Arutunoff and the Lancia Appia Zagatos

Story by Toly Arutunoff

In 1964 it seemed like I needed a companion in the garage for my Lancia Flaminia Zagato. The previous year, after our good finishes in the Targa Florio, Nurburgring 1000km, and Spa 500km, the factory offered me a straight swap for my car and one of the GTS Appia Zagatos, guaranteed for 117 mph. I turned the offer down, but later I saw an ad for an Appia Zagato in Rhode Island for $900. I heard it call my name and before I knew it we were on our way east from our lair in Oklahoma.

I went thru Nashville where I called on Bill Pryor–my Europe co-driver–and we flew up to NYC. We got in late and invited the stewardesses (those were in the days when stewardesses still looked like stewardesses) to have a late dinner with us at Reuben’s. Is it still in existence?

I knew I was in New York when we all went into Reuben’s at 1:30am with our luggage and I told the hostess/cashier that we liked the place so much we were going to live there and she didn’t bat an eye. A couple of the girls invited us to sleep on the couches in their house, and at sunrise and after 4 hours sleep we took a train to Rhode Island. The train was in crummy shape. We got a taxi at the station and after the driver asked some people how to find the town we wanted (in Rhode Island for pete’s sake!) we took off. It was hot and humid and we were tres fatiguee. The cab had a flat. He had no spare. We tried to doze on the hot plastic upholstery for the hour or so it took for a spare tire to arrive. Then we found out we were about 3 blocks from the dealership where the car was!

The car’s owner, Dr. Maurice Schlossberg (any relation to Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, I wonder) was at Lime Rock or something. I discovered I’d left my checkbook at home. The guy at the dealership said “No one is gonna come up here from Oklahoma to steal an Appia Zagato!” and so I wrote a check on a piece of paper like we could do in those days. The car did not have a license plate on it, so Bill, an artist, wrote “in transit” on it very neatly. Also there wasn’t a title, just a bill of sale.

The paperwork completed, as we drove off I noticed the wheel shimmy but it went away over 10 mph. We stopped for gas but the nice old Polish lady wouldn’t let me use my Texaco credit card since the card form required a tag number which we didn’t have. This took about a $3 bite out of our traveling cash.

I knew the car was classified H production in the SCCA, so I had a single-hoop rollbar put in and went to a race in Independence, Kansas. The front shocks were adjustable with a little brass wingnut on top (the front suspension was sliding pillar with included shock, much more sophisticated that the Morgan’s system). Running with the muffler and the air cleaner and the Michelin X tires, i.e. absolutely stock, I got a third place out of five or six cars.

Around this time George Starch bought one of the show cars, with a wooden headliner held in by chrome bows; it had kickup rear fenders like a Fiat 1100tv. It also had a trick racing muffler that hung just below the driver’s seat and had dual outlets right there. Not only was it noisy it gave me a nice buttocks massage at almost any rpm. I got bigger carb venturis and suitable jets and planned to run the car seriously in H production the following year, but it was dropped from the production car list. I mentioned that to Tracy Bird at the SCCA convention and he told me to write a letter but the way I was in those days I just said to heck with it.

While I was off somewhere a friend decided to overhaul the car for me without my asking. he took it apart and borrowed an Italian restaurant owner’s limo to haul the parts in the trunk. The limo chauffeur somehow got the car and thought the stuff in the trunk was junk and took it to the Nashville dump. Somehow I got the thing back together and swapped it straight across for a Lotus XI climax, complete with working headlights and all upholstery! I raced it once and the owner decided to swap back. I’d put new tires on it but it’d also blown its head gasket so we called it square.

You’re gonna think I’m mildly nuts but just as George Starch can’t remember what he did with his Zagato, I can’t remember what happened to mine! I’ve seen it advertised a few years ago in Hemmings as ‘Toly Arutunoff’s car’ but I never checked on it.

I got my current Appia Z (which is an earlier car than my previous one) in Chicago for about $2500–a magic number, see my book–and had it repainted. The local restorer thought it had been in an accident but it was just the standard amount of Italian Bondo. I got cute on messing just a hair with the timing and thanks to the carbon in the cylinders, I melted a piston and that’s how I found out Appias are very sensitive to timing.

I sent the engine to Jack Beck’s Orion engineering and instead of just fixing/replacing the piston I got a complete overhaul. I replaced the exhaust system with a straightpipe with the only muffler a long universal muffler/tailpipe I won as a doorprize. My wife swears the car is noisier inside than outside, but she’s never been in it with all the carpeting and underpadding which I still have stored away. I’ve tried swapping the 22/23mm venturis with a pair of 26s and doing the proper rejetting but I’ve never actually compared the performance at Hallett(motor speedway); the car feels no faster and on the street has a little hiccup when the second throttle opens so I run it in standard configuration now.

It says on the brake fluid reservoir to use vegetable oil only but I use brake fluid. The reservoir has a pressure plunger you pull up to, of course, pressurize the system. It didn’t work for 20 years and a few years ago I pulled on it and up it came. As the cars all sit for some time and I forget to push the brake pedals weekly or monthly, I recently got in the Appia and the pedal went to the floor. What the heck–I pulled the plunger all the way up, bled the brakes, and now the pedal works fine. (The Flavia Zagato’s all-disc system did the same thing and it has two plungers and guess what it worked too! I was told that disc brake pistons can recede and suck a little air in around the seals).

A nice guy in Texas gave me the complete body and engine parts books, and I also have a couple shop manuals. Wouldn’t it be fun to place an order for a couple Zagato racing seats and plexiglass windows and have some employee in Italy wander back into the storeroom and find ’em and send them to me…..dream on..

Through the years I’ve driven the car from Tulsa to Nashville and up to Washington D.C. and back to Tulsa; We also drove it out to Arizona and ran the first Copperstate 1000. I’ve towed it out to the Monterey Historics and run it several times; also ran the Coronado historic race once, and that delightful one-time-only Torrey Pines Hillclimb/concourse several years ago. The late Martin Swig bought a lovely Appia Pininfarina coupe that’d been for sale for years near Dallas. It’d been reupholstered in black leather and was like new everywhere except the trunk, for some reason. I was hot for it but Karen said “you don’t need another little pissant car.” Of course I bug her about the year before the Allard year at Monterey we looked at a restored ugly waterfall grill Allard in L. A. that was $12,500 or make offer. it only needed the rubber strip under the windscreen but duct tape would’ve easily gotten us back to Tulsa and next year it probably would’ve at least doubled our money. But oh no, it was too ugly…..rats!

I raced the Appia in the Memphis vintage race in ’87 or ’88 on the original ’59 Michelin X tires. If you don’t know Memphis, after a practically mile-long straight there’s a 210 degree gently banked right turn which eventually stripped the tread off the left rear which made a loud machinegun noise as I drove back to the pits. I put on the unused spare and it did the same thing in a couple laps. Let me add that I wasn’t lifting for the turn and so with the banking I figure I was putting a .8g load on that vintage tire. I’ve also raced the Appia at Pittsburgh a couple times and at the one-off Philadelphia vintage Grand Prix–marvelous event but never to be repeated due to its location abutting the ghetto…I had a wonderful race against a rollercrank Porsche 356 1300s coupe! Seems like I might’ve raced it at an early Walter Mitty at Road Atlanta when they didn’t require all that safety stuff.