Intermeccanica Italia Advice

The same could be said for my Lusso ...

the Italia even at the high water mark of $143k at RM represents a great looking / driving machine and I would much rather drive the Italia than the Pantera. (speaking as a current owner of both)

 

Well to each their own I guess, the Pantera on short runs under 2 hours were always one of the most exciting rides you could have. The Intermeccanica was pleasant.

 

On reflection I am most likely biased given I am predesposed to rag tops.

 

I like them too sadly Iso only made one. Grifo 002

 

I seem to recall they also made a targa ? Speaking of Isos my 72 Fidia and 67 Griffo should be both completed some time this year.

 

Targa's yes only one Spyder Grifo 002 . This was made by Bertone and it was a complete surprise to Renzo Rivolta. What # is your Grifo. I have a Fidia too.

 

A couple of good ones from the Milwaukee Masterpiece Concours this weekend. The Apollo was the second to last one made, and has under 10,000 miles on it. The story is that Apollo had already gone under when it reached the USA, so customs seized the car for unpaid fees and auctioned it off. It then went into storage for 30 years.


TT
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Damn that's a good looking car.

 

I think there is a matching spyder to that car too.

 

there is...I remember MANY years ago (circa early 1980's) in Walnut Creek, CA, a fellow on Mt. Diablo Blvd. (can't think of his dealership name - but sold used Mercedes Benz cars for many years) had the red spider and a coupe at one time...I almost made a play on it! Had a Buick motor? is that right?

 

It does have a Buick V8. This car was also in storage out near LA for 30 years, but is now living up here just north of Chicago. The owner is a European living in America.

He had the car repainted due to paint damage during storage, but otherwise its all original and unrestored.

 

Here is a 1971 that came out to the 2002 Italian Concours here in Seattle. He took 2nd place in the "special interest" category. Very nice car!

Still owned by the same gentleman today too.

Mike
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I cannot argue with you that the handling is not equal to the beauty as it would be difficult for anything else on the car to match its unusual beauty... but as a '69 Italia owner; I take issue with your assertion that the suspension was “never developed”. It suffered from bad press on the early models; but there was little press written on the cars after many of the problems were fixed.

Unlike many other low-volume cars that were built-out after very brief development periods, Frank Reisner (owner of Intermeccanica) had several years to get the bugs out of the Italia’s design because it’s gestation period was ultra-low-volume for the first few years. During that low-volume production period, Reisner had the benefit of handling experts like John Crosthwaite, Mark Donohue, and the staff at Holman-Moody. Each made their contribution and Reisner made many improvements based on their recommendations.

When Jack Griffith commissioned Reisner to set up a production line to build his “Griffith 600” (its original name before it later became the Omega, then Torino, and finally the “Italia&#8221, he left the chassis design up to Reisner. Reisner was a pragmatist and designed the basic frame out of welded-together box-section steel tubes. Anticipating a production volume of 1,000/year (based on Griffith’s overly optimistic projections), Reisner also designed & built a production jig to hold the frame pieces together during chassis welding. He also built another production jig to hold the hand-formed steel body panels in place accurately when welding them to each other and to the frame. Normally, low-volume manufacturers could not afford such expensive jigs so car-to-car variations in their products have been part of their charm; but the Italias are fairly unique (among low-volume coachbuilt cars) and greatly benefited from having jigs for these operations to improve quality control and consistency.

The result is that Italias have a very strong yet lightweight chassis/body assembly that doesn't squeak and rattle the way its contemporary cars (with bodies-bolted-on-frames) did. This reduced car-to-car variations in suspension geometry. Further good news for modern-era owners is that if any rust is found in the chassis, the flat steel box-sections are much easier to repair/replace than complicated unibody floor stampings used under many other custom-coachwork cars

Griffith engaged John Crosthwaite; a racecar chassis specialist with an excellent reputation, to support Reisner on the suspension design. According to Paula Reisner, Frank incorporated Crosthwaite’s recommendations in the Italia’s suspension design. One limitation to the design was Frank’s requirement that to keep costs reasonable they would mostly use parts out of European production-car parts bins. The American market (and the big V8 motor) dictated that the car had to be designed larger than most European sports cars so several of the parts came from large European vehicles (like a steel front suspension arm from a Fiat truck) or rear suspension bushings from Alfa Romeo’s 2600 series (Alfa’s heaviest car at the time). This makes finding replacement suspension parts difficult to find today, but does not necessarily mean that the basic design wasn't thought out.

Several elements of the chassis/suspension design were not ‘cost-reduced’ such as the inclusion of an excellent rack & pinion steering system and the four-wheel disc brakes that Griffith insisted on. The brake calipers on the Italia are the same ones Girling provided for Shelby's AC Cobras!

Griffith asked Reisner to skip the prototyping stage and go right into production based on the fact that Reisner was already in production with the Intermeccanica Apollo cars. However, Frank designed an all-new chassis for the Italias to improve on the Apollo’s design. The plan was for Reisner to ship completed bodies from Turin, Italy to Griffith’s Long Island NY facility to have their Ford powertrains installed. Reisner designed Griffith’s car around Ford’s lightweight but powerful 289 V-8 engines and drivetrains. Unfortunately, Griffith was going bankrupt after only 6 bodies were shipped! When Ford showed up and repossessed their 289 engines and related drivetrains, Griffith tapped his Detroit connections to quickly obtain enough Plymouth Commando 273 c.i. engines to complete the first six cars. But this created a huge problem because Chrysler’s engines and drivetrains were considerably heavier and less powerful than Ford’s.

Mark Donohue (who was driving a Griffith-sponsored Shelby Cobra at the time) used his expertise to evaluate these early cars’ handling. Donohue was already highly skilled at exploring vehicle dynamics at the limits, but one of the reasons the Griffith/Italia’s handling reputation suffered in the early press was that Donohue was evaluating underpowered cars with heavier powertrains than the Griffith/Italia had been designed for, so there could be little hope of a good-handling package.

Steve Wilder took over the Griffith/Intermeccanica project and named his car “Omega”. Thirty-three coupes were built with the original-design 289 Ford powertrains – of which three had to be submitted to crash testing! Frank Reisner’s comfort level with his new ‘partner’ was helped by Wilder’s contract with Holman-Moody to install the Ford powertrains and complete final assembly at their facility in Charlotte, N.C. This was in 1966 when H-M were winning LeMans with the GT-40 project so they certainly had plenty of car-building and evaluation expertise on hand.

Steve Wilder commented that the cars were “quite good on the street”, but there were handling problems with those early cars. Replacing the original rack & pinion steering assembly with one from a Peugeot 503 solved an early steering problem. The other problem was excessive torque-steer after Wilder switched from the 2-bbl carbureted engine to the Hi-Po 4-barrel 289 engines with 271 horsepower. I’ve personally experienced this in my own car (mine has the 351 c.i. Windsor motor) but it went away when I replaced the old Alfa 2600 rear suspension bushings with harder durometer ones - a simple change that’s easy to make.

Wilder lost interest after selling only 30 cars, which left Reisner holding a huge inventory of unshipped bodies. So, Frank took over production, final assembly, and marketing of the cars. He rightly concluded that he should have the Ford powertrains shipped to Torino, Italy so that the cars could be fully sorted and test driven by him personally before being shipped to the USA. This further avoided some of the negative publicity that the earlier cars suffered by putting all aspects of manufacturing directly under the company owner where he could ensure the quality of every car before it was shipped.

Reisner also had the automotive design genius - Franco Scaglione - design a convertible version. These early cars were named ‘Torino’ until Ford wanted that name for their car, at which time Frank renamed the car “Intermeccanica Italia”. The majority of the cars made were in these latter years – so most of the ‘Italias’ out there had the benefit of several years of de-bugging and development. That’s not to say they are as reliable as modern cars, but compared with many other low-volume coachbuilt cars that you’d be loathe to wander more than 10 minutes from your garage in, the Italias are considerably more reliable and actually handle quite well with a few tweaks.

The Nov 1970 issue of Sports Car Graphic said, “It is one of the most bug-free examples of exotica we’ve ever seen.” The reviewers liked the car so much that they seemed almost loathe to mention that under high-speed heavy braking the rear had a tendency to come out. They attributed this to the absence of a brake-proportioning valve to prevent rear lock-up, so I added a proportioning valve to my car when I rebuilt the brake system.

I loaned my car to a test driver for one of the British specialty racing car manufacturers because I wanted to get his input on the handling. He was very impressed – especially noting that the car had no bump steer (it had been designed out in the original design) and that the chassis was so quiet (due to its all-welded design).

In addition to the stiffer rear bushings, I’ve also replaced sagging front springs and shocks with coil-overs so I could adjust the ride height. In time, I plan to add adjustable coil-overs at the rear as well. When the time comes that I need ball joints and tie-rod ends, it may make sense to modify my suspension to use modern parts so it will be easier to find replacements, but I’d be reluctant to make any significant changes to the geometry.

Italias deservedly received some bad press in their early days as Griffiths and Omegas, but most of these bugs were worked out before the majority of these cars were produced under Reisner’s own banner. The few bugs that went unresolved can be rectified with relatively simple fixes as I’ve described. It may never handle as well as it looks but isn’t that like complaining about Sophia Loren’s cooking?

 

Bottom line is no one "loves" the handling, and there were many bugs in the cars, this is to be expected as there was no racing program or a large amount of cash behind the project like Lamborghini. I like the cars , but these issues will always affect their desirability.

 

Indra Ex owner in California original color white, many overheating problems.

 

I'm keeping my eye's open for one, but that's a little to much of a project for me.
Thanks for posting!

 

veddy intelesting!

 

I sold a rusty project Italia in Australia some 15+ years ago.It was restored using Ferrari 365 GT4 running gear by a long time Ferrari collector.
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Wow that came out nice! Which cassis is used?

What is with the air cleaner box's? They look like they shroud the carbs well but don't go anywhere.

 

Chassis is 365 GT4 2+2 shortened to Daytona length . Air cleaner is fed via front grille thru hood.

 

Nice engineering, I like the look of the car Ferracanica!

 

Found another one in the Chicago Area. Has its original 302 and paint. Has owned it for almost 30 years and is his second Italia.


Tom Tanner/Ferrari Expo 2012-Chicago March 2012
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Hello we are just restoring a 67 Intermeccanica Torino here in Germany and we are looking for the right colour. The original paint was red (Max Meyer 12265) Does anyone have an actual color code for it?
Thank you