in fact he won not only the Group N World Championship with a private car, but in 1989, aged just 24, he came second behind Miki Biasion with a Jolly Club car. Today, Alex lives in Puglia like me, and he also runs the Fiorio Cup, a competition held on a track we built behind the farm. Cesare Fiorio maritime pilot: your adventure with the Destriero is still an unbeaten record. I raced motorboats for eighteen years. Any Sunday when I wasn’t busy with the teams, I would race in the sea, and I must admit I won many of the most important races in this category, including two world titles. But I had my heart set on the Blue Ribbon, the prize awarded to those crossing the North Atlantic, from Europe to America and back again, in the shortest possible time. My first attempt was with an Azimut Benetti boat, but one of the engines broke and we dropped out. I had another chance right after I stopped working at Ferrari, when I received a phone call from His Majesty the Aga Khan, who offered me the possibility to manage, organise and lead that extraordinary boat, the Destriero. It was really futuristic: built by Fincantieri, it was over 67 metres long and was driven by three General Electric aeronautical turbines, the ones installed on the famous F-117 Stealth bomber. We set off on 9 August 1992 from the Ambrose Light in New York, covering 3106 nautical miles without refuelling on the Atlantic Ocean, as far as the Bishop Rock lighthouse in the Scilly Isles in England in 58 hours, 34 minutes and 50 seconds, with an average speed of 53.09 knots (almost 100 km/h). Yes, the record still hasn’t been beaten. So your life has been dominated by passion. But there’s still one thing we haven't talked about: music. Music is another of my great loves. I have played most instruments, from the drums to the double bass. At one point I even had a jazz band, where I played the saxophone and Enrico Rava the trumpet. But then he became a famous artist and my fate led me elsewhere. -- Alessandro Barteletti is a photographer and journalist. Through his photos, he has been revealing the reality behind news stories, as well as social and sports events, for almost 20 years. Being keen on anything that can be driven fast, on the roads or flying in the sky, he has specialized in the auto, aviation and space industries. Among his clients: National Geographic, Dallara and Italian Air Force. Alessandro currently lives between Rome - where he was born - and Modena, the heart of Motor Valley; he is the editor-in-chief of SpeedHolics Magazine.

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.

A car says a lot about its era, and the German photographer Jens Ochlich knows this very well. Armed with his camera, he hunts out American "golden oldies” along the US West Coast: the result is highly poetic images that breach the boundaries of time Words by Francesca Rabitti Photography by Jens Ochlich (IG: @jens_ochlich) Whenever I look at one of Jens’ photos, I expect to see film stars turning up out of the blue - and chatting to him I found out that this was exactly the reaction he was aiming for. The photo comes to life, the frame pans slightly out and we get a glimpse of the director and the actors getting ready to make an entrance: every shot hides a different screenplay, leading spectators to wonder what will happen next. Will it be a love story, or a thriller? Class of 1970, born in West Germany, Jens Ochlich moved to California around twenty years ago. He confessed that he works alone, with no assistant, and spends a lot of time sitting and waiting for the right moment to take a photo. To my great surprise, I discover that his photos are almost always the result of sitting patiently, because nothing is constructed: there is no set, as many might imagine when looking at the moments he is able to capture. Like many Europeans, he is fascinated by the potential of the American landscape, particularly those desert towns that so easily blend into the surrounding wilderness, and the sunlight, which gives the shots their unique shade and texture. All in all, for him California is a continuously evolving natural backdrop that allows him to explore the America that made him dream when he saw in on TV as a child. Looking at his works, I ask him how he gives his photos that vintage aura typical not only of the 1970s but also the ‘50s and ‘60s. He tells me that he uses what for him is a winning combination: a digital camera with vintage lenses dating back to those times. The effect is surprisingly cinematographic and ‘retro’. Jens has always been fascinated with mid-20th century design and architecture, because for him they are a perfect example of freedom, just as all the cars from that era are the expression of post-war optimism: indeed, any car will tell us a lot about the period it was built in. When hunting for that perfect photo, Palm Springs is his ideal destination, as it is able to blend cars - especially muscle cars, another of Jens’ passions - and period landscapes in a single photo. His website is called Autobahn66, and he explains that the nickname comes from the song of the same name by the British band Primal Scream, and is the perfect match of his German origins and the US Route 66. Today Autobahn66 has become his trade mark, even though he uses his real name more and more often in order to avoid any confusion. How did Jens Ochlich become a photographer? By studying 1950s architecture photography books, on Julius Shulman, Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz, Ernst Haas, Saul Leiter and Slim Aarons; or the films that went on to become classics, like Vertigo and Double Indemnity. A passion for nice photos is not enough, you have to study, research constantly, in order to improve and develop your own unmistakeable style. I admit that I use Instagram a lot, for me it’s a never-ending gold mine, and it's the place I run to when I’m looking for photographers who have something really interesting to tell me for Speedholics. And so I had to ask Jens what he thinks about this social network, which in some ways is so controversial. He confesses that for him it is a showcase where he can come into contact with potential customers interested in his style, and thanks to Instagram he has been commissioned several works by European interior design companies. Lately however, he has noted a bit of a crisis, especially since the advent of TikTok, and I have to agree with him, even though deep down I hope that it will never lose the charm it is still known for and which offers inspiration for specialists and non-specialists alike. But what does Jens photograph when he’s not waiting for cars? The world when night falls, and this has led to another project he would like to get back to working on soon, “California nocturnal”, or “Shopping carts”, devoted to abandoned shopping trolleys. He is also fond of nature generally, with close-ups of plants and flowers, although in recent years a certain laziness has led him to pay less attention here. I am surprised to discover that he’s not a professional photographer, but it’s as if he was, if we think how much time he devotes the photography every day: it’s really true that if you love something you will always find time to devote to it. This is the story of a guy who dreamt - and conquered - California. So sit back as the lights dim, the chatter suddenly stops and in the background we can only hear the sound of popcorn being munched. The film you are about to watch is … you choose. I have decided: a turquoise house at no. 612, a few palm trees swaying in the wind in the background, and a white and red Beetle in the foreground. It must be warm, I can tell by the sky and the light, but I will only know when I see how the protagonists are dressed. Nobody knows where this story will lead me, but as any journey teaches us, we just have to set off and let ourselves be guided. What about you, have you chosen your story? -- 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 and National Geographic Traveler 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.

Considered the inventor of the “Quadrifoglio”, the cloverleaf, the Aversa-born driver’s competitive career with Alfa Romeo was short but very eventful. The 1923 season was particularly visible for him, but his career and life ended dramatically in Monza on 8 September of the same year. One century on, SpeedHolics tells of his adventures, thanks also to a precious testimonial offered by his grandson Giorgio. Photos by Giorgio Sivocci, Fabio Morlacchi and Alfa Blue Team Archives 15 April 1923, Cerda, a town in the Sicilian hinterland east of Palermo, the starting and finishing line of the “Piccolo Circuito delle Madonie”, the Targa Florio circuit in Sicily. The stands set up in the village of the Sicilian Automobile Club were extended, with a new floor for the press, some covered stands and spaces for a selected audience that wanted or was able to be isolated from the others. The sports reporters were connected directly to the timekeepers’ cabin, a laboratory was available to the photographers wanting to develop their negatives, with the possibility to send packs of photos to their newspapers from the in-house post office. It was the best technology had to offer at the time. The route was tough, the mountain roads were not tarmacked and were only partially tarred. The race ran anti-clockwise: Cerda, Catavulturo, Polizzi, Collesano, Campofelice and back to Cerda. A total of 432 kilometres, divided into four 108-km stages. Two-seater cars could enter the race, and in addition to the driver they had to have a mechanic on board, and the weight of the crew must be at least 120 kg. The cars were divided into six categories based on engine size: the first up to 1100 cc, the second from 1101 to 1500 cc, the third from 1501 to 2000 cc, the fourth from 2001 to 3000 cc, the fifth from 3001 to 4500 cc, the sixth from 4501 and above. The start was at 7 in the morning, starting from the lowest category. The morning of 15 April was cool, after a bout of heavy rain that stopped the dust from being kicked up by the wheels, but there was a strong risk of nasty puddles. This is why some competitors decided to mount temporary front mudguards, perhaps only on the driver's side, but which also hid the main wheel from sight when steering. All that was exactly a century ago... Alfa Romeo races with a team of five RLSSs prepared specifically for the race. The drivers were Giuseppe Campari, chief tester and driver, Antonio Ascari, driver and Alfa Romeo dealer for Milan and part of Lombardy, Ugo Sivocci and Count Giulio Masetti, all official team drivers along with Enzo Ferrari, racing as a private driver, despite being a regular presence at Portello. Both Masetti and Ferrari were racing with their own RLSS TFs. All the RLs had a 3-litre engine, apart from Sivocci and Ferrari, which had the cylinder capacity increased from 76 to 78 mm, despite the 110 mm stroke, which took the engine capacity to just under 3.2 litres and the power output from 88 hp at 3600 rpm to 95 hp at 3800 rpm. Campari raced with RL no. 8 and a new lucky symbol, a green cloverleaf on a white round background, located on the sides of the radiator casing, Ascari had RL no. 10 with the green cloverleaf on a white triangle in the same position as Campari, Masetti had the same symbols as Campari on car no. 11 but placed behind the engine compartment. None of the three had front mud guards, and they all raced in the 4thcategory. Sivocci raced with RL no. 13, a 3.2 litre model in the 5th category, with the lucky cloverleaf symbol on a square background rotated 45°, placed on the sides of the radiator casing, and mounted two front mudguards. Ferrari raced with its own 3.2 litre RL, race no. 14, but without the cloverleaf. So, 100 years of the “cloverleaf”. It seems that the idea of using the cloverleaf as a lucky symbol came from Ugo Sivocci, racing in the 1923 Targa Florio in RL no. 13, demonstrating that, at least apparently, he believed in some form of superstitious symbolism. A few months later, number 17 was no longer to bring him luck. The differences between the white background and the positioning should have been a choice to ensure the immediate recognition of the Milan cars in the race, all the same, without having to remember the race number and the correspondence with the driver. Despite the constant rain before the start, huge crowds formed at the interesting points or those most easily reachable along the route, also taken there by special trains or boats. Targa Florio began in 1906, an internationally renowned competition despite the fact that it was held in the distant and far from easy-to-reach Sicily. The newspapers spoke of a strange character in the area, who stated that each of the 19 competitors were more than able to win the race, thus excluding only the non-starters. At 7 in the morning, luckily the sun was shining. The starter was the Prince of Petrulla. The cars were lined up waiting for the start. The first competitor didn’t turn up, so the first to start was no. 2 in the Bugatti, followed by the other competitors in the lower categories. Finally, it was the turn of the RLs. Campari set off with the mechanic Fugazza, then Alfieri Maserati in the Diatto 20S with the mechanic Parenti, Ascari with Sozzi in the RLSS, Masetti with Marinoni in another RLSS, then another competitor. In the fifth category, Sivocci started with the mechanic Guatta, then Ferrari and Ramponi in the other 3.2 litre RLSS, Gastone Brilli Peri with Lumini in the Steyr and other competitors. In total, there were 17 competitors in the race out of the 19 registered. Bodendik started in Chenard & Walcker number 12, and immediately after the RLSS number 13 with Sivocci was pushed onto the starting line. A few last words with the mechanic Guatta, sitting on his left. It is worth remembering that in Italy, until the introduction of the highway code, which was amended in 1927, cars drove on the left-hand side, so the driving seat was usually on the right. The mechanics inserted the electric starter in the crank hole, slotted into the engine shaft. A signal, Sivocci delayed the ignition start, turned the Bosch contact switch on the round panel to the right of the steering wheel. The starter triggered the engine, which immediately came to life. Advance in the normal position, engine at 1500 rpm, another couple of minutes until they set off. And they're off, the dry multi-disc clutch engages sharply, 2500, 3000, 4000 rpm, quick double de-clutching, and here you are in second gear. And, please, don't forget the gearbox is unsynchronised. The RL engine coped well with a moderate overspeed thanks to its strength, and the helicoidal springs on the valve control rods help the rapid closure. The first check is at the hill, 2 kilometres after the starting line, where the Steyrs are 12” ahead of the Alfas, the second check is at Catalvuturo, the 32nd kilometre. Brilli Peri passed with 30', Campari and Maserati with 21'. Brilli Peri had to stop immediately. On the first lap, Hermann Rutzler went wild in the Steyr ahead of the crowd, 1.45'19”, followed by Campari, Maserati, Sivocci at 1.48'35”. Sivocci, a man of few words, had a precise driving style, respectful of the mechanics, not particularly spectacular, cold and always correct, yet extremely efficient. It always seemed like he was out for a quiet drive, yet almost having fun on the inside. He didn’t stop to refuel, while Ascari, who drove angrily, moved into eighth position. Ferrari was sixth after the first lap, but just after passing the line he went off the road and had to retire. On the second lap, Ascari put his foot down and caught up with Rutzler, who had to retire on the next lap after a stone punched a hole in the engine casing. Sivocci was first on the third lap, with a time of 5.29'48”, followed by Ferdinando Minoia and Ascari with 5.30'35”. Ascari went into first place in the fourth lap, and from the stands you could see the dusty red RLSS approaching in the distance, on its way to win the race. Suddenly, Ascari slowed down and stopped, and the engine died. The crowd in the stands saw the driver and his mechanic get out of the Alfa, open the semi bonnet and fiddle with the engine. Only later they would find out that there had been problems with the magnet. Other mechanics ran from the Alfa Romeo bays, but the RLSS engine fired up again and, without the bonnet, with four people hanging on the car, all in all a very tragicomic scene. But that wasn’t allowed, the cars could only have two people on board! Ascari decided to return to the point where he had stopped, and not finding his mechanic nearby he took a spectator by the arm, threw him into the left-hand seat and set off in reverse to return towards the finishing line. But in the meantime, Sivocci had passed him and won. Ascari had lost around 10 minutes, coming in second, with Minoia in third place. The Steyr mechanics were spread out along the last kilometre to cheer on their driver, who managed to overtake Masetti in his RLSS. Three Alfa Romeos and four Italian drivers in the top places. Ascari drove impetuously and really fast, but luck turned its back on him. Just before the completing the first lap, a rear tyre exploded on a tight bend, although he managed to hold the road, change the tyre quickly and get back on the track. Then, just a few metres from the finishing line, the magnet, then the risk of being disqualified... for having too many passengers on board. Sivocci won in 7 hours and 18 minutes, while it took Ascari only 2' and 52” more, despite all his troubles. More than seven hours of bends, practically one after the other, climbs and descents with few straight or flat stretches, in cars with rigid axles and leaf-spring suspensions, equipped only with rear brakes, driven constantly with controlled skids on earth and mud. Definitely heroic times. This was the first appearance of the lucky cloverleaf, which since then has become a kind of trade mark for the racing Alfa Romeos. Alfa Romeo and its drivers took part in several races in 1923, ahead of the Italian Grand Prix and the European Grand Prix, held in September in the new Monza circuit, the “motodromo” as it was called at the time. Saturday 8 September, during an extra test drive, at 10 in the morning Sivocci and the mechanic Guatta were driving the new Gran Premio Alfa Romeo P1. After several laps, they reached the underpass at the elevated curve following the Serraglio curve, followed by a short straight and the broad Vialone curve to the left leading into the long east straight. The P1 skidded, went off the track and ended up with the left side against a tree, standing just a few metres from the tarmac. The driver and his mechanic were thrown out of the passenger compartment. Enzo Ferrari was in the pits along the parallel straight, and ran over to where his friend Sivocci had crashed. Guatta was injured but alive, but nothing more could be done for Ugo Sivocci. Ferrari lovingly placed his lifeless body in an ambulance and he was taken away. Alfa Romeo retired from the race as a sign of mourning, but evil tongues whispered that perhaps the choice was also made because of the mediocre performance and poor road holding of the GPR P1. Shortly afterwards, work began on Vittorio Jano's completely new GP car, the P2 (but that’s another story...). The accident occurred in the same spot on the track where, 32 years later, in 1955, Antonio Ascari’s son Alberto died, on the same day his father died in Monthlery. Ugo Sivocci had just turned 38, he was born in Aversa, in the province of Caserta, on 29 August 1885. His father Giuseppe, a piano teacher and conductor often travelled for work, with his wife Maria Clerice. He began his test-driving career in 1906 in the Turin-Sestriere race in an O.T.A.V., a Milan-based car and bicycle manufacturer. In 1911 he was hired by De Vecchi in Milan, where he met Antonio Ascari. He took part in the 1913 and 1914 Targa Florios in De Vecchi cars. After WWI De Vecchi was taken over by C.M.N. in Milan, and Sivocci continued to race for them. Right after the war he met Enzo Ferrari, who had come to Milan from Turin looking for a chance to advance his still-precarious career as a racing driver. They were hard times, but the friendship and support of Ugo and his family, who lived in Milan in Piazzale Rottole, today Piazza Durante, helped him through it. They would meet in a bar in the centre, the Vittorio Emanuele in Via Orefici, not far from Piazza Duomo and the place where the A.L.F.A. deed of incorporation had been signed a few years earlier in 1910. Ugo helped Enzo join C.M.N., racing the Parma-Poggio di Berceto for them in 1919. The two drivers took part together in the next 10th Targa Florio, driving the racing C.M.N. they were to use in the competition from Milan to Sicily. They took turns at the wheel, often not stopping even at night, and in Abruzzo they were even attacked by a pack of wolves, chased off by Ferrari’s pistol. When they reached Sicily, the episode told by reporters became a legend. In 1920 they were with Alfa Romeo, Sivocci after Ferrari due to a major death in the family. At Portello they made up the first team of Alfa Romeo drivers, Antonio Ascari, Giuseppe Campari, Enzo Ferrari and Ugo Sivocci. The 4 Musketeers, as named by the great journalist, photographer and writer Orio Vergani. Three years of racing, then the 1923 Targa Florio... -- RICCARDO SIVOCCI - Riccardo was 13 years old when his father Ugo died, and he had just lost his younger brother, who died in 1920 aged 8. After his studies he was taken on in the Racing Department at Alfa Romeo. He became a mechanic for some great drivers, including Nino Farina, he was at the 1938 Le Mans supporting Raymond Sommer and Clemente Biondetti’s 8C 2900 B Touring. He took part in the first sporting expeditions in South America, where he met Fangio, who would remain his friend even after the end of their sporting careers. He met Tazio Nuvolari, Nello Pagani, Prince Bira, John Behera, Carlo Pintacuda, Jean Pierre Wimille, Onofre Marimon and others. In the Formula Junior, he worked for Lorenzo Bandini and Geki Russo. And, as we heard when talking about Consalvo Sanesi, he also worked with the famous driver and tester from Milan. Having his own Alfa Romeo tuned by Sivocci, in Sanesi's workshop... Riccardo Sivocci’s son Giorgio told me that as a child, returning home to the flat above the workshop, he met Sanesi who, setting off to test a Duetto, asked him if he wanted to take a ride. Giorgio still remembers that experience very well... -- ALFA ROMEO RL - The RL represents both the high point and the swan song of Giuseppe Merosi at Portello, the first Alfa Romeo designer who worked there from 1910 to 1925. Within the production cars, the RL came after the 1910 24 HP and its evolution, the 20-30 ES, the smaller 1911 12 HPs with the evolutions 15 HP and 15-20 HP, the large 1913 40-60 HP and the 1919 G1. The RL is considered Merosi’s masterpiece, it was presented in October 1921 in the company’s executive offices in Via Paleocapa in Milan, a stone's throw from the west corner of Sforzesco Castle, where the Strada del Portello headed towards Gallarate. It was designed with a 3-litre engine, with an international sporting future in mind, meeting to new formula specifications with a class up to 3 litres. The straight-6 engine had a cast iron cylinder block with a removable cast iron head, the first engine built by Alfa with these characteristics. A separate aluminium crankcase, four main bearings, overhead valves aligned with the piston, valvetrain with camshaft in the crankcase, pushrods and rocker arms. The internal bore and stroke of the piston was 75 x 110 mm, ensuring the original engine capacity of 2,916 cc. With the 1925 6a series, the bore was increased definitively to 76 mm, again with a 110 mm stroke, and an engine capacity of 2,994 cc. The suspensions had rigid axles and semi-elliptical leaf springs, with drum brakes only on the rear wheels, later also on the front wheels, from autumn 1923. The RL came in three versions: Normale, RLS (Sport) and RLSS (Super Sport), with power output from 56 to 83 HP. Production ran from 1921 to 1927, then ending the so-called “Jano Era”, exactly when the production of the more modern, lighter and easy-to-handle 6C 1500 began. The RL was also used as the basis for the cheaper 4-cylinder RM, with a modern concept of modularity, using many parts from the larger 6-cylinder RL, in order to exploit the machine tools used to produce the mechanical parts to the full. Production began for the sports versions RLS and RLSS respectively at the start and end of 1922, with a wheelbase shortened from 3.44 to 3.14 metres, a larger engine with due vertical monobloc carburettors instead of one. The RLS made its racing début at the 1922 Targa Florio, driven by Augusto Tarabusi. The RLS and RLSS prototypes were also tested and raced by Ugo Sivocci. With a view to taking part in the 1923 Targa Florio, the RLSS was fine-tuned and improved even more, the wheelbase reduced again to 2.88 metres to improve its handling and further reduce its weight. The bodywork was significantly lightened and made more aerodynamic, with a radiator casing and quite prominent tapering when seen from above. 5 cars were built, called the RLSS TF (Targa Florio), 3 with 3-litre engines and 2 with 3.2-litre engines, the latter for racing in the 3001 to 4500 cc class. For the 1924 Targa Florio, the model was changed again, the bodywork given a more solid but lower appearance with the classic sharp-edged radiator, already seen on the Steyrs and Mercedes of the time. The engine crankcase had seven main bearings, drastically improving the balance of the cranks in the crankshaft. Again with two engine capacities, the usual 3 litres and a new 3.6-litre version, obtained by increasing the bore to 80 mm and the stroke to 120 mm. This advanced engine had already been installed from the summer of 1923 on the RLSS TFs racing after the Targa Florio. Anyone who has heard its engine revving will confirm that the RLSS had a low, full and slightly rough and thrilling sound, with the typical firing sequence of straight-6 engines. It sang as it approached overspeed seemingly effortlessly, giving the impression that the engine can up the revs infinitely, a characteristic sensation caused by almost all Alfa engines. The two models in the Alfa Museum in Arese are reconstructions built in the mid-60s directly at Portello, starting from modified normal chassis, recovered engines and rebuilt bodywork, using some workers who built them in the 1920s and original drawings found in the archives. -- ALFA ROMEO G.P.R. (P1) - The first car designed specifically for Grand Prix racing, after the short-lived 1914 Grand Prix with just one prototype, the G.P.R., acronym of Gran Premio Romeo, was built at the express will of the engineer Nicola Romeo. With the arrival of Jano’s next GP car in 1924, the P2, the G.P.R. was renamed the P1. A new 2-litre engine capacity category was introduced at the European GP in Monza in September 1923. Merosi got to work, and in just a few months the new racing car was born. Three were built. Straight-6 engine, two overhead camshafts, two valves per cylinder, dual ignition, seven main bearings. Steel twin block covered in metal sheet with integral head, naturally aspirated with two vertical monobloc carburettors. Suspensions with rigid axles and semi-elliptical leaf springs, drum brakes on the four wheels. Bore x stroke 65 x 100 mm, not particularly exciting for a GP car, 95 HP at 5000 rpm. After Ugo Sivocci’s death during the European G.P. test runs in Monza, the 2 remaining G.P.R.s were withdrawn. In early 1924, the engine of one of the two cars was fitted with a Roots-type supercharger built by Alfa Romeo. One of the technical drawings of this modification is dated 29 December 1923 and shows the compressor placed at the front of the engine block. This is one of the first designs by Vittorio Jano, who joined Alfa in the autumn, as Merosi had no experience of superchargers, while Jano, coming from the excellent FIAT racing department, did. The engine had a single aspirated carburettor mounted on the compressor body, and produced 115 HP at 5000 rpm. Tested briefly, the supercharged G.P.R. was not deemed satisfactory, with poor power output and, perhaps, rumour had it, also for the aspirated version in which Sivocci died, a rather perilous and unstable road performance. -- FOUR- AND THREE-LEAF CLOVERS - On a famous website focusing on the Targa Florio, you will find some rather poor-quality photos, probably taken from magazines of the period, with captions that describe how they portray Tarabusi’s RLS no. 28 during the 1922 Targa, with a cloverleaf on a white triangle clearly seen on the front sides near the bonnet, which allows us the imagine that the symbol was already in use in 1922. However, the car in the photos seems too low and streamlined to be one of the first RLSs, and is in fact probably a 1924 RLSS TF. In the 1922 Targa Florio, Augusto Tarabusi raced with the mechanic Guatta in the RLS and did have race no. 28. But from the official photo, of excellent quality, it is clear that this is a different car, and does not have the cloverleaf symbol. It is the racing début of the RL Sport. Tarabusi was stopped by a stone he hit coming out of a curve that bent the front axle. For the record, the RLSS TF no. 28 in the photos appearing on the website is in fact Amedeo Sillitti’s car, which competed in the 1926 Targa. The error is made worse by Giulio Schmidt who, in his book “The Roaring Races: The True Story of Enzo Ferrari Race Car Driver”, places the cloverleaf on car no. 35, driven by Ascari in the 1922 Targa Florio. On that occasion, Ascari raced in a 20-30 ES Sport, and as we can clearly see in several photographs, the cloverleaf does not appear on the car. A cloverleaf on a white triangle can be seen on the bonnet of the 20-30 ES Sport driven by Count Franco Caiselli from Udine, with the mechanic Attilio Marinoni. There are two photos of the car, one in a static pose and the other while racing, indicated in the captions as during the 1921 Targa, but there is no record of the car or the driver entering the competition. We can see what seems to be race no. 10 or 18, but unfortunately not clearly because of the reflections off the mirror-polished bonnet. There are no mudguards mounted, and this is a two-seater baquet with external exhaust pipe on the side which, along with the electric headlights would rather indicate that it is the Sport version of the 20-30 ES. Count Franco Caiselli raced privately in a standard 20-30 ES in 1921 and '22, and always appears in the following races without the cloverleaf symbol: 1921 Italian GP, Montichiari circuit. The flying kilometre race was held on 9 September, he won in the production car category with the 20-30 ES no. 4, with an average speed of 135.849 km/h. In the next GP Gentlemen on 11 September, he ended up off the road on the Ghedi curve and retired with a damaged front axle and bent front left-hand wheel; on 11-21 August 1922, 2nd Cup of the Alps, in the 20-30 ES no. 25 he came first in the under 4500 cc category and seventh overall. The car had mudguards and carbide headlights, and therefore seems to be a standard 20-30 ES. The photo thus appears to show the 20-30 ES Sport with the cloverleaf in late 1922 or 1923, even though it is unlikely that the cloverleaf made an appearance prior to the 1923 Targa Florio. On the other hand, a green three-leaf clover, rather than a four-leaf clover, can be seen on a white background on several occasions, on the bonnet of the winning P2s, during the GP seasons in 1924 and 1925, bringing good luck to a car that was in any case almost unbeatable. Winning its début race in 1924 with Antonio Ascari and the cloverleaf on the bonnet, the P2 won the first GP World Championship in 1925 with Count Gastone Brilli Peri. The three-leaf clover painted on the bonnet was however not lucky for Ascari in Monthlery, during the 1925 French GP, where due to causes that are still not clear today he ran off the road on the 22nd lap and died. Not always, but the cloverleaf was used throughout the 1920s on racing cars and at least once definitely during the Mille Miglia race on a private 6C 1500 S Zagato in 1930. From 1932 to 1937, when the Alfa Romeo racing department was managed by Ferrari, it was not used officially, and neither from 1938 to 1940 by Alfa Corse. It can be seen again after WWII on 158 and 159 racing cars, the famous “Alfette” that won the first two F1 World Championships, and is still used today. From the 1980s it was also used in green or gold, to identify sports or luxury versions of Alfa Romeo production cars. -- Fabio Morlacchi was born in Milan in 1960, and studied architecture and advertising graphics. In 1983, he started working for an advertising agency, on the launch of the Alfa 33. A car fanatic from a young age, Alfa Romeo was a passion at home too, as both his parents worked there: his father was a designer and his mother worked in Sales. His love of planes came from his paternal grandfather, who was a bomber pilot and officer of the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) from 1918 to 1943. He is a member of the Alfa Blue Team, historian, speaker and writer on car history, particularly that of Alfa Romeo, as well as the history of Italian aviation.

She was called the “Tipo B”, but Tazio Nuvolari's extraordinary win at her Monza début in 1932 immediately set things straight: from now on, she was the car to beat. And that’s how, following the successes of the previous P2, for everyone she became the “P3”. The German company CMC reproduced a 1:18 scale model, which is a masterpiece Photos by SpeedHolics Fans may have an authentic feeling of reverence towards certain types of car. Today’s museum pieces that conceal authentic heroic deeds behind the patina of time. There is no other way to define the feats of those drivers, designers and engineers behind the most pioneering period of auto racing and motorsports. And it is not by chance that the first drivers were known as the “Knights of Risk”. A similar kind of feeling can also be aroused when looking at a model car. It doesn't matter if it’s eighteen times smaller than the real one, or if its wheels have never touched the ground at a real circuit. Even a reproduction can thrill. And this is what happened for us with the 1/18 scale model of the Alfa Romeo P3 that the German company CMC recently added to its catalogue. An item with all the consistency needed to deserve the attention of the most discerning collector. Shaping it are 1805 individual pieces which, following an unprecedented design and production, even for a company of the calibre of CMC, are almost all made from high-quality metal. No one can deny that this reproduction can be defined as complete, 360 degrees: above and below, inside and out, even where it is hard for the eye to reach, the quality of the details remains perfect from every point of view. The same can be said for all the parts that are unveiled as you lift the bonnets and remove the bodywork panels, obviously starting from the supercharged straight-8 engine divided into two blocks. The bonnet itself is a miniature engineering masterpiece, with stainless steel hinges and hooks that reproduce the same movement and the same locking system as the actual car. As usual, to make things easier, CMC has included a pair of tweezers with curved tips in the package. In turn, the engine block is held together with 85 microscopic steel screws. And of course, all assembled by hand, as the original car was. Designed by Vittorio Jano, the Alfa Romeo P3 made its début on 5 June 1932 at the 10th Italian Grand Prix in Monza, with two cars driven by Tazio Nuvolari and Giuseppe Campari. Nuvolari won by one lap and two-and-a-half minutes ahead of the second place; Campari finished in fourth place. The name of the car was actually “Tipo B” but right from the start it was clear that the new car would have replicated the successes of the previous P2, and this is why it was nicknamed the P3. This brought it luck: the P3 immediately made her name as the car to beat, and remained that way for all her competitive life. In 1932, Tazio Nuvolari won the European Grand Prix series, Alfa Romeo the Manufacturer's title and, in 1933, the P3 won six of the eleven races fought. Jano introduced many innovations on this car, and the CMC engineers found themselves having to “re-design” these in scale. First of all, the transmission: the rear wheels are driven by two separate diagonal shafts. This solution allowed the driver’s seat to be positioned lower, thus lowering the centre of gravity of the whole car. The scale reconstruction of the elliptical leaf spring suspensions and the friction dampers is another minor work of art. Even the four drum brakes, clearly visible through the wire wheels (the front ones steering) are faithfully reproduced. The attention to detail continues in the front of the model, with the steel brake linkages: the functioning mechanism can be fully appreciated by removing the lower panels (you will also find a screwdriver to remove the tiny screws in the package). The model shown in this article (ref. M-219) reproduces car number 8, driven by Tazio Nuvolari on her début, when she won the Monza race in 1932. The engine corresponds to the first configuration, the version with 2654 cm3 and 215 HP. For the record, during her career the P3’s engine capacity was increased to 3822 cm3 and the power to 265 HP. The CMC catalogue includes around a dozen different versions linked to drivers of the calibre of Rudolf Caracciola, Luigi Fagioli and Luis Chiron, as well as a limited set of 300 pieces devoted to Tazio Nuvolari, consisting of a small figure and the three cars in which he won the French GP, the Coppa Ciano and the Coppa Acerbo in 1932. There is also a “cut-off” version which allows us to admire all the genius and finesse of both Vittorio Jano’s work and that of the CMC designers. Yet more proof of the value of a model car that pays uncompromising homage to a car considered to be one of the best pre-war competition cars, and for this reason a monument to the history of international auto racing.