Ferrari 166MM-53 Abarth for sale

Our North American reporter snapped up some images up of it at Eye on Design last weekend. Here is a small editorial on it (warning page might contain pop-unders, but NO spyware):

http://www.***************.com/frame.mv?file=car.mv&num=2025

 

Ok guys, here's a stupid question:

How do you pronounce "abarth." (a-barth?)

Love their little sports cars, but never knew how to correctly pronounce it. I remeber reading about these wondeful cars in Japanese car mags, but the Japanese "pronunciation" as typed in the mags seems a little weird, and I presume incorrect (a-ba-ru-to?).

I would like to know the correct (or most common) pronounciation as spoken by English speakers in the US.

Thanks!

-art

 

Well, RM auctions is expecting 7 figures... per their news release.
How many think its worth that?

 

Thanks for the comps. I didn't know anything about it until seeing it on the list of entries at last weeks Eyes on Design show in Grosse Pointe, MI. Wouter started looking into its history and we quickly realized how important it was. It was spectacular to see those lines in person. Supposedly RM Auctions has it in their possession right now and therefore it may be at the upcoming RM Auctions 25th Anniversary Concours in Chatham, Ontario, Canada in case anyone's interested. I've attached two more pics of my 31 image total.

 

Thanks for the pointers, I slightly modified the text. It seems to be a rarely written about car. Even my very detailed Abarth book has only one paragraph of information about it. There is however a very nice picture of the chassis fitted with the support frame in the book, all the panels are behind it stacked up against the wall.

Perhaps the RM catalog will have a more detailed history of the car, but judging from the press release, they don't seem to be all that well informed.

 

Abarth was Austrian, so the CORRECT pronunciation is AH-bart. But everyone I know calls it A-barth (long A like Hay).

 

Yes, not identical but surely taken on the same day.

 

Thanks erikkoik! After posting my original message, I thought how ridiculous it was asking for the "correct" US way of pronouncing something European. Now I see how they derived the Japanese prononciation... (looks like they got the first half right, though they mangled the last half).

Now I can confidently yell "nice abarth!" if I ever see a nice bialbero or something passing by, provided I could be heard over the loud motor....

-art

 

That 166MM looks a lot like a locomotive with that huge centre headlight! An alien locomotive.

 

Credit for the styling of this unusual Abarth Ferrari 166 MM ultimately belongs to Franco Scaglione.
(Not to be confused with 'Scaglietti' - the Ferrari coachbuilder).

Born in Florence in 1916, he was a brilliant man, fluent in four languages, and degreed in aeronautical engineering. Unfortunately, the end of WW2 found him in a British prisoner of war camp, with a lifetime addiction to morphine as a result of wounds he received when his ship had been torpedoed. Italy had no aircraft industry after the war, so he turned his attention and considerable drawing skills to automobiles.

Battista Pininfarina initially hired him, but they had a falling out after only two months; before any cars were built to his designs. After he left, however, Pininfarina built several cars to his designs, which are particularly notable for their jet aircraft inlet designs - such as the Lancia PF200 Roadster recently auctioned by Christies (See picture below).

Bertone, who - to his credit - was willing to give Scaglione freer reign with his designs and the credit for them, then hired Scaglione. Their first collaboration to be realized in metal was the groundbreaking Fiat Abarth 1500 in 1952 (shown in the blue picture below as it was being pulled out of a barn after more than 20 years storage). It created a sensation when it was first unveiled at the 1952 Turin Auto Show.

Just as Harley Earl credited the look of the twin-tailed P-38 Lightning when he introduced tailfins on American cars, Franco Scaglione credited the influence of new jet aircraft (like the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star shown below) for his Fiat Abarth 1500.

The Abarth Ferrari 166 MM followed quickly after and ws clearly influenced by the success of the Fiat Abarth's reception. The comprehensive book 'ABARTH-the Man, the Machines' by Luciano Greggio only states that the Abarth Ferrari 166 MM's exceptional body was designed at Abarth, no less an authority than Griffith Borgeson directly credits Franco Scaglione with the design of it. Clearly, Scaglione had just completed the Abarth Fiat 1500 to worldwide acclaim, and he continued to work with Abarth over the years, developing such notable cars as the Bertone-Fiat-Abarth Streamliner record-breaking cars of 1956, and the Porsche Abarth's in 1960. Even if Scaglione could not be proven to have designed the Abarth Ferrari 166MM, his influence on it is unquestionable as it was clearly based on his Fiat Abarth 1500, from the scooped out side fenders on both cars for better brake cooling to the headlight in the nose and dual side-scoop air inlets.

Can you remember any other cars prior to 1952 that even begin to approach the jet age styling that Franco Scaglione introduced to automotive design?

Scaglione went on to design the amazing BAT 5, 7, & 9 (Berlina Aerodynamica Tecnica) cars - a series of aerodynamic studies that greatly improved their Alfa Romeo 1900 engine's ability to reach higher speeds and improved fuel economy. These were followed by the Alfa Giulietta Sprint that saved Alfa Romeo and put Bertone into the black as a high volume manufacturer.

Scaglione left Bertone in 1959 and went independent. After working with Giotto Bizzarrini to design the mid-engined ATS 2500 GT Berlinetta, Bizzarrini recommended him to Ferruccio Lamborghini where he was hired to design the prototype for Lamborghini's first supercar - the beautiful, sleek and gracious Lamborghini 350 GTV.

Designers will tell you that it is far more difficult to make a small car look beautiful than a large one, yet look at how Scaglione clothed the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 Stradale (a car universally admired for it's aggressive yet elegant styling) by stretching the bodywork tightly over its race car chassis the way Marilyn Monroe was sewn into her dress.

Unfortunately, Scaglione never designed any more Ferraris after the Abarth Ferrari 166 MM, though I'm not complaining, since Pininfarina did so well for Ferrari. Still, I think it was Pininfarina's loss when Scaglione left there. By not recognizing Scaglione's talent enough to keep him happy there, Pininfarina created his greatest competition because Bertone's best designs throughout the 1950's were by Scaglione. Then if Lamborghini's initial design had not been so successful, they may not have survived to compete with Ferrari in supercar sales.

Scaglione later forged a long-lasting relationship with Frank Reisner and his Intermeccanica firm in Turin... improving the design of the Buick-powered Apollos such that they are now Milestone cars. He then designed the beautiful Intermeccanica Italia roadster, which, styling-wise, is like owning a Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spyder and pocketing the $3.8 Million change. At Intermeccanica he also designed the IMX concept car and finally the Indra.

With the exception of the Alfa Giulietta Sprint, Scaglione's best designs were only built in small numbers. What a shame that we cannot see BAT 5's, 7's, and 9's and Alfa 2000 Sportivas showing up at every Concours, or that we do not see Alfa 33 Stradale Coupes more than once every ten years if you're lucky.

Scaglione's greatest legacy is the influence that he had on other designers by incorporating aerodynamics into his cars in ways that previous designers neither understood nor dared consider before seeing Scaglione's work. The aerodynamic styling theme of ducting all the radiator inlet air underneath the leading edge of the bodywork is an idea that Scaglione is generally credited with. So are the fender flares that were popularized by the Porsche 944, but were first seen on Scaglione's Intermeccanica Indra.

The irony of Beethoven's inability to hear his own magnificent symphonies is mirrored in Scaglione's near blindness preventing him from being able to obtain a driver's license. He was unable to drive his own creations and had to commute by bus or train. Imagine all the magnificent designs we might have seen if we had been able to peer into his thoughts, yet he took these to his grave when, unlike Beethoven, he died in near obscurity in 1993, leaving a grown daughter. One of Italy's greatest stylists remains nearly unknown to this day.

So when you stare into the Cyclops eye of this Abarth Ferrari 166 MM, don't use your eyes. Rather, imagine you are looking at it through the eyes of a weary postwar world, accustomed to pre-war car designs warmed over for the late 1940's. Have you read about what a sensation Ford's first new postwar design made in 1949? If anyone saw that design as groundbreaking, just think what they must have thought when they saw Scaglione's Fiat Abarth 1500 Coupe, quickly followed by this Abarth Ferrari 166 MM.

These early Scaglione designs were as radical as low-flying jets and decades ahead of their time!
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More pictures of Scaglione's 1952 Fiat Abarth 1500 Biposto Coupe styled for Carrozzeria Bertone.

Unofficially this car has been referred to as "BAT 1"

Note the similarities to (and thus the influence on) the 1953 Abarth Ferrari 166 MM.
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More Scaglione Pictures to support the Motorace article above:

1953 BAT 5 (Charcoal Gray with red interior)

1954 BAT 7 (Aquamarine w/ the most radically curved fin tips)

1955 BAT 9 (Silver)
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Picture 1 = Alfa Romeo 2000 Sportiva Coupe at the 1954 Auto Show

Picture 2 = Scaglione's Alfa Sportiva 200 Spider

Picture 3 = Scaglione's Alfa Romeo Giulietta Coupe
The styling that saved both Alfa Romeo and Bertone

Picture 4 = Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint Speciale -
Scaglione's production Alfa based on the BAT studies
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1962 ATS 2500 GT Berlinetta
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1) Scaglione's original sketch proposal to Ferrucio Lamborghini

2) Scaglione's prototype Lamborghini 350 GTV Coupe built in 1963 & recently restored.

3) Early photo of original car pre-restoration

4) Early promotional literature based on the Scaglione design - before Touring made some minor changes like using fixed headlights instead of Scaglione's hide-away headlights.
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Scaglione's beautiful design for Alfa's Tipe 33 Stradale
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Scaglione's beautiful designs for Intermeccanica

1) Apollo 2+2
2) Italia
3) Italia
4) Indra
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Motorace,

Thank you for the great pictures.
Ciao
Eugenio

 

It's Ab-bart

 

That looks like a Rens Biesma drawing. Do you by any chance have a current e-mail or postal address? E-mail sent through his website des not get answered....

 

Giulietta spider prototypes by Scaglione for Bertone:

http://autos.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/alfaromeo750and101/photos/view/f68f?b=9

 

clearly this design was a copy of the famous studebaker bulletnose of 1950.

i am kidding but it could actually be influenced by it. raymond lowey's studios designed a whole lot of nice studebakers from the late thirties til 62 with the avanti.

and his studios or folks related directly were responsible for a whole lot of nice looking cars like fifties alfa romeos, sunbeam alpine/ tiger, and some not so great cars like the hillman husky.

the linage is visible in the relationship between the headlights hood and grill. most of those relate back to the internationally acclaimed 53 studebaker starliner/ starlight coupe.

as for the ferrari abarth (i always thought it would be uh-barth). i wonder if the center headlight turned with the wheels like it did on the tucker?

tom w

 

WOW! What a great looking car!

Al