Story and photos by Sean Smith
From the Archives, December 2018
Well before Nick Soprano climbed behind the wheels of some of the world’s greatest sports cars, he was drawing his version of the perfect high performance machine. Every young car lover does this, but Nick never grew out of it.
He was perpetually mesmerized by the form and shape of the Italian exotics featured in his beloved automotive magazines. The lines of a 250 SWB Ferrari were compelling to the young Soprano. It was a visceral attraction; he didn’t understand the technicalities behind the design. He just knew it was right. These aspects were what he created in his drawings. Eventually Soprano would create his own car based on a lifetime of experiences with Italian cars. But it didn’t happen overnight.
Born in 1951, Soprano’s first automotive memory was grabbing the steering wheel of his dad’s ’49 Plymouth. His father was driving and the young Soprano felt he could control the car, so he thought he’d give it a try. Though surprised, his father saw the interest in his young son and watched what played out.
His solo driving career started at around 6 years old on an Allis-Chalmers garden tractor. Soprano was drawn to machinery. Anything with a motor and wheels was like a magnet.
It was an affinity that wasn’t learned or part of his hereditary. To his father a car, a truck, a tractor were utilitarian tools; to Nick they were all-consuming.
At age 13 a family friend gave Nick his first car. It was a 1959 Fiat 1100 four-door sedan with 4 on the tree. Soprano remembers it as a perfectly nice, 5-year-old car, but at the time everyone was into big American cars, so the car was gifted to him. This is where he really learned to drive, doing circuits in a field next to the family homestead. A main road ran by the field, and the local police would watch the young Soprano driving around and would often stop him and tell him what he was doing wasn’t quite legal. After a month of this, Nick sold his first foreign car to a buddy.
At 15, license soon to be in hand, Soprano bought his first road car, a 1960 Alfa Romeo 2000 Spyder. He’d seen a 2600 for sale, but it was priced out of his reach. The 2000 was down two cylinders from the 2600, but it still had the elegant style of its more powerful sibling that Nick had fallen in love with. He knew the history of Alfa Romeo from reading his Road & Track, Car and Driver and Sports Car Graphics. Anything he could get his hands on he poured over, absorbing knowledge of the great Italian marques. He wanted a car that represented part of that potent history.
The Alfa stayed with Nick for about a year and a half. From there he moved on to a 1961 Corvette with a 283 motor. First thing he did was take the car to his back yard and pull the motor out of the ‘Vette. He then stuffed a 350 cubic inch, 350 hp power plant in its place. The performance upgrade was profound. Nick loved creating this kind of change with nothing more than his own two hands and a few tools. It gave him a greater appreciation of the machine; for him, it became a form of bonding with the car.
Soprano went through college and graduated with a degree, but most careers that were available held no attraction for him; no spark. All during school Nick had been fiddling with cars in his back yard, so he decided to follow his heart and go down that road. His subsequent career grew out of his innate passion, mechanical abilities, and a devotion to European road and race cars.
The genesis of his business was to experience all the great automobiles that inspired him. At the time, the cars were around and could be had at a reasonable price; you could play a little bit. The buying and selling of these cars gave him the motivation to create Motor Classic and Competition, devoted to the sales of cars that interested Nick. After some more buying and selling, Nick was able to buy his first significant car: a Ferrari 330 GTC. At the time its price was more akin to the price of a new Corvette, not the lofty position it inhabits now.
The next level was racing. For Soprano, to experience the true essence of a Ferrari or a Maserati he had to do it on a track. It was another dimension: hard braking, hard acceleration, using every bit of the car and track, a bond of man and machine at a high rate of speed. Nick bonded with a number of thoroughbreds: a TDF Ferrari, a 450S Maserati, even a Shelby Daytona Cobra. Finally, it was time to rekindle the dream to build his own dream car. By 1990, he was ready.
Building the dream car
Through first-hand experience with so many iconic racers, he had a constantly expanding pool of information to draw on in the evolution of his dream car. Nick would watch the play of light on a car as it moved down the road and saw how it changed; this went into his subconscious and came out in the emotional and dramatic lines of his design. The shape was reconfirmed by the success of the cars that inspired him.
The compulsion grew and grew. Ultimately, these drawings had to become 3-dimensional. It was something Nick had to do. Some people paint, others sculpt; Soprano had to bring his dream off of the paper and on to the road. By this time he knew how everything went together; he understood the workings of a sports car. It was no longer a black art, it was something he could do. A self-taught conceptual engineer, by observation Nick could see how things went together, how they worked, and why they worked. Now it was time to do it himself.
The power would come from a Ferrari 12 cylinder motor that would be mated to a ZF transaxle. He had suspension uprights with brakes, and a general idea of the optimal wheelbase, track, and position of the motor with respect to the drivetrain and fuel cell. All this was given to a very talented chassis fabricator, who created the initial skeleton to support the bodywork.
The chassis had dimensions that Soprano knew worked well. He placed the motor well behind the front axle and the transaxle was situated almost completely ahead of the rear one, giving a centralized mass, so even though the car’s power plant was in the front, the handling was more that of a mid-engined machine.
Now to clothe the dream. Nick had a wealth of drawings he’d been creating over the years as a starting point; they were handed over to another artisan to refine his designs.
As the clay model came together, Nick laid hands on the design to feel how the shapes flowed together. He didn’t rely on wind tunnels or computers to tell him what was correct; he could tell by the feel of the curves under his hands if it was right. By eye, he refined lines and shapes to create an aesthetic as well as an efficient form.
Many weren’t sure the design would work. It didn’t follow the guide lines laid out by modern convention,; Soprano’s design was outside the box. He was stepping back in time to create the shape he knew by experience would work, and turning the image in his mind into a working prototype.
To make the car optically correct (a dramatic shape) Soprano set aside mathematical correctness and experimented with shape and form, envisioning how wind would flow over a shape. This was a more emotional and organic process compared to feeding numbers into a computer. The car was destined to cheat the wind and look good doing it.
Soprano wanted to create a vision like Zagato, or Pininfarina. This process took almost 25 years. He called it the Sensuale and it was finally completed in 2014.
Other than the motor, transaxle, and suspension uprights, everything on the Sensuale was fabricated and bespoke to the car. There could be no compromising; it was all made to fit the dream. A team of artisans fed off of Soprano’s enthusiasm and plied their craft, not as a job, but as a way to showcase their talents in one cohesive form.
It has truly met Soprano’s vision.
The vibe inside the Sensuale is that of a 60s sports racer. Leather, wood, black crackle finish, and big Veglia dials make you feel right at home. The snarl of the V12 at start up gives you visions of winding roads and heel-and-toe down shifts.
Those visions become reality on those selfsame roads. The Sensuale has the feel of a car bred for the track, but it still has the refinement of a great GT car. With a well-balanced chassis, almost perfect weight distribution, and sticky tires the Sensuale doesn’t rely on electronic add-ons to make it handle. It relies on a good set up and a driver behind the wheel who has disconnected himself from all the standard modern day distractions, willing to enjoy the visceral driving experience offered up in large amounts by this one-of-a kind machine.
Specs
Length: 166 inches
Height: 47 inches
Track, Front: 61.5 inches, Rear: 60.5 inches
Weight: 2980 lbs
Engine: Colombo Ferrari V12
Valves: 2 per cylinder
Carburetors: Three Weber 40 DFI
Bore: 81 mm
Stroke: 71 mm
Horsepower: 340
Torque: 268 ft-lb at 5000 rpm
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