VeloceToday.com

The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts

Lancia 037 and S4

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Lancia 037 at a recent meet.

Story and Photos by Hugh Doran

Ever since Lotus boss Colin Chapman took out a competition license in the name of “Gold Leaf Team Lotus”: motorsport has been a rather colorful sport. Today we are well used to seeing racing cars painted in the colors of all manner of various products. Looking back over the years there have been some bad paint jobs on the cars, but there have also been some good ones. Then there are the ones that really stand out. One such livery is the Martini colors worn by Lancia in the World Rally Championship
[Read more…] about Lancia 037 and S4

Our Features This Week, January 7th, 2014

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News Briefs and Hot Items

Incredible Barn Finds to first three Premium Subscribers!

Special Offer: A free copy (including shipping) of “Incredible Barn Finds” by Wallace Wyss to the first three NEW Premiums Subscribers to VeloceToday. Just sign up for a year and we’ll contact you if you are among the first three for your mailing address. Click here to get started!.

Wallace Wyss and others including Porsche expert Randy Leffingwell would like to know if anyone has any idea of what happened to the Bertone Porsche as seen in Randy’s photo. We’ll have a story on the car shortly but it would be nice to see if we could establish its current whereabouts first.

Coming up: Jonathan Sharp takes us on a tour of the Fiat Lingotto facility and the new museum. The Museum is an incredible visual feast and serves as a homage to the greatest cars of the 20th century; from Marlene to Moss and the cars they drove. Don’t miss Jonathan’s latest adventure.

For the New Year, a new banner, buttons and font size. Sharp’s image from Lingotto now graces our banner head; be sure to take note of our new buttons and shop at our store; notice the larger font size now used for our articles. We hope you approve of all!



Our Features This Week

Fiat 508 Balilla Mille Miglia Berlinetta

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The neatest, prettiest, most Italianate small displacement pre-war coupe ever made.

In one sense, the paltry 998 cc 36 hp Fiat Balilla Mille Miglia Berlinetta Coupe is much ado about very little. In another sense, it is the quintessential example of prewar Italian design in miniature and very nearly takes your breath away. And the name is no auction house hype; Mille Miglia Berlinetta it was from the day it rolled out of the factory in 1935.

If looks aren’t enough, consider that the ultra-rare MM Berlinetta may be one of the first true Grand Touring cars ever conceived, and most certainly one of the first small displacement GT cars ever built.
[Read more…] about Fiat 508 Balilla Mille Miglia Berlinetta

Epoqu’Auto in Lyon, 2013

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Story and Photos by Thomas Bromehead

Next month everyone will be headed to Paris for Retromobile, France’s largest classic car show. But last November 8-10, 50,000 people attended France’s second largest event, Epoqu’ Auto. No newcomer, the event celebrated its 35th anniversary and now boasts more exhibitors than even the fabled Retro. [Read more…] about Epoqu’Auto in Lyon, 2013

Autodelta at the Quail

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The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering August 16th 2013. Art by Evan Klein.

By Brandon Adrian as told to the Editor

How could we have missed this…not once, but twice…?

Somewhere along the way during Monterey Car Week, we overlooked an unusual display of Alfa Romeos gathered at the Quail. In November, the organizer of this small but potent affair, Brandon Adrian, reminded us of our oversight. We were going to include a short report in last week’s special Autodelta edition of VeloceToday but in the hustle and bustle of the holidays and deadlines, we forgot…again! By this time poor Brandon was about to run us over with a spare GTA.

We promised to make amends so here it is…Autodelta at the Quail. [Read more…] about Autodelta at the Quail

Our Features This Week, December 31, 2013

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Happy New Year!

We don’t want to let 2013 go by without acknowledging the birth of Autodelta fifty years ago. Roberto Motta helps us celebrate with a report on the anniversary meeting at Monza, the editor chips in with an appreciation of Carlo Chiti, and we present an Autodelta Gallery courtesy of Alfa Romeo Automobilismo Storico, Centro Documentazione (Arese, Milano). Due to space reasons, this week’s features will appear only once, below.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE SMALL PHOTO TO GO STRAIGHT TO THE ARTICLE.

249 Good Reasons to be a Premium Subscriber

Below, we roll out all the articles we’ve published in 2013, posted from December to January; just keep scrolling down to January. Our thanks to all of our contributors, authors, correspondents, proofreaders and all of you who have become Premium Subscribers, without whom VeloceToday would not exist. Point and click and thank you!

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Carlo Chiti: An Appreciation in English and Italian

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By Pete Vack

All images courtesy and copyright Alfa Romeo Automobilismo Storico, Centro Documentazione (Arese, Milano)

Carlo Chiti was many things: an engineer for Alfa Romeo from 1952 to 1957, Ferrari’s revolutionary chief engineer from 1958-1961, then the ATS chief engineer from 1962-1963. But above all, Carlo Chiti was Autodelta. Wrote his wife Luigia Fumanelli, “Autodelta was his creation. I think that he looked upon it as his second home, and it lasted so long – twenty years – that when it was no longer there he felt his life had been taken from him.”

Chiti admitted that his fortunes at Autodelta were closely allied to those of Giuseppe Luraghi, the colorful, novel- writing President of Alfa Romeo from 1960 to 1974. It was Luraghi who, via Orazio Satta, was invited to form a competition department of Alfa in 1962, but Chiti was tied up with ATS. By 1964 ATS was on the ropes and he was now able to take up on Luraghi’s offer to create a racing department, originally separate from the factory. Chiti had remarkable independence; although each project had to be passed through both Satta and Giuseppe Busso, according to Piero Casucci, “the freedom he enjoyed, together with his team, was virtually complete.”

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Autodelta’s 50th Anniversary in English and Italian

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Story and Photos by Roberto Motta

“The legends back on track” was held on 21 and 22 September, at Monza to celebrate 50 years of Autodelta. Organized by the Italian Alfa Romeo Register, it attracted a large gathering of Autodelta racing cars and featured more than 700 cars on the track. Of these, about 300 racing cars were from Europe, Russia, Japan, and the United States.

Also participating were many of the drivers and technicians who contributed to the success of Autodelta. In the course of a conference, they entertained fans and journalists by telling stories about their part in the history of Alfa’s famous racing arm. The group included Nino Vaccarella, Teodoro Zeccoli, Gianluigi Picchi, Andrea de Adamich, Mauro Pregliasco, Bruno Giacomelli, and Camillo Marchetti.

Autodelta’s founder and chief engineer, Carlo Chiti, passed away in 1994 at the age of 70, but his son Arturo and his daughter Olga attended in memory of his father. Arturo accepted an award on behalf of the unforgettable Tuscan engineer.

Carlo Chiti's son Arturo accepts an award on behalf of his father.


The more than three thousand fans were on hand to get the chance to see some of the cars that made Autodelta history; the cars rarely leave the garages where they are jealously guarded, and now take to the track only on special occasions.

Several TZ1 and TZ2 were on hand to celebrate Autodelta's fifty years.

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Autodelta Photo Gallery: 1965 to 1981

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1965: A GTA in front of the new Autodelta shop.

All images courtesy “Alfa Romeo Automobilismo Storico, Centro Documentazione (Arese, Milano)”
Results from http://www.italiancar.net/pilot/ms054.htm

1966: A life too short. The TZ2 would be retired to concentrate on the GTAs.

1967: The GTA's were successful in keeping the Porsches at bay even in Germany.

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Merry Christmas

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Photo by Greg Vack. Click on pic to read more about a Scalextric Christmas.

Six of the Most Talked-About Articles in 2013

The comments from our readers are not numerous: however, they are indicative the intelligence, knowledge and thoughtfulness of our readership, and pro or con they are all well written and honest. Thankfully most (and we publish all) are positive and helpful. All are worth reading, and a learned comment from just one of our astute readers is worth 1000 of the less serious remarks found on many other websites.

For this Christmas Eve, we decided to list six of this year’s most talked about articles. Read on and add your comments as well.

Comments aren’t always an indicator of how good an article is…some of our best articles elicit few comments simply because they are no errors or don’t raise any controversy. Case in point, the superb work done at Goodwood this year by both Jonathan Sharp and Hugues Vanhoolandt only came home with a total of ten comments over a five article special feature. Both Sharp and Vanhoolandt worked endlessly all year providing VeloceToday with stunning photography and astute and accurate reporting. Well done!

With 15 comments, Wally Wyss’s article about the Faux French Hot Rods of Californian Terry Cook really struck a note with our readers, but were the remarks good or bad? We all knew we’d have controversy, and yet when all was said and done, almost all of the comments took to Terry’s side and congratulated him on his automotive art. We thank Wyss for continuing to provide interesting and provocative articles such as this and we applaud Cook for accomplishing what many of us can only dream of doing.

Paris, 1954, how sweet it was. The Editor’s uncle Gerald Vack, then serving with the U.S. Military in Germany, got a break and went off to Paris to see all the latest fashions at the Grand Palais. The stars of the show were the new 1300 Alfa Giulietta Sprint and the Ferrari 375 bodied by Pinin Farina, which director Roberto Rossellini purchased while at the show. The two-part article featured 20 still-brilliant Kodachrome slide shots of all the best cars at the show and gathered up 17 comments, all nice, of course!

Michael T. Lynch reported on the acquisition of the Road & Track archives by the REVS institute and added one of his favorite Brockbank cartoons to the article. When Road & Track was being moved to its new location in Michigan, said Lynch, the new owners didn’t want to take the tons of archives. Fortunately the REVS Institute saved everything for posterity. Twenty of our readers were happy that the archives were saved, but many sadly noted that the magazine is not what it once was and feared for its future.

Gijsbert-Paul Berk is one of our most senior and experience writers; he has been a journalist in Europe since the mid-1950s. His four-part article on Streamlining and Concept Cars was complete, full of new information, and told a story still relevant in today’s changing world. Beginning in 1888, Berk detailed decades of advanced aerodynamic vehicles and how the manufacturers influenced each other on both sides of the Atlantic. Twenty one readers added their opinions.

Graham Gauld needs no introduction nor does Henry Manney III. But Gauld’s remembrances of Manney immediately brought forth comments from Bill Warner, Toly Arutonoff, Jeff Allison, Mrs. Patrick Manney, Alan Boe, Sue Ellis (Russell Brockbank’s daughter), Chuck Queener, Charles Fox and Dick Irish, to name just a few who also don’t need introductions here. Over thirty comments made this article come in first with the most comments. A great writer on a great writer.

Distler’s Porsche

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Christmas, 1955: Couldn't find an OSCA so a Porsche would have to do...

By the Editor

The Santa jig had been up for a few years now but the Allied Powers still demanded a hand written ‘wish list’ for Christmas. This resulted in a kind of a game we’d play; I’d write an honest but unreasonable list and the Powers would search all over to try to fill the bill.

This was difficult, I know. The list, circa 1955 – scratched out on yucky brown pulpy school paper with blue lines to keep the sentences on a horizontal plane – was formidable, even for loving and knowledgeable parents. Where, for example, would they find a toy OSCA MT4 (I gave them a break, I’d take a Tipo 2000S if an MT4 couldn’t be found. I was very understanding). Next on the list was a Porsche 550 Spyder, a Ferrari 212, a Lancia like the one that won the Mille Miglia the year before, etc. Further down, primarily because it was a mere street car, I listed a Porsche 356 Speedster, Max Hoffman’s baby that was just making the scene. It’s amazing they even saw it, buried so far down on the list.

But I had done my duty, signed sealed and delivered the list per instructions, handily ignoring chemistry sets, crystal radio sets, planetariums, books, or other such toys which might enhance one’s education and broadened the learning curve. My parents had given on that about same time Santa went up in smoke.

The Distler Porsche's model, and the oldest documented sale in the U.S. was this rare 1952 356 Cabriolet owned by Dr. Robert Wilson of Oklahoma City, Okla. According to the company, Wilson's car was imported in November of 1952 by Austrian businessman, Max Hoffman, in New York, who brought the first Porsche cars to the U.S. beginning in 1950. Courtesy www.carscoops.com.

A Porsche for P.D.

By mid-December they had exhausted themselves in a vain and futile search for Pete’s Christmas presents and asked themselves over and over what the hell was wrong with our kid anyway? Why couldn’t he be like the others and get a hockey stick or baseball glove and be happy? They didn’t even know where to look; there weren’t any Toys ‘R Us, Hobby shops, F.A.O. Schwartz (not in our town, or even our state), no Macy’s, no large departments store, and forget the Sears Christmas catalog, which catered to real kids with real Norman Rockwell toys.

Eight-year old P.D. boy, in other words, was a royal pain in the ass.

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