Vintage Ferrari frames

certainly do, most are at Neri and Bonacini who made most of them

 

ALL of the Ferrari chassis prior to 1958 were made by Gilco, which still exists, and is now known as trafiltubi. They are located outside of Milan. The owner's name was Colombo, but there is no connection to the Colombo that worked for both Alfa and Ferrari.

Gilco published a book with blueprints of some of the frames, plus information on the racing sailboats and racing bicycles they built. Only about 1000 copies were printed, about 10 years ago, but they can occassionally be found.

I had 10 copies when they first came out, but were sold very quickly at the Society of Automotive Historians swap meet outside of Los Angeles (a once a year event, held at the end of June) and to a couple of Ferrari people I knew. Tom Warth, the big old car book dealer sometimes has a copy for sale at "around" $100.

In addition to being a sub-contactor, Gilco built frames for others. Some chassis were "in-house" designs, and some were designed at the companies themselves. They did a lot of "etceterini" chassis, and even some stuff for Maserati.

Maybe ALL the pre-1958 Ferraris should really be called Gilcos, as although they did not do all the designs (some were done at Ferrari), they DID build them all!

 

Gary Bobileff has a blueprint of the chassis of a 250XXX, I don't remember the exact model, but it is hanging on the wall of his office, it was huge, at least a D size drawing. Give him a jingle, http://www.bobileff.com/

He is in San Diego.

Contact: Gary Bobileff
Ph: (858) 622-1600
Fx: (858) 587-0579
E-mail: [email protected]

 

A little off subject, but I remember in the 60s meeting Tom Meade in Modena, and (among others) he took me to a place where (he claimed) the Ferrari frames were being made. It was like a 4-car garage behind a house, very "old world craftsmen", with 2 guys welding tubes on a chassis plate. Could this have been the Gilco "factory"? It was Modena, not Milano. Wish I had asked more questions!

 

I can just see it now...two old codgers in a garage...

"Hey, Luigi! Where we putta the battery?"

"I donna know; let's builda a secret compartment behind the wheel well!"

"Hey Luigi, you a genius! We can smuggle olive oil in there too!"

Ken

 

Or Manicardi e Mesuri ?

 

Gilco stopped making chassis for Ferrari in 1958, but they probibly provided the tubing for some time after that, until everyone went to other than tube chassis. They were the first company to extrude tubing that was ovoid in section and tapered in length, dating back to the 1930s. I believe they only produced complete chassis (for anyone) post WW2, but continuded making chassis into the 70s, including platform style designs. I would assume that the shop in question got the tubing from Gilco, but built the chassis there.

 

Funny, but why would two Italians in Italy in the presence of nobody else speak English? Just like in the movies.

 

If I wrote it in Italian no one could read it. I often wondered how all Hogan's men could speak fluent German....

ken

 

A little off subject, but I remember in the 60s meeting Tom Meade in Modena, and (among others) he took me to a place where (he claimed) the Ferrari frames were being made. It was like a 4-car garage behind a house, very "old world craftsmen", with 2 guys welding tubes on a chassis plate. Could this have been the Gilco "factory"? It was Modena, not Milano. Wish I had asked more questions!

 

Ed: I have been in the Gilco fabrica outsde Milan in the early 1980's. They were
making a lot of tubular furniture in the "moderist italian" style. The actual
fabrication of steel tubing was being done by FALK to their designs.

Down in Modena their are quite a few garage or larger operation making
frames,motors and body panels for all the orginal and faux motorcars.

You may wonder why Modena is such a hot bed of racing car activity,
During the 1930's there was a very large aircraft factory in Reggio Emilia
built most of the Italian airforce up to and during WWII. After the war
there were thousands of unemployed and very skilled metal workers. Hence
very easy to find the neccesary skilled men to build a racer. They knew
how to work light weight alloys and speciality steels.

Jeffrey Vogel

I have a 1950's ALFA racer built on a GILCO chassis.

 

Chinetti had several cars which were badly burned or wrecked long ago. When the cars became valuable recently it was Vacari that made new chassis. This was done only with written permission from the Factory. Vacari does many of the factory supervised repairs to chassis also. Used to be a Mr. Amadesi of Ferrari, Spa. had to give his O.K. for any of this to happen and I believe he controls who sees blueprints also.

 

facinating, i have often wondered when redoing major structure on aircraft how different it is or is not from working on the old racers.

 

It was of course the same Mr. Amadesi of Ferrari S.p.A. who approved the recasting of "P4 SUSPENSION PA" (Tipo 603 Uprights) for my car 0846 in July of 2002. Photo's of these uprights and discussion of how they came to be have been posted on a website copyrighted by Ferrari S.p.A. for years.

 

My bicycle has Falk tubing. A little slice of Ferrari history in there!

Ken

 

It's my understanding that Gilco was the company that extruded the tubing for virtaully every Italian aeroplane built in the 1930s. There was surge in auto racing in Europe just after WW2, and every compnay in Italy was looking to do anything that would make some money. Gilco got into the chassis business indirectly, using technicians that were involved in building WW2 aircraft....not because of any major interest in auto racing, but simply to go into a business that would bring in some capital...similar to the reason Ferrari got into the machine tool business during the war..

 

I'm not real sure, but I think this is the "GILCO" company in today's world.

http://www.columbustubi.com/eng/default.asp

I think that the part of the company that built chassis' was called GILCO AUTOTELAI (auto frames)

Best wishes

 

Here is the company's web site. Click at upper right for English or German; the site is in Italian...

http://www.trafiltubi.com/

 

Velocetoday has an upcoming article on GILCO ... For those interested, it might be worth watching out for.


http://www.velocetoday.com/people/people_17.php

Best wishes

 

I'M the one who wrote the article! Vack got the article at least 2 years ago, but never used it, along with some other stuff I wrote; one on every Alfa based special ever built.....of course it's understandable that the Alfa article was never used, as when it appeared in the Dutch national Alfa magazine "Het K", about 10 years ago, it was over 50 pages with the photos!

 

Dear Sir,
I presume that you are referring to the Ferrari Owners' website? http://www.owners.ferrari.com
Then, in the light of recent correspondence from the factory, I am surprised that Ferrari S.p.A. have not requested that you remove said entry from your garage.
Or have they?