The Intermeccanica Formula Junior: The Rest of the Story

By Pete Vack

As we have seen, after describing the car to a tee, author Andrew McCredie left us all hanging about wondering whatever happened to the one off Frank Reisner F Jr, from its last race in Canada to the present time, a gap of some 47 years. What happened to the car was Sam. Here is the story the book omitted.

Guys are incredibly insensitive sometimes, cruelly defining even friends not by who he or she is, but by what cars they own, as if the vehicle was more important than the owner. Contact begins with not “Hey Sam, how have you been,” but with “Hey Sam, you still have the Intermeccanica?” We are as guilty of this sin as anyone, and we all do it from time to time, I would guess.

A backhanded tribute maybe, for when one thought of Sam, one just automatically thought of the Intermeccanica. He’d had it so long it just became a part of him and his legend.

Like the car so identified with him, Sam was indeed a legend. On any given hot, humid, Virginia summer day in the 60s and 70s, Sam Coronia could be spotted outside Sam’s Foreign Car Repair, dressed only in shorts and sandals giving orders to his minions, looking, acting and sounding like a ¾ scale version of Telly Savalas as Kojak. The impersonation may have been coincidental but in any event it worked; he didn’t take any shit and everyone knew it. That’s not to say he was not kind, generous or compassionate, for he was all of these things, especially to young female customers who couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was wrong with their Jagew-ar. But business was business.

In those days if you could fix an S.U., rejet a Weber or change an Alfa head gasket, business was good. Being of Italian descent Sam was always partial to the Italian imports, ostensibly becoming an Abarth dealer in the early 1960s. He owned and raced a Abarth Allemano at east coast SCCA events, most notably the old Marlboro track near Washington D.C. He wasn’t serious about his racing but it was fun and did wonders for the business.

It was at one of these races, sometime between 1966 and 1968, that Sam found and purchased the one, the only Intermeccanica Formula Junior. A product of Frank Reisner’s fertile imagination and Bill Von Esser’s checkbook, the race car launched Reisner’s Intermeccanica accessory firm as a car company. After a checkered competition record, no longer competitive in Formula Junior if in fact it ever was, Sam thought he could do something with the IM, and indeed he did…he kept it.

I remember that the IM always had the showroom of his ex-gas station garage, sitting there like the prima donna it was, with the flames on the headrest and the upswept tuned exhausts, obviously patterned after those of the 1962 BRM and most definitely post Frank Reisner. Along the way it had lost the Peugeot engine, replaced with a more conventional Fiat 1100. Rarely run and probably never raced, it nonetheless attracted customers as the presence of a Formula car was a sure sign that the shop owner knew his stuff.

In the back of his mind he did have a purpose for the Intermeccanica. Through his greasy portal passed many a young jock who thought he was God’s gift to the grid. But Sam knew by hard experience what it takes to overhaul, fix, maintain, tow and race even a low budget SCCA racecar. It took a lot more than guts; it demanded intelligence, dedication, perseverance, luck, money and a will to win stronger than any 18 year-old’s sex drive. Lacking a family of his own, Sam thought he could adopt a protégé and provide him with the tool to go racing–use of the Intermeccanica. The problem was that Sam would have to find the talented, gutsy young man who was also able to demonstrate that he had all of the other qualities necessary to make the grid.

That was never to be, for real race drivers are a rare breed. A kid named Freddy came close, having the intelligence, drive, mechanical abilities and determination, but he was careless and reckless and scattered. It didn’t work out, and Sam was left with a racecar whose limits would never be tested by a would-be Fangio.

Despite many offers over the years, Sam refused to sell the Intermeccanica. Some things just weren’t for sale, like his old black 1950s Chrysler (similar to the one Paul Frere won the over 2000 Touring class in the 1953 Mille Miglia) he used as his tow vehicle, or the backlit Abarth sign he picked up as an official Abarth dealer. Years came and went, Sam moved from one location to another, retired, bought and sold cars and tried to save those cars he felt valuable by storing them in a private rented lot. Broken Lancias, Alfas, Fiats, Simcas, even Jensens were added to a growing collection with no particular purpose in mind. The IM, though, he kept close to hearth and heart. It was always garaged wherever he lived. Occasionally he’d pull it out and paint primer here or there, clean it up, but never raced it or even bothered to keep it running.

In 2004, tired of people asking me if I knew if Sam still had the Intermeccanica (you see, I wasn’t the only one), I decided to look him up, calling and of course asking, “Hey, do you still have the Intermeccanica?”

He did and invited me out for a look. And there was Sam, now in his seventies, his wife Sunshine, and the IM all nestled in for a long VA summer. No, the IM wasn’t for sale. Well, yes it might be if the price was right. No, I didn’t want it (ok, just a little, ok?) I took the photos you see here, and of the dozen or so other cars which might be of interest to VeloceToday readers. We put up an article about Sam and his cars and mentioned the IM. No, of course I wouldn’t take a fee from Sam, he now needed the money pretty badly.

From the U.K., via the good offices of VeloceToday, Sam got a call from a Bernard Brock. Did Sam still have the IM? Yes, but the price was very high. But there was no hysteria this time, no broken parts. The price was negotiated to the satisfaction of both the buyer and seller, and the IM, which like a loyal black Lab had stayed with Sam for over forty years, was suddenly gone. The IM would get a new lease on life; the long time caretaker would not.

It’s sad to see that he wasn’t a part of McCredie’s book, as the car was so much a part of Sam and vice versa. Not that McCredie didn’t try to contact Sam–but he can be very reclusive when he wants. Maybe Sam didn’t realize that being part of the book would make his legend live on. McCredie’s book is good, and unlike this ethereal Internet story, it will live on for generations. The one and only Intermeccanica, saved for so many years by Sam, will be restored and live much longer. Sam, being of mere flesh and bone, will soon be gone, and his one shot at being part of the recorded history of the car and the era is over.

In the meantime, I still occasionally get calls and emails asking about Sam, beginning with “Hey, does Sam still have that IM?”