The Shaffer images
It was Frank Shaffer who first brought the bright red Lele to my attention.
“Listen“, he said. “I’ve got some pictures to show you of something old and Italian. I know it’s Italian but that’s about all I know.” He pulled out a set of prints, produced by an old 35 mm Leica camera.
After taking a good look at Frank’s photos, I thought it might be interesting enough to take a look at the car up close. It was an Iso Lele, to be sure. It was large and red, red as in Ferrari fire engine red, red as in “my first Italian sports car red repaint.”
First photos of the car did not provide enough detail to read the dashplaque and signature on the dash of the Iso.
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It looked in decent condition, and there were two interesting details on the car. One was a “Marlboro” badge on the front fender, and the other was the signature on the dashboard next to a brass plaque.
I do not know everything, even about Italian cars. The Isos, as grand as they may have been, never redlined my tach and I knew comparatively little about them. A dyed-in-the-wool Iso enthusiast would have known right off the bat what the Marlboro emblem meant. Or maybe not--it was pretty obscure, as we would eventually find out. So, how, I asked Frank, do we get to see this thing?
The Marlboro emblems were clear, but what did they mean?
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He would set it up, he said. This would entail making an appointment with estate trustee William Dunn, who was virtually deaf despite a cochlea transplant. Frank was about the only person whom Dunn could understand. Dunn was the trustee of the mansion where the Iso could be found. The mansion was in a gated community near Williamsburg Virginia, and Frank said that alone was worth seeing.
The mansion
At the appointed time, Frank picked me up in the Mercedes and we approached the mansion, turning on to John Browning Drive. “Another coincidence,” Frank muttered. “Jack Dunn was a gun collector and loved Browning shot guns.”
Whoa, back up, I said. Who is Jack Dunn?
“Remember I told you that William Dunn was the trustee of the estate? Well, Jack was his son. Jack owned the mansion, and the Iso Lele.”
So what happened to Jack? Why is his father the trustee to his estate?
“Jack was an avid hunter and fisherman and businessman, who also married very well. His father-in-law owned a very special and lucrative machine shop, and Jack soon was managing it. There was a lot of money,” Frank said. “We’re talking NASA contracts, not valve jobs here.”
Frank's silver Mercedes parks in front of the now-empty Dunn mansion.
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“But in 2001, Jack died in a car accident while returning from a hunting trip in Virginia Beach. He had his favorite Browning shotguns in the truck with him, and the accident scattered the guns all over the highway. He was only in his forties.”
Yes, but what about his wife? Didn’t everything go to her?
“Well, yes, but she died, also very young, less than two years after Jack. And their only son is still a teenager. Hence, Jack’s father is handling the estate for his grandson.”
A family tragedy of the third degree. I was reminded that bad things do happen to good people.
“And now, William needs to get rid of many of Jack’s personal items which were kept by his widow. He hopes to sell the mansion but needs to clean it out.”
Starting to come together. Jack Dunn is at right, alongside Piero Rivolta in a photo taken
at the 2001 Le Belle Macchine d'Italia, a short time before his untimely death. Photo by Darren Frank.
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Frank pulled the Mercedes around the circular drive of the mansion. “William will be meeting us here shortly.” It was a McMansion, but a Whopper of a McMansion, the biggest one in the development, at the end of a long road and backed by a natural inlet off the James River.
William “Bill” Dunn pulled up, a large man, in fine fettle aside from his near total deafness. We shook hands, and Bill Dunn took Frank and me on a guided tour of the house that Jack had built. There were balconies everywhere, a very open space in the center, living spaces to the sides of the house, and four floors including a five car garage in the basement. There were rooms full of books and stuffed animals and hunting trophies, and it seemed like Jack’s influence was everywhere. If new mansions could be haunted this would make a good candidate. We took the elevator to the basement, where the lights turned on automatically as we made our way to the Iso.
A big, bright red Iso Lele sat in the basement of the huge mansion. But so many questions left to answer.
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A Marlboro Lele
It sat next to a covered Mercedes Benz 280 SL, last of the small pagoda tops, and obviously in a bit better condition than the mysterious Iso. Frank’s earlier photos of the car had told most of the story, but we went through and checked out just about everything else.
Clearly, now, the plaque read "Howden Ganley".
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It seemed an honest car, the interior was impressively original, the engine clean and in good working order. The repaint was thick, and several blisters were popping up around the hood and window areas.
The Marlboro badge and insignias were apparently a factory effort. Now, it was much easier to determine what the plaque actually read: "This car specially built for Howden Ganley Esq".
Next to it, written on the leather of the dashboard, was Piero Rivolta’s signature.
And alongside was the signature of Piero Rivolta.
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I remembered now, Howden Ganley, a brief run in Formula One in the early 70s. Formula A as well? Hmmm. And of course Piero, whom I had met a few years earlier, and oh, what a character he was, and still is, I hoped. This could turn out to be an interesting story, I thought.
By days end, we had “discovered” a rare Iso Lele, but many questions remained. Had this car really been built for Howden Ganley? What was the connection to Marlboro? What is the history of this particular Lele? Why and when had Piero Rivolta signed the dash? Now that it was for sale, who would most likely want to own such a beast? The answers in Part II.
