pete

Peter Whitehead hustles his four-seat racer through a turn. Photo by Racecarshot.com.

By Brian Winer

You would think, in a country like Italy, that once seeing Ferrari V12s or Maserati V8s in action, any Italians thinking of building high performance cars to compete with them would throw up their hands and say “It is useless to compete—you cannot improve upon perfection.”

And then there were guys like Renzo Rivolta who, after venturing from the refrigerator making business into cars with the tiny BMW Isetta in the fifties, decided to make a grand touring coupe.

Not using an Italian engine, of great complexity and cost, but an off the shelf Chevy V8 with an iron block, iron heads, overhead valves, low tech but high horsepower.

The result? A four seater coupe that can be out there on the same race course as a Ferrari or Maserati four-seater and blow their doors off. And if you live in the U.S. and blow a part, hey, you stop at Auto Zone or the nearest junkyard. Try that with your Ferrari or Maser.

The first Rivolta was shown in the Turin show in 1962. If you dig into its history you find that it actually was a phoenix arising out of the ashes of a British project called the Gordon Keeble.