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The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts

ALFA TO ZECCOLI Part 2

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Zeccoli in the ‘Periscopio’ Alfa T33 prototype at the Nurburgring, 1967. (Zeccoli Archives)

Graham Gauld talks to Alfa test driver Teodoro Zeccoli

As we learned in Part 1, ATS was a recipe for disaster. It didn’t take Carlo Chiti long before he had enough. He joined forces with his friend Ludovico Chizzola in his Autosport Company, which prepared touring cars for racing. The company they formed together was Delta Auto, later changed to Autodelta. Chiti recalled the previous approach to ATS from Alfa Romeo and so contacted Giuseppe Luraghi, the Chairman of Alfa Romeo, and was offered the chance to take on the program. Chiti then resigned from ATS and took Teodoro Zeccoli with him as test driver. Zeccoli’s career took another step forward.

The Autodelta years

Racing in the wet with the Alfa Romeo TZ 2 at Monza in 1966. Teodoro Zeccoli brakes for the Parabolica. He would win his class with co-driver De Adamich. (Zeccoli Archives, Alfa Romeo)

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The Significance of Scottsdale Vis-à-vis Ferraris

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Lot 23 at the Gooding Auction brought $737,000. It was a 330 GTC.

Opinion by Wallace Wyss
All photos courtesy of Gooding & Company Auctions.

We are still reeling from the prices achieved at Scottsdale auctions. For example, $737,000 for a mere 330GTC is mind-numbing. It is about three times what GTCs usually get at auctions.

Other mind-numbing numbers at the Gooding auction were: [Read more…] about The Significance of Scottsdale Vis-à-vis Ferraris

From the Archives: Famous Cars, 1954

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You probably know someone who keeps old newspapers; yellowed, full of mold, faded to brown at the edges and decaying with both alacrity and odor…

The headlines are usually “Pearl Harbor Bombed”, or “Kennedy Assassinated”, or “Long Live the Queen”. The ones lying about the office of VeloceToday are old and yellowed enough, but the headlines are “Famous Cars and Their Badges”. We all have our quirks.

All three pages seen at left are from “The Topper”, an English tabloid-sized comic book which was published by D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd and ran from 1953 to 1990. The “Famous Cars and Their Badges” page may be familiar to our British readers. These date from December 1953 and January 1954, and were shipped (literally) from England to the U.S. some fifty-six years ago.
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Ain’t French or Italian but…

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austin Healey

The Davison Lancia, the erratic Healey, and sensible transportation. Photo courtesy Eric Davison.

By Eric Davison

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read ‘Marquis of Mystery.’ Imagine, a French car that wouldn’t start: not until you blew in its ear and doused it with expensive champagne.

I can top a car that wouldn’t start. I once had an English car that would not only not start, it would not stop.
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Denise McCluggage: Racing the Alfa at the Nurburgring P1

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Drawing by Duane Unkefer

By Denise McCluggage

“I Go Pro” was written for and published by “Sports Cars Illustrated”, February, 1959 and is reprinted here with the permission of the author and artist.

SEVERAL CENTURIES AGO when the Sports Car Club of America was still interested in the furtherance of road racing, members were permitted to plunge into the rough “professional” world of racing abroad and then come home to race with other amateurs for fun instead of money. In those days only dollars had the power of complete corruption. A driver’s blistered palm could be crossed with lire, francs, marks, bolivars, pounds sterling, escudos or what-have-you (an ancient coin) and he was still an amateur as long as he didn’t take dollars-at least not take them anyplace where there was enough light for the green to show.
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ALFA TO ZECCOLI Part 1

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Alfa-GTA Zeccoli
Zeccoli flat out at Spa in the Alfa Romeo GTA . (Zeccoli Archives, Alfa.)

Graham Gauld talks to Teodoro Zeccoli, Alfa Romeo’s test driver and team member.

In the alphabet of the world’s racing drivers, Teodoro Zeccoli comes somewhere near the end. He is a driver we have all heard about, due to his particular exploits with Alfa Romeo, but he is more than just a young Italian who grew up wanting to be a racing driver; Zeccoli was one of the favored test drivers of Carlo Chiti. Apart from being one of Chiti’s principals at Autodelta he was also the test driver for Chiti’s Formula 1 bad-egg, the ATS.

Zeccoli was one of a group of young Italian hotshoes who came to light in the 1960s that included Spartaco Dini, Ignacio Giunti, Roberto Bussinello and Nanni Galli.

I met up with him about ten years ago at his svelte BMW dealership in Imola, within earshot of the Enzo and Dino Ferrari Circuit. Though in his seventies, the tall and elegant Zeccoli was at first perplexed that anyone should want to know about his racing, but it was clear his racing years were dear to him.

The back wall of his dealership had an array of trophies, photographs and certificates highlighting his racing career. There were diplomas from the Automobile Club of Milan naming him Italian 1600cc Sports Car Champion in 1966 (Abarth), Touring Car Champion in 1970 (Alfa Romeo) and Sports Car Champion in 1971 (Alfa Romeo) and photographs of him racing all over the world.

Born in 1929 in Lugo, near Imola, Zeccoli did not fancy joining his father in the family business – which was making saddles for motorcycles – but had a passion for racing. His first race car was a Zagato-bodied Ermini Fiat 1100TV that he ran successfully in hill climbs and races during 1957. Later he had a Fiat 8V Zagato which he bought second-hand from a local Fiat dealer, and such was his success in events that he was approached by Sig. Dei of Scuderia Centro Sud to drive an OSCA MT4 in the Grand Prix of Liberation in Havana, Cuba. This race was put on by
Castro to celebrate the overthrow of the Cuban government. Zeccoli finished 9th in the class driving a three-year-old Tipo S 1500 version of the OSCA MT4 (Chassis 1179).

Teodoro Zeccoli with his first race car, a Fiat 1100TV Ermini Zagato coupe. (Zeccoli Archives.)

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Roland Garros/Black Bess Bugatti Part 3: Ivy Cummings

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The Garros/Black Bess Bugatti crosses the Channel to a new life and legend.

By Gijsbert-Paul Berk

In its 100-year history, the Rolland Garros Bugatti had a number of significant owners, who together have accumulated an impressive amount of victories, often against competitors in more modern cars.

After the death of Roland Garros in 1918, the Bugatti became the property of Louis Coatalen, then Chief Engineer of the Sunbeam Motor Company Ltd. in Wolverhampton. During World War I he had designed the Sunbeam aircraft engines. In 1919 he was involved in the merger of Sunbeam with Talbot and Darracq to form STD Motors.

As Coatalen was born in Concarneau (Brittany) he spoke fluent French and was often in Paris. As a driver and an engineer he was greatly interested in fast and sporting cars. Sometime later –between 1919 and 1921- the Bugatti was bought by Sidney Cummings, a car dealer at Fulham Road, for his daughter Ivy.

Miss Ivy Cummings. Photo courtesy Octane.

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Hugues Vanhoolandt at the Louwman Museum

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Hugues Vanhoolandt takes us on tour of the Louwman Museum, also known as the Dutch National Motor Museum.

The Dutch National Motor Museum is also called the Louwman Museum, due to the name of its founder, P.W. Louwman, who began to show his collection of cars in a museum in 1934. Mr. Louwman was Dodge and Chrysler importer in the Netherlands and his son, Evert, is now the Toyota and Lexus importer.

The Louwman collection is the oldest private collection of motor cars in the world.
At the time of our visit, the museum housed a special exhibition of pre-war Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows, on loan from the Stuttgart Museum, but Italian and French cars are always well represented in the collection.

Louwman’s will send the famous Roland Garros Black Bess Bugatti to the Paris Retromobile show in February. Read about Garros and the Black Bess Bugatti in VeloceToday this month.

This 1933 Maserati 8CM saw three of the greatest drivers of the time behind the wheel; Raymond Sommer, Tazio Nuvolari and Piero Taruffi.

1933 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Le Mans Touring was driven at Le Mans by Louis Chiron and Franco Cortese.

1941 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Spider Corsa ‘Balena’ was an experimental car in which the engine and the body were developed by Gioacchino Colombo, who later designed the 125 Ferrari V12.

[Read more…] about Hugues Vanhoolandt at the Louwman Museum

Stanford/REVS Receives Road & Track Archives

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John Morton sits in the Collier Collection’s Porsche 356B Abarth Carrera GTL with his head and torso wired. Various parts of the car are electronically monitored as well, all in the name of research by the Revs Program at Stanford. The sending unit for the telemetry can be seen above the rear window. The event is the 2011 Porsche Rennsport Reunion at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Impressive Progress at the Revs Program at Stanford University

By Michael T. Lynch

Last week we spoke of the issue of disposing of one’s automotive ephemera, or at least the portion that has been unused for some time. The solution offered was Steve Fields Automobilia, which provides a service to do so through eBay.

This week we will discuss the question of donations of serious collections. I get at least two calls a week on this subject. The horror stories I have heard include going back to the donee later and finding that most of the donation has vanished or seeing the donated material ten years later in the same boxes in which it was delivered. While there are repositories that properly sort and index what they get, budgets, volunteer help and other issues do not usually provide a process that takes the gift from the box to a medium that can be distance accessed by researchers, let along the public. There is now such an institution. [Read more…] about Stanford/REVS Receives Road & Track Archives

Roland Garros/Black Bess Bugatti Part 2: Bugatti T 18

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By Gijsbert-Paul Berk

Part 2 describes the development of the Garros Type Bugatti and the car when owned by French hero Roland Garros.

Read Part 1

The Development of the Bugatti “Roland Garros”
Before he set up his own company, Ettore Bugatti designed engines and chassis for various manufacturers, among them De Dietrich, Hermes, Mathis, Deutz and Peugeot. Bugatti’s own factory in Molsheim was operational in 1910 but he continued to work for others. One of these projects for Peugeot was to design racing car for the 1912 Grand Prix de l’Automobile Club de France and the Coupe de l’Auto.

The engine Bugatti developed for Peugeot was a large (around 5 liters) four-cylinder with a single overhead camshaft. One can quite well understand that Ettore drew on his experience with an earlier design he had done for Deutz, and also incorporated design features of the small engine he produced under his own label. Apart from the size of bore and stroke, the main difference was that the larger engine had three valves per cylinder (two inlet valves and one exhaust valve).

1910 Bugatti-designed Deutz had a SOHC, Bugatti's first. Note chain drive.

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