The 540 Aperta is it appeared at Villa d ‘Este. Photo by Hugues Vanhoolandt.
By Wallace Wyss
From the VeloceToday Archives, 2010
Let’s say you have more money than God and way back you saw an old Italian movie that had a sexy car in it. The movie was by Fellini and the car, as near as anyone can tell, was a special by Fantuzzi, and/or originally installed on a racing chassis.
According to our friends at Coachbuild.com, “Fantuzzi’s golden Spider body was first installed on the chassis of 330 TR-LM #0808TR in 1963. After its racing career, this 330 TR-LM also received a new Coupe body by Fantuzzi and the car was once offered for sale with both the Coupe and the Spider body. In 1964 the Spider body was constructed onto #4381SA – originally the first of four 1963 330 LM Berlinettas.” All this before appearing in its first and only movie.
A glimpse of the Fantuzzi Ferrari as it appeared in the Fellini movie.
Then let’s say decades after seeing that movie you decide to spend some money on taking a brand new Ferrari and converting it to have the design cues of the same car you saw in the movie. We probably all wish we could do something along those lines.
That’s basically the story of the Ferrari P540 Superfast Aperta made by Pininfarina. It was built for Edward Walson, whose father John is credited as being the creator of cable TV.
The movie was a 1968 short, “Toby Dammit”, one of the three episodes of the film “Histoires Extraordinaires”, (also titled “Spirits of the Dead”) made in 1968 based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
It was directed by Federico Fellini, with Terence Stamp as Dammit, as a drugged and drunk English movie star who gains acceptance in the Italian press and his producers fawn over him. It was “Never Bet The Devil Your Head”.
The other two episodes, “Metzengerstein” and “William Wilson”, were directed by Roger Vadim and Louis Malle.
The original Golden Ferrari sometime, somewhere, in Italy. Note the vents.
The original “Golden Ferrari” had faired-in headlamps, a la GTO, a Plexiglas wraparound windscreen, an oval grille, a roll over hoop and was painted a sort of metallic gold. Using reference photos (though the body still exists today on a less valuable 330GT chassis in America) the folks at Pininfarina and Ferrari’s Special Projects division created the new one-off from a modern standpoint.
Walson’s version of the Golden Ferrari, as interpreted by Pininfarina. Photo by Hugues Vanhoolandt.
Walson, obviously smitten with the original Golden Ferrari and hearing of Pininfarina’s Portfolio program, had gone to Ferrari and asked to have a car designed with similar design cues and the same color. The car that Pininfarina built for him has a roof style that is awfully much like the ’68 Corvette T-top coupe (without the center roof bar) but at least it looks better than the 599 Aperta’s solution.
The new 599 is the latest iteration of the open front engined Ferrari concept. Photo courtesy Ferrari Media
The donor car was a 599 GTB since there was no open version yet, a lot of finite element analysis was done in development to make up for the loss of the roof. It took 14 months to finish the car and no doubt provided the basis and perhaps inspiration for the new 599 Aperta.
The following describes the author’s impressions to the retro styling of the 540 Aperta. All photos by Hugues Vanhoolandt.
The side wastegate gills still are a good modern interpretation of Ferrari side gills and a refreshing update from those on the original Gold Ferrari. The extra vents in the rear fenders though, look crammed into too small an area, a result of them trying to keep the energy absorbing bumper inviolate. They should have been smaller or dropped altogether.
The main flaw of the car is that they were trying to impose a sixties design on a year 2010 car with the result that the sixties part got put on top of the modern part. Not exactly as good as starting with a blank sheet of paper.
While single round lamps per side are classic sixties Ferrari, a la GTO, Lusso, 275GTB, the fact that the whole rear valance is positioned above the safety bumper was too big a compromise if they were going retro. The bottom edge of the inset valance panel is twice as wide as it needs to be and gives the rear a thick heavy look like it’s on a 5000 lb. car.
What they should have done was commence designing only after the stock U.S. spec car was titled and licensed in the U.S., and then they could have modified the safety bumper to fit the styling. Instead they fit the Sixties retro style design cues onto a U.S. legal car trying to retain the energy-absorbing features as if it were slated for production. On a custom, this wouldn’t have mattered. They could have done anything they wanted to…but we still celebrate the opportunity Pininfarina and Ferrari provide to create something unique.
The Author: A design critic, he is the author of two books on Ferrari and has lectured at the Art Center College of Design.
It’s not bad especially the 3/4 rear view.
Fascinating. What Goldfinger would drive.
It would have been really something if the Ferrari factory had built the original version as homologated GT cars to race against the Shelby Cobras during this time period.
I remember going to the NuArt theater in West LA to see Toby Dammit. This was where my buddy John Estes and I saw so many Fellini films. The other two Poe adaptations were almost unwatchable. One wonders what the original directors Orson Welles and surrealist Luis Buñuel would have done, rather than Malle and Vadim. But the latter probably drove to the set every day in the 275 GTB he gave Jane Fonda.
While watching Dammit I remember saying to John, “You know, I think I saw that car at the Chicago auto show in ’66 or ’67”.
One hopes the owner of the Aperta won’t be haunted by the six year old girl, who finally lifted Terrance Stamp’s severed head by its blonde locks from the rubble of a closed freeway construction site, while the single span cable barrier he had just driven through is still humming, with that neck width spot of blood on it.
Stamp drove into and over a lot of mannequins populating the streets of Rome that evening on his way to that fateful, high speed ending.
Fantuzzi’s crisp and dynamic rebody of 4381SA in that tarnished gold paint exhibited the delicacy of the era’s design sensibilities. While the Pinin ‘homage’ seems to be reaching from the grave, to continue the Poe metaphor, yet not quite grasping such an elusive apparition…
Oh, I do remember “Toby Dammit,” and his wild ride around Rome and by the Coliseum! I was at just the age to think of myself in those scenes. I didn’t remember the other two segments of “Spirits of the Dead” as being that awful, but that was my “art film” phase. The Fellini segment though, dark as it was, seemed to me to have more life in it than many Fellini films. BUT (again), I loved racing cars.