What is this???

It looks like a Vignale spider of sorts. Anyone?
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Siata

 

yes... Siata 300 BC

750 c.c. crosley engine usually

nik

 

You guy's are awesome. Thanks!

 

You could order it with just about any engine. I had one for a while that had been a sort of test car for one of the local shops (Warren Olson?), and it had had an assortment of engines. By the time it got to me, it had a lump of some kind; I want to say Turner, but no longer sure. (Now someone will ask what the hell is a Turner!) As stated elsewhere, some of us loved having unusual, sometimes obscure, cars.

 

OK, I'll bite. What the hell is a Turner?

Alberto

 

tUNER MADE CARS IN THE uk IN THE 60S BUT NOT ENGINES I thought.. Some had SAAB 750 cc engines too.. Siata that is...

 

Turner made F-3 engines before he made cars.

 

http://www.turnersportscars.co.uk/

 

The photo that opened this thread is indeed a Siata 300BC. The car is almost certainly ST*407*BC which was born without an engine but was accessorized, as were most of the first thirty cars built, to receive a Crosley engine after arrival in the USA. The normal preparation was a Fiat gearbox fitted with Siata close-ratio gears and a bell-housing that would mate up to a Crosley. Many of these cars arrived with only a fuel gauge for instrumentation and it was up to the dealer to install the appropriate equipment to suit the engine and the customer's wishes. Only a very few of these early cars were actually fitted with engines in Italy. If it is ST*407*BC, it was fitted with a Crosley engine in 1952 (in the USA) and made quite a lot of history as an H-modified. It lost its Crosley engine and some other engines became associated with it but were never run. It was restored by my father and myself (with Crosley engine) for a doctor in Colorado who subsequently sold it to a fellow in Texas ... who fitted it with a pushrod Fiat 124 at some point for "vintage racing" and it is in that configuration that it appears in the photo above. It was subsequently sold again and a fellow in Southern California had us restore the car again ... back to the original Crosley configuration. It was sold late in 1991 through Fantasy Junction and has subsequently done many MM events in the hands of one "Pilotessa", beginning 1992.

Incidently, the last twenty cars in the series (50 total, so far as we can tell) were fitted by Siata with tuned Fiat 1100 engines and larger front brakes. The last ten cars were bodied by Motto instead of Bertone and it appears that one of the earlier cars was re(?)-bodied by Motto as well. Almost all of these cars were sold in the USA so the Europeans know very little about how great these cars really are. Shhhh! Don't tell them!

Ed, you used to remember that the "lump" fitted to your Siata Spyder (when you got it) was a Singer 1500. I haven't learned the chassis number yet, but have traced the car back to 1952 when Ernie McAfee's shop installed a pair of Triumph 500cc motorcycle engines fed by a single S.C.O.T. supercharger. George Reis attempted to race it a few times but had no success ... if it even managed to start an actual race(!?!). It went back to McAfee at some point and in 1954, Bob Sutton had McAfee install a J.A.P. 1100cc motorcycle engine along with a rack&pinion unit that made it uniquely RHD (among Siata 300BC) and it was raced until 1957. It was second in class (Gm = 1100cc) at Santa Barbara in 1954 and then had very little success, running "out of gas" at least twice and having "fuel regulator problems" on at least one other occasion. Sutton apparently removed the engine after that and it was offered in Road & Track in 1964 with the Singer 1500cc engine installed. You got it and offered it again in 1968 ... and the next owner was .... ???????

John de Boer
The Italian Car Registry

 

Wow! Amazing... Great response, you guy really know your s#!*. Awesome, the knowledge of the members here. Thanks for the insight. Todd

 

If the car ever comes back to you I hope you don't put another Crosley engine in it.

 

This particular Siata spyder 750 still has a tuned Crosley in it.
At least, it did when I saw it a few weeks ago, in the care of some friends in Italy.
The race-tuned Crosley is historically "correct" for the car ... and they are good little engines when built properly.

Other similar cars can be "correct" with other engines. As I indicated above, the last twenty in the series are "correct" with tuned Fiat 1100 engines (1100E or very early Fiat 103) and a few of the earlier cars were also fitted historically with similarly tuned Fiat 1100 engines. One early car had a Cisitalia engine fitted in the USA. Another had a Fiat 1100S engine fitted in the USA. Individual exceptions to the Crosley norm for those specific cars. But, the importers (Pompeo and McAfee) saw little sense in sending Crosley engines to Italy just so they could be sent back to the USA in complete cars ... which would have made for greater expense at every step of the process.

John