Giotto Bizzarrini

As the automotive world mourns the loss of one of Italy's greatest automotive engineers, Andrew Frankel of The Intercooler shares some insight into Giotto Bizzarrini's legendary career and some of the iconic classics he played an integral part in bringing to life.

Had Giotto Bizzarrini never been born, someone would have had to have made him up. There can’t be many who have flown so far under the radar of public knowledge while, at the same time, making such a vast and important contribution to some of the greatest cars ever created. It is no exaggeration at all to say that neither Ferrari nor Lamborghini, perhaps the two most revered of all sports car manufacturers, would have been the same without him. He died earlier this month, three weeks before his 97^th birthday, so we thought there’d never be a better time to appreciate some of the cars he created, so many of which have passed through the Bonhams auction halls over time.

Having trained in mechanical engineering, the young Bizzarrini started his life in the auto industry in 1954 working for Alfa Romeo on the chassis set-up of the gorgeous 750-series Giulietta before moving to the experimental department where he swiftly became a test driver. But in 1957 a call came from Ferrari: a test driver of theirs had been killed and they needed another, fast. He did not hesitate.

He became invaluable, because instead of a test driver flagging a problem for an engineer to solve, and the engineer then handing to car back to see if the issue had been addressed, Giotto could do it all himself. By the end of the decade he was the head of the experimental, sports and GT departments. He worked on the fabled 250 SWB sports racer, diagnosing and fixing a fundamental problem with its chassis design before turning his attention to its legendary successor, the 250 GTO.

Forbidden under the GT rules to create an all new car, he set about perfecting the SWB as it morphed into the GTO. He moved its engine rearward, improving the car’s weight distribution, smoothed out its aerodynamics and lowered its centre of gravity. Although still conventional by the standards of the futuristic Jaguar E-type, the purity of Bizzarrini’s vision combined with the quality of Ferrari engineering made the car all but unbeatable.

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Not that he got to enjoy the fruits of his labours: before the GTO turned a wheel in competition, Bizzarrini had already left the company alongside four other engineers who walked out in solidarity with a sacked colleague. Together they decided to create a new company called ATS (Automobili Turismo e Sport) to hit Ferrari where it hurt. But the plan was commendable but wildly ambitious and soon its backers were at each other’s throats, while even the engineers managed to fall out between themselves. Within a year he was back on the market.

He set up his own engineering company, his first act being to build a Ferrari to out-GTO the GTO. The result was the famous ‘Breadvan’, so called for its unique Drogo body which races on to this day, even though in period it rarely got the better of its illustrious quarry.

But his best work was arguably yet to come. While still freelancing (he became heavily involved in the beautiful little ASA 1000GTC racing car), he got a call from someone else wishing to take revenge on Enzo Ferrari. This time, however, it was Ferruccio Lamborghini who commissioned Giotto to build a V12 as fine as any produced by Maranello. He was as good as his word, producing a motor that powered every V12 Lamborghini well into the 21^st century. Think of the names: Miura, Countach, Jarama, Espada, Islero, Diablo, Murcielago, and even the monstrous LM 002 – every one of them was powered by one variant or another of Bizzarrini’s original engine design.

You can probably guess what happened next: he fell out with Lamborghini. And fell in almost immediately with another, a certain Renzo Rivolta. This was the man with whom he developed the ISO Rivolta car, powered by a Corvette V8 motor Giotto considered to be an even better engine than a Ferrari V12, not to mention considerably less complex and expensive.

Yet while the Rivolta was an effective GT car, both the man whose name it bore and Bizzarrini himself wanted something more sporting, something that could be raced. And the Bertone-styled ISO Grifo was the answer, made in two versions, the A3/L for the road, the A3/C for the track. The latter started racing in 1964, powered by a 5.3-litre Chevrolet engine mounted so far back it the chassis it left you wondering if it hadn’t been designed for a motor of twice the capacity. And at Le Mans the following year one came ninth overall, winning the category for GT cars of over 5-litres, though, to be fair, it was helped by the fact it was the only entrant in that class.

But – and by now you may not be entirely surprised by this – by then he had fallen out with Rivolta too and created his own company ‘Automobili Bizzarrini’ under whose banner the cars raced on. Indeed there has been some discussion over whether the car that did so well at Le Mans was an Iso Grifo A3/C or a Bizzarrini 5300GT. It was named as an Iso on the entry list, but wore Bizzarrini badges; ultimately it is a semantic argument as we’re talking not about two different cars, but two different names for the same car. Powerful, light, low, slippery and very advanced, it should have been a world beater and, with Ferrari-sized development budgets, no doubt that’s what it would have been. Sadly despite producing many other car designs, the early magic of the first Bizzarrini was never repeated and sales stopped in 1969.

A few years back I tested an original Bizzarrini race car at Donington Park in England and was surprised, excited and just a little bit scared to discover a car that, on racing tyres in the wet would spin its rear wheels in every gear in the box. It was a very wild ride indeed and my heart went out to those brave drivers who wrestled this beast not for a few laps of Donington, but for many hours at Le Mans.

And of course the Bizzarrini name has recently returned to public awareness, the company reborn under new ownership with the family’s full approval, making continuation 5300GTs and working on an all new supercar which remains top secret.

I hope it succeeds, not least because it will make more people curious about the origins of the Bizzarrini name. And it would be nice think that, even after his passing, the great man may finally get the recognition his talent and accomplishments so richly deserve.

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