Toly in his familiar white sunhat with his double bubble Lancia Flaminia Zagato at the Pau circuit in the south of France. (Photo Grand Prix Library/Gauld)
Story by Graham Gauld
Anatoly Arutunoff celebrated his 90th birthday yesterday, September 21, and I wish I had been there in Tulsa where I am sure he had a great party.
Years ago, and long before I met him for the first time, I had heard about this mad Russian who lived in Oklahoma and amongst other things owned his own auto racing circuit ( Hallett Circuit near Tulsa).
Toly, as he is usually known, is one of the truly great characters in motor sport, who appeared to have a thing about Lancia’s and Zagato coachwork. The first time I met him was at the Pau street circuit in the South of France where they were holding a historic event around the streets and park in the town.
On that occasion he was driving his pale blue Lancia Flaminia Zagato and was clearly enjoying his racing in France, but his other interesting Lancia was his Series 1 Appia Zagato GTE.
This 1.1 liter V4 Lancia was one of a small run of aluminum-bodied versions he ran in various events in the USA including the Monterey Historics and the Copperstate 1000.
Toly’s father Sergei was born in Armenia and, with his wife, fled Russia during the 1917 Revolution and aimed for Berlin in Germany. Sergei was a remarkable man who, at the age of 11, wired up the family home in Russia with electricity and became a professor at the University in Tbilisi at the age of 19.
In Berlin Sergei continued to work on his ideas and most importantly had developed a new kind of underground pump suitable for the oil industry. He had difficulty getting it financed but eventually did find a bank that would loan him the money. Looking around him, he could see the German economy was wracked with inflation so he and his wife moved once more, this time to America and Oklahoma, for that was where the oil was and where he would have potential customers for his pumps.
The whole project took off and soon the family became wealthy and were to buy a second grand home in Hollywood, California in a house that was later sold to actor Vincent Price.
Toly was born in the United States in 1936 and had a happy and comfortable upbringing between Oklahoma and California that allowed him to indulge in his passion for cars and racing. Talk to him about cars and he pours out stories; his enthusiasm is infectious.
What many people may not realize, however, is that Toly, at one time, was a Ferrari dealer in Tulsa, which led me to ask him just how he managed to become a dealer so easily.
It all came about in the late 1960s when he saw a letter in the local Tulsa newspaper by his friend Dick Irish, who used to race Ferraris with Tony Parravano. Toly recalls:
“When I saw the letter from Dick I thought to myself I am 32 years old and need a goal in life so why didn’t I become a Ferrari dealer.
“As Dick was into Ferraris back then I called him and hired him. We called ourselves Automobiles of Italy and I think we ended up with every franchise you could think of apart from Fiat and Alfa. I remember when we opened we had two De Tomasos, a 365 Ferrari, two Siata Springs, a Lancia Fulvia Zagato and a few more. We had a chassis dynamometer, air conditioning for all the mechanics’ bays and sent all this information to Chinetti in New York.
“They came back and said ‘Fine, send us $6,000 and we will send you some parts and sign this”. That was it. I was a Ferrari dealer”.
Toly’s most spectacular Ferrari was this one-off Zagato 3Z based on a 250 California Spyder. (Photo Grand Prix Library/Gauld)
Toly’s love of Italian cars, particularly if they had Zagato bodies, was such that when he visited the 1971 Turin Motor Show and saw a razor-edged Ferrari on the Zagato stand he just had to have it, but Zagato refused to sell it to him. A year later he went back to Turin and again asked on the Zagato stand if the car was for sale, only to be told it had been sold. So what was this car ?
The donor car was Chassis 2491GT, the 17th of 56 short-wheelbase 250GT California Spyders that arrived in Luigi Chinetti grey with red Connolly leather. Chinetti kept the car for eight years before sending it to Turin to be converted into a spyder with Zagato bodywork.
The 3Z spyder was one of the few Ferraris to be bodied by Zagato, and was credited to Guiseppe Mittino at Zagato Design for the car’s unique sharp-edged style. I feel sure Luigi Chinetti Junior ( Coco) had a hand in the shape as he had considerable talent in sketching original coachwork designs.
After the Turin Show it arrived in the US and was sold to a doctor on Long Island. Meanwhile, back in Tulsa Oklahoma, Toly Arutunoff was still searching for the car but didn’t have a idea where it was.
Seven years later, no longer a Ferrari dealer, he decided he just had to find this car.
“So I decided to put an ad in the New York Times which said something like ‘do you know the whereabouts of Ferrari 3Z etc.’ However I was going to have to drive six miles to place the ad and so I thought, instead, I would call Stan Nowak who was a great Ferrari collector and dealer in very special Ferraris.
“I said I was trying to find the 3Z so Stan said he knew where it was but apologized, remarking that part of his income came from finding cars for people and would a 5% finders fee be OK ? I said, yes, do we need a contract or anything and he said no, we were friends. So I said go ahead…………… without a pause he said it was advertised in the New York Times, just like that, so it cost me $2500 not to drive six miles and put in my ad!”
The pulling power of a Ferrari was just as strong then as it is now. “I was driving the Zagato back from Long Island to home and pulled in for a sandwich. There was a homely girl behind the counter and she said ‘Is that a Ferrari?’ So I said, ‘yeah.’ She said ‘Will you marry me?’ I said ‘no, but I like your spirit,’ so she told me that she had always promised herself if she ever met anyone with a Ferrari she would ask him to marry her.”
So, after a quest that had taken eight years, Toly finally got the Zagato and kept it for over thirty years before it was sold in 2010.
In February 2011 Toly was involved in a road accident and lost a leg, but when next I met him he proudly showed me his prosthetic leg, on which he had Zagato symbols painted, and I invited him to take part in our Ecurie Ecosse Tour in Scotland.
Toly with his classic Ford Thunderbird on the Ecurie Ecosse Tour in Scotland. (Photo Grand Prix Library/Gauld)
Much to my surprise he and his wife Karen sent his white 1955 Ford Thunderbird to Europe to run in one or two classic events such as the Vernasca Silver Flag in Italy and our Ecurie Ecosse Tour. His car was now equipped with hand controls and he surprised a lot of the Scots locals with his dashing Thunderbird which was a rare sight in the Highlands.
Anatoly Arutunoff, then, is one of the true great enthusiasts who has much to reflect on after a busy and remarkable 90 years, and I personally hope we will continue to have his company for many years to come.
I once met Toly, who was a guest at one of David Jones’ Old Drivers Reunions at his ranch in Fort Worth. We had a nice conversation and from what I remember, I never noticed he missed one leg. He moved around pretty well. As for Dick Irish, he told me a story once about how he had to buy [on behalf of a rich Oklahoma friend in the 1950s] a Ferrari from Luigi Chinetti and had to walk around New York City with an enormous amount of cash, since Luigi insisted on a cash payment. He made it safely, escaping Luigi’s fellow countrymen looking for easy money.