We received a number of nice comments last week along with a few images relevant to the articles on the Ferrari 312P and the Serenissima F1 by Roberto Motta, and thought it might be a good idea to add a few of them to an And How! feature…
Serenissima at Le mans
Count Volpi and the Serenissima GTs
Interview by Serge Cordey for Artcurial as edited by Wallace Wyss
Note: Three Serenissima automobiles will be part of the Artcurial Auction on February 8th at Salon Retromobile in Paris, see details below. We thank Serge Cordey and Artcurial for allowing us to publish portions of this rare intereview with Count Volpi.
Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata was born 1938 in Venice, where his family was very well established. He inherited a fortune at the age of 24 from his father, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, a politician financier and founder of the renowned Venice Film Festival.
Serenissima McLaren F1
From the archives, December 12th, 2007
Story and photography by Roberto Motta
In the early 1960s, Scuderia Serenissima, founded by the Venetian Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata, was very active in motor racing, entering major events with Porsches, a Lotus-Cooper, Maseratis, and Ferraris driven by Nino Vaccarella, Graham Hill, Umberto Maglioli, Joakim Bonnier, Jo Siffert, Lodovico Scarfiotti and Giancarlo Baghetti.
Scuderia Serenissima entered Formula 1 events in 1961 with a Cooper-Maserati driven by Maurice Trintignant. For the French GP, the team used a De Tomaso chassis powered by an OSCA engine, which was shared by Giorgio Scarlatti and Nino Vaccarella. However, the De Tomaso OSCAs were not competitive.
Design Critique: Serenissima Le Mans
By Wallace Wyss
Photos Courtesy Artcurial Auctions
It seems, at first glance, a superfluous effort to do a design critique of a design that is over 50 years old, of a car that was never in production.
I used to think that about Robert Cumforford’s design analysis of one-off cars. But then I had a re-think. I realized that sometimes a design critique helps us elucidate why we like the car; or highlights trends at the time that we, perhaps raised in different eras, didn’t appreciate.
So here’s my take on this long “lost” car which, turns out, wasn’t really lost at all, just well-hidden in deep storage by an owner who, having been a key figure in real racing, wasn’t tempted to bring it out for vintage racing. (Count Volpi was even quoted at one time saying in effect that even if you owned one of these cars now, it could never be the same as owning it then; as if you can’t repeat history…) [Read more…] about Design Critique: Serenissima Le Mans