Iso A3C or Bizzarrini=-why didn't Chevy back them?

I can't seem to find the Iso Grifo racing car, A3C, existing in 1962 but was wondering if anyboy who was into racing at the time knows why Giotto Bizzarrini didn't receive any help from Chevrolet. Here he hada car that could fight off the Cobra. I even think it did about the same or close to it in class at Lemans the first time it raced there. Or is this a case of Duntov worrying that if they helped Bizzarrini and Bizzarrini did well, they wouldn't need Duntov or worse yet, it would hurt Corvette sales in the U.S. Or maybe imperil his Grand Sport program (which saw only five cars built).
It seems to me, looking back through the telescope of history, that Duntov fought off anything that imperiled his little empire, to the detriment of Chevrolet brand.

 

I thought they were backing Chaparral at the time. Seems like backing a team from Midlands Texas would be less complicated.

 

IIRC, Chevrolet put any public racing support on ice due to the negative image that could result from accidents. Pierre Levegh's fatal accident at LeMans was a catalyst.

So by the dawn of the 60's, any effort by Chevrolet would be "back door".

Even Chaparral support was covert - always "unofficial". So to the point about logistics, that was certainly a factor.

 

I read once that Jim Hall met the Chevy engineers when he saw a display of the Monza GT show car and told them he was a car builder and you'll note a later mid-engined Chaparral has almost the same nose treatment as the Monza SS, a later open version of the Monza GT. But I recall and can't find the reference that Jim Hall was one of the engineers hired by GM to test the Corvair to try to duplicate it going out of control during hard cornering. That might have been after 1965 because that was the year Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed was published. So I don't know where Jim Hall met the Chevy engineers but I gather that they spoke the same language. I also wasn't at the races in Europe like LeMans but I wonder how many guys in the Chaparral pits were "vacationing" Chevy engineers!

 

I wondered the same thing, but looking back GM turned down Shelby too. Plus there were a bunch of guys running SBC's in anything that rolled.

Bizzarrini built a better oil sump used on Iso cars and tried to pitch it to GM, but GM turned him down. He also built the crossflow manifold for Webers that GM ended up using on a few of their race cars. I wonder if Bizzarrini would have accepted their help.

 

I'd like to know if Chevy copied that off Bizzarrini. The real Bizzarrini ones
I think had a rod down the center, spring loaded, to pull the carbs open with horizontal springs. I don't know about the one on the Grand Sport--I never looked at their engine carefully. I am still thinking Duntov was the stick in the mud--he had raced at LeMans (a Porsche) and enjoyed being GM's only certified LeMans racer who everyone at the Corporation could come to for questions. But when others surpassed his knowledge he didn't seem so eager to get them involved. I hope somebody who reads this forum can give their opinion on that. I think it might be like Pete DePaulo at Ford, who prepared the Thunderbird two seater race cars, he had great knowledge for the '50s but when it became the '60s he was "old hat" (on the other hand I don't know what year he died...)

 

I think they did, the early versions of Bizzarrini cross draft were different than the later ones. Some early ones looked like they were hand made and brazed together rather than cast.

Bizzarrini also tried to sell them the cast oil pans used on the Grifo and Rivolta's because they worked better, but GM turned him down.

Bizzarrini also used the Kamm tail design years before the Ford guys w the Daytona's