RIP true genius Giotto Bizzarrini

He who had such huge engineering and driving talent passed today on his 97th year.
He could develop and properly test drive, fine tune, improve his creations, a rarity among engineers.

He played a major role in a pivotal era of Maranello but as a stubborn and somewhat wild Tuscan he was part of the 1961 Palace Revolution and moved on.

He was then the originator of the Breadvan built for Volpi, NOT by Drogo as so many mistakenly and stubbornly believe but by Neri & Bonacini... together they created a car that was faster than the GTO's...

Then he moved on to many other exciting projects, all excellent but his brilliance was forever thwarted by his poor business acumen or lack thereof as he fully admitted but that made him all the more pure.

It was an honor to interact with him briefly twice, in the early 90's for a chat at Pebble beach and in 2008 or 9 to gather his memories on his spawning the Breadvan for Volpi for the book about it.

RIP Ingegnere.

 

The news was just confirmed from Italy via Cyrille Jacquinot. 97 years shows what wood he was made of.

 

When I did an article for Classic & Sports car (October 2011 issue) on his lovely little Bizzarrini 1900 Europa GT, driving two of them in Belgium in 24 hours, he mentioned via email that he preferred it to the Strada.
Brilliant little car handled as well as it looks, I want one badly, they used to be cheap but that is a distant memory now; one dealer was asking €300K for one in recent years...which even a 250 GTO owner refused to pay.

This could have been very profitable for Bizzarrini, much bigger sales numbers than Stradas but typically the government subsidies that he got for the project were hijacked by some unsavory "businessmen" who conned him and it all came to nought after just 12 cars were built...

This example is the same one I had seen at Zurich dealer Koni Lutiziger's chalet in my teens so to drive it decades later was very special.

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I know of that one, interesting build, it was offered to me years ago. Just needs the headlight covers. It has to be fantastic to drive.

 

Well I literally stumbled into this one when going through the photo files of my Breadvan book...too good not to post.
Not sure who took it, maybe Coltrin.

Modena aeroautodromo 1963 or 64, the Breadvan with young heir Volpi at right by the door who has offered to none other than Juan Manuel Fangio, sitting behind the wheel, to test his toy. This is when Volpi was using it as a road car.

Perfectly framed by the door window is our man Giotto squatting down ready to give advice to the maestro.
A nice moment in time...


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