Scuderia Ambrosiana

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

Most people interested in Italian motor racing will no doubt have heard of Scuderia Ambrosiana, originally founded by Count “Johnny” Lurani back in 1936 but probably know little else about it.

In my case, one of the first racing cars I photographed as a journalist was a Ferrari 125 F2 car (Chassis 110) originally bought by English driver Peter Whitehead. However, it was a car that he did not like; he was to buy a later model ( Chassis 114), selling the original one to David Murray later of Ecurie Ecosse fame. I noticed the blue and white badge of Scuderia Ambrosiana on the side and the team had fascinated me ever since.

Many of my questions, however, were answered about fourteen years ago when Italian motoring journalist and ex-team manager of Scuderia Ferrari, Frano Lini, persuaded me to go with him to a room in the Monza grandstand to meet up with Massimo Leto di Priolo who was holding a party for Scuderia Ambrosiana and a lot of their gentleman driver friends. Massimo was a banker with the Banco Popoare Commercio e Industria in Milan and had raced for the team in the 1950s.

The origins of the team go back to 1934 (Eighty years ago this year) when the elegant Count Giovanni “Johnny” Lurani and his close friend Count Luigi Castelbarco formed their own team to go motor racing with a couple of Maseratis. However later that year Lurani was called into the army and was sent to Abyssinia for two years during the Italian/Abyssinian war. When he returned in 1936 he immediately got together with his racing pals and on December 3 1936 they met at the legendary Restaurant Biffi in Milan where this group of gentleman drivers founded Scuderia Ambrosiana.

Sant Ambroeus is the patron saint of Milan but also part of the full name of the famous Italian soccer club Inter Milan, who play in a blue and black strip. As a result Lurani chose blue and black within a steering wheel motif for the club badge.

Also at the restaurant that evening were Luigi Villoresi, Franco Cortese and Eugenio Minetti and they chose Ferdinand Pozzani, who was also a director of the football team, as President of Scuderia Ambrosiana.

Over the next few years the team scored countless successes and kept expanding with new friends who joined in. It was a serious operation set up by Lurani complete with racing cars, lorries and they went about their affairs in a professional manner and were able to extract good starting money from organizers. They also came up with a lot of good results. Lurani wanted to create a professional team like Enzo Ferrari with his Alfa Romeos.

Over the winter of 1936/37 the team bought three supercharged 1500cc six-cylinder 6CM Maseratis, two of them for Cortese and Villoresi and the third one was given a special four cylinder 1100cc engine aiming for the Italian 1100cc Championship. They also bought two four cylinder Maseratis, one of them a sports car, and two Fiats, one a 750cc and the other a 1500. Clearly this was a formidable team but also one aimed at bringing on young Italian talent; something Lurani was to do when he proposed Formula Italia and then Formula Junior in 1957 and 58.

Lurani concluded in a letter written in 1936, “As you see we thus have a fleet of very good and modern mounts, all of them sure to be among the fastest cars in their classes. As for drivers besides the ‘star’ drivers, Cortese, Villoresi and myself, we have Minetti as well as Francisco Spotorno and occasionally other good drivers to race for the black and blue badge”.

He then went on to remark that after the launch of the team, “…the most extra ordinary offers flocked in – for example no fewer than 103 people wrote asking to be taken on as drivers in our team! Many of these had never even driven a car or seen a race, but they simply felt they would be racing stars and they asked what offers we were prepared to make to them”. As can be seen nothing has changed in the last eighty years!

One of the team’s first events was the 1937 Monte Carlo Rally where Villoresi won the 1500cc class with one of the Fiats and for the Mille Miglia that year Ambrosiana entered their sports Maserati, an Alfa Romeo and two Fiats.

At the end of World War II Scuderia Ambrosiana started quietly with a few events in 1946 but their first major event was the Grand Prix of Marseilles. The team entered Luigi Villoresi with a Maserati 4CL but he only lasted nine laps before the engine blew.

It was probably around this time that Johnny Lurani and Reg Parnell, the English driver who was racing his own Maserati 4CL, got to talking about how they could both continue to race. The trouble was that both Italy and Britain were financially broke and the British Government, for example, allowed anyone leaving the country to take just £25 on which to live. Italian drivers coming to England faced the same problem.

Parnell and Scuderia Ambrosiana then came to a loose arrangement whereby if Scuderia Ambrosiana came to England to race Reg would pay all the expenses and in return, when Reg went to race in France, Italy Scuderia Ambrosiana would pay. This arrangement gave Reg a bit more financial flexibility than the £25 limit offered.

This worked also when it came to race cars as Parnell and his friend Joe Ashmore both bought new Maserati 4CLTs which came into Britain, but in Ashmore’s case his car eventually went straight back to Italy.

A little later another English driver, Peter Whitehead was able to get a Ferrari short wheelbase 125 F2 car but when he changed it for another Ferrari the F2 car then sprouted Scuderia Ambrosiana stickers. Reg rented it to Scotsman David Murray who was later to form Ecurie Ecosse.

Murray only drove the car a couple of times and when I saw it in 1952 it was another Scot, and founder member of Ecurie Ecosse, Bill Dobson, who was driving it.

Meanwhile back in Italy, new drivers joined Scuderia Ambrosiana including the three di Priolo brothers, Massimo, Carlo and Dore. By now they were out of major International motor racing, but Dore Leto di Priolo won both the Stella Alpina and the Geneva Rally with a Fiat 8V in the former and a Giulietta 1900ti in the latter. Then in the 1990s Lurani and Massimo Leto di Priolo decided to reform the team and run in historic events.

Massimo and his brothers were famous for speedboat racing and they set world records in the 1950s. Massimo and brother Carlo shared ownership of a Ferrari 250GT TdF (Chassis 0229GT). He was a charming host at the party but I have never met up with him since. He certainly was as proud of Scuderia Amrosiana as Count Lurani, who had died a few years before, as Scuderia Ambrosiana was a team that helped transform Italian motor racing after the War.