Ferrari 400 GTi – Originally Owned By Piero Ferrari

This 1983 Ferrari 400 GTi is unusual for a couple of reasons, it was ordered new with a 5-speed manual transmission (most were automatics), and the man who ordered it was Piero Ferrari – the son of Enzo Ferrari.

The Ferrari 400 GTi has never been the most beloved car to carry the racing horse, the styling was one step too far for many despite the fact it was designed by the great Leonardo Fioravanti at Pininfarina – the same man who penned the Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona.

The model family that included the 400 GTi started with the Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2, which was then succeed by the 400, which itself was then succeeded by the Ferrari 412. The numerical model name is a reference to the approximate capacity of each cylinder in cubic centimeters, for example the 400 has a unitary displacement of 401.93cc.

When it was released in 1972 the Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2 was somewhat controversial. It was taking over from the beautiful Ferrari 365 GTC/4 which had been designed by Filippo Sapino at Pininfarina. By the early 1970s the car design world was becoming enamored with much sharper lines in automobile design, largely influenced by the work of designers like Giugiaro and Gandini.

The 365 GT4 2+2 was developed to appeal to this new world, at best it did it with mixed results however almost 3,000 were sold, an impressive figure given that the model was never officially imported into the United States.

Above Image: The interior is as opulent as you would expect for a Ferrari grand tourer, with plush leather seats and a driver focussed dash.

Each model in the family was built with a tubular steel chassis was based on that of the GTC/4, but with a slightly extended wheelbase. They used a steel body and a fiberglass floor for weigher reduction, however the curb weight of the 400 GTi was still a little on the heavy side at 1,830 kgs (4,034 lbs).

Power was provided by the venerable Colombo 60º V12 in Tipo F 101 form, with an alloy block and heads, double overhead cams per bank, 24 valves, with the intake coming via either a bank of carburetors or fuel injection.

Inside the cars were luxurious and well appointed, these were GT cars after all and not sports cars. Seating was 2+2 in all variants, with ample headroom, plenty of trunk space, and all the interior appointments you’d expect.

When the Ferrari 400 was introduced in 1976 it would be the first Ferrari to offer an automatic gearbox from the factory, a GM THM400 3-speed automatic transmission was used. After the introduction of the automatic as an option, most of the cars sold in this model line were automatics.

Today we’re seeing people look at the 365 GT4 2+2 and its descendants anew, the origami styling so emblematic of its era has become popular once again and for many, these cars represent a still-affordable route into Ferrari ownership.

Above Image: The angular styling hasn’t been historically popular with Ferrari fans, but these cars are aging well and becoming more valuable over time as a result.

The Ferrari 400 GTi shown here is more special than most, and not just for the fact that it’s fitted with the manual transmission option. This car was delivered new to Enzo Ferrari’s only surviving son Piero Ferrari, known at the time as Piero Lardi Ferrari.

Piero was born to Enzo Ferrari and his lifelong romantic partner Lina Lardi, the two became involved in the 1930s and remained so until Enzo’s passing in 1988. Enzo had a son named Dino with his wife, tragically Dino would die from muscular dystrophy in 1956.

Today Piero is an active and vocal supporter of the Centro Dino Ferrari, a medical research center for neuro degenerative and muscular diseases named for his brother and originally co-founded by his father.

Piero spent decades working his way up through the ranks at Ferrari, his father insisted on it, and today he carries on Enzo’s legacy as Vice Chairman at Ferrari as well as 10% shareholder in the company.

Piero Ferrari’s Ferrari 400 GTi is due to cross the auction block with Bonhams in April, the price guide is $78,000 to $110,000 USD. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Images courtesy of Bonhams

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The Only One Ever Made: The Georges Irat Prototype Sports Two-Seater From 1946

This is the only example of the Georges Irat Sports Two-Seater that was ever made, it’s a prototype that was designed to kickstart the French company’s automobile production in the time immediately after WWII.

There can be no denying that this was a cleverly designed car with advanced aerodynamics, a lightweight magnesium chassis and body, and a a 1,100cc flat-four engine. The reason it didn’t go into production had nothing to do with the quality of the car and everything to do with the state of the French economy at the time.

The sleek styling won the car accolades when it was first displayed at the 1946 Paris Salon, however France was recovering from the ravages of WWII and Nazi occupation and sports cars weren’t a signifiant priority. As a result the car would never reach production, and the example you see here would be the only one ever built.

French Automaker Georges Irat

Automaker Georges Irat had produced its first car back in 1921, the company was named after its French founder – Georges Irat. Over the course of the boom years of the 1920s Georges Irat made a name for itself building beautifully designed sports cars that were powered by either imported American Lycoming engines or in-house developed Georges Irat engines.

One thing that set the company apart from its rivals was its remarkable ability to quickly evolve when required to stay in business. When the Great Depression hit in 1929 the company struggled for a few years before inking a deal with Godefroy et Levecque, makers of the Ruby engine, to use their engines and move car production to their facilities.

After the outbreak of WWII in 1939 and the invasion of France in 1941 Georges Irat quickly pivoted from gasoline to electric car production – correctly assuming that gasoline supplies would become increasingly scarce across France and Europe which would open up a market for electric cars.

Above Image: The unusual prototype has a magnesium body and a large “cyclops central headlight.”

Small batches of these electric vehicles were built, both a two-seat convertible and a two-seat minivan were offered, however by 1942 supplies of metals and rubber had dried up and production was forced to cease.

The Georges Irat Prototype Sports Two-Seater

At the end of the war in 1945 supplies of steel and gasoline were strictly rationed and hard to come by, and it was clear that large flashy cars were going to be frowned upon, and possibly impossible to put into production. As a result the decision was made to develop the car you see here with its magnesium body and chassis, small-capacity engine, and its elegant aerodynamic styling.

Despite the interest surrounding it cars like this Georges Irat prototype weren’t destined to succeed. Instead it would be designs like the Citroën 2CV that would find favor and entire mass-production.

This wasn’t the end for Georges Irat however, the company displayed the car at auto shows three times in various guises before it was relegated to storage and the company was closed. Although his namesake company would cease to exist Georges Irat himself was never one to quit.

He founded a new company named Société Chérifienne George Irat in Casablanca, Morocco. With this new company he would develop and release the VdB or “Voiture du Bled” – an exceedingly minimalist car influenced by the American Jeep.

Above Image: The car has seating for two, a central gauge cluster, wind up windows and a beautiful frameless windshield.

The tiny VdB was powered by a rear-mounted Panhard engine, for the sake of simplicity it was rear-wheel drive only but it was fitted with a locking differential and a low range transfer case for use off-road. The vehicle was highly capable too, it could climb a 40% grade, cross a 60 cm (24 inch) deep river, and due to its low weight it could be physically pushed and pulled over or around most obstacles.

Of all the designs from Georges Irat the one shown here really is the one that got away. Small sports cars from Britain proved hugely popular in the American market after WWII and had Irat managed to get this car into production there’s no telling what alternative future may have existed for the company.

As it stands today the body from the prototype was discovered at the Georges Irat factory in Bègles, it had been shaped by the famous Parisian coachbuilder Labourdette and sadly it was all that was left of the car – the chassis and engine having been removed for some other purpose.

Some considerable thought was given to what to do with the historically significant body. In the end it was decided to fit it to a chassis from a fellow French automaker from the same era, a chassis by Simca, and the car is powered by a matching Simca engine.

In its current form the car remains 100% French and it can be driven on the road, displayed at shows, and parked in private collections of museums. The unusual design doubtless draws crowds, with its larger central cyclops headlight and its two regular lights up front. The windshield is a beautifully frameless design and the car has seating for two, after which the body sweeps away down to the ground behind.

If you’d like to read more about this car or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing on Bonhams. It’s due to cross the auction block on the 23rd of April in Monaco with a price guide of €70,000 to $100,000 or $84,000 to $120,000.

Images courtesy of Bonhams

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Datsun 510 SSS Coupe – The Japanese Car That Became A Rally Legend

This is an original Datsun 510 SSS, known in most world markets as a member of the Datsun 1600 model line, it would be this car that would help put Datsun on the map for many buyers in Western counties thanks in no small part to the car’s significant successes in both rally and circuit racing.

The Datsun 510 And The SSS

Datsun released the 510 model in the North American market in 1967, it was clear that they had developed the new car with no small amount of inspiration from the BMW 1602 model family from Germany.

Both the Datsun 510 and the BMW 1602 featured unibody constriction, a single overhead cam four-cylinder engine, independent MacPherson strut suspension in the front and independent, semi-trailing arms in the rear. Both cars featured the more boxy styling that was rapidly becoming popular, and both would prove surprisingly adept at racing.

Datsun offered the 510 in four major body types, four door sedan, two door sedan, four door station wagon, and two door coupe. Engine sizes varied depending on model and year, from 1.3 litres up to 1.8 litres with the most desirable model being the one you see pictured here – the Datsun 510 SSS.

Above Image: The 510 SSS is the higher-performance model that was fitted with a sports camshaft and dual side draught carburetors.

The 510 SSS was fitted with a high-performance camshaft and twin SU style Hitachi side-draft carburetors, it produced 109 hp versus the 96 hp from the regular 1600cc model, and the SSS proved immediately popular with racing drivers.

It would be a Datsun 1600 SSS that would win the East African Safari Rally with Edgar Herrmann at the wheel, and another 1600 SSS would win the 1970 Round Australia Trial (the Ampol Trial), a tough event that sent cars on a circumnavigation of Australia that was thousands of miles long.

Other Datsun 510s would win the 1971 and 1972 SCCA Trans Am 2.5 Championship in the United States, and the 1982 and 1983 Australian Rally Championship.

Today there is a strong global fanbase for the 510/1600 model family despite the fact it left production all the way back in 1973. Finding original uncrashed cars that haven’t been consumed by rust can be problematic, and locating numbers-matching examples of the Datsun 1600 SSS is something of a holy grail.

Above Image: The 510 Coupe is a two door car with a swept back rear roofline, giving a more sporing profile than the standard car.

The 1971 Datsun 510 SSS Coupe Shown Here

The car you see here is an proper SSS, not a car that was converted later in life. It’s still fitted with the desirable 109 bhp 1.6 litre inline four cylinder engine that’s now fitted with upgraded carburetors.

A small number of period correct upgrades have been applied, including the 14 inch Speed Star (SSR) Mk 2 alloy wheels, the above mentioned carburetors, lowered suspension, modern gauges for monitoring engine vitals, and modern Dunlop Direzza rubber on all four corners.

The surging popularity of Japanese sports cars, particularly uncommon examples like the SSS has been showing no signs of slowing in recent years. Many of these cars were passed over by collectors for decades until recently, with their prices now climbing to levels where they probably belong.

The SSS shown here is currently being sold out of Hong Kong via Collecting Cars, the seller is responsive in the comments providing people with quotes for international shipping. At the time of writing the bidding is sitting at £1,600 with seven bids cast and four days remaining on the auction.

If you’d like to read more about it or place a bid yourself you can click here to visit the listing.

Images courtesy of Collecting Cars

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The Beachrunner – A Land Rover Series 2A Restoration By Oliver & Dobson

This is the Beachrunner, it’s the first in what will be a series of restorations by the team at Oliver & Dobson who are based in Sydney, Australia but originally hark from Britain. This is build #001 for the new outfit however one of the founders has previously restored seven Series Land Rovers – and his first car was a Series 2A with a Rover V8 replacing the original four-cylinder.

The plans for the Beachrunner were simple, the two men wanted to create a seven-seat Series Land Rover that would be perfectly suited to taking groups of friends to the beach for surfing, fishing, or camping expeditions.

Once they had settled on what they wanted to build they set about finding a suitable Land Rover to use as a starting point. The key difficulty with this was that the year was 2020 and much of Australia was locked down to due the Covid-19 pandemic.

Traveling to see Land Rovers was off the cards and so they decided to take a gamble on a 1967 Series 2A SWB Landy that was being offered for sale in the rural town of Goulburn located 195 kilometers (121 miles) south-west of Sydney.

Buying an old vehicle sight unseen is always risky, and in this case luck wasn’t on their side – the old Land Rover was in far worse condition than they had been led to believe after decades of hard farm use:

“It was a non-runner and, whilst largely rust free, it really needed much more work than we anticipated. It had clearly been well used and abused over the years with many rough farmyard repairs. None of the body panels were straight, we actually ended up having to replace every panel except for the bonnet and radiator panel – even the floors had to be replaced because they were buckled. It was during the strip down that I really started to feel we had taken on too much of a project. Note to self, always view future projects in person.” – Jack Dobson

When it came to this rebuild, perhaps the pandemic was a blessing in disguise as it meant there was nothing to do but get on with the job at hand. I’m going to turn it over to Jack here to finish telling the story of this unusual Land Rover:

The vehicle was stripped right back to the bare chassis and rebuilt from the ground up. All the mechanicals were either replaced with new or rebuilt. Since you can no buy many of the body panels these had to be sourced second hand from all over Australia. It was hard work and cost a lot of time tracking things down.

The vehicle was rewired with a custom loom that looks original but has additional features to support a modern sound system and wireless charging. The original sealed beam headlights were replaced with modern halogen units and all other lights were fitted with discrete LEDs (we are yet to find LED headlights that look in-keeping with the vintage look).

Build 001 started life as a truck cab with three vinyl seats in the front and an open rear. This configuration was ditched in favour of a full soft top and leather seats front and rear (three in the front, four in the back).

Old Land Rovers came in a very limited choice of colours. We decided we wanted to go with a complete colour change so all panels were stripped to bare metal before being painted in Audi RS6 Nardo Grey. The purists may be horrified but we feel it looks fantastic, complemented by black trim and wheels.

The wheels and tyres that came with Build 001 were small diameter and incredibly skinny – they really do not fill the wheel arches nicely. In their place we fitted Ex-Australian Army steel rims and Maxxis Mud Terrain tyres.

The two men are now hard at work on #002, a Land Rover Defender that’s being built for a client in the United States. If you’d like to contact them about getting a vehicle built you can click here to visit their website.

Follow Oliver & Dobson on Instagram here.

Images by Pat Nevard

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1990 Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 – The Affordable American Supercar

The Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 (C4) was released in 1989 as a home-grown American challenger to the dominant supercars of the day – the Ferrari Testarossa, the Lamborghini Countach, and the Porsche 911 Turbo.

At its heart, the ZR-1 Corvette is powered by an engine that was developed not in America, but over in Britain by Lotus. General Motors bought Group Lotus, the famous English performance car manufacturing firm in 1986 and co-developed the ZR-1 package with them, including the engine, braking, steering, and suspension systems.

The original plan for the C4 ZR-1 was for it to be the fastest production car in the world, this didn’t come to pass however the final production ZR-1 would break seven international and world records at a test track in Fort Stockton, Texas in 1990, all verified by the FIA.

The Lotus-developed engine in the car was dubbed the LT5, it proved to be a remarkably resilient engine given its complexity and power output which ranged from 375 to 405 hp depending on model year.

The LT5 is an all-alloy V8 with double overhead cams per bank, four valves per cylinder, fuel injection, an 11.0:1 compression ratio, and a unique induction system that could shut down half the intake runners when in low power mode for fuel efficiency.

This engine compared favorably with the V12s used in the Testarossa and Countach which produced 385 hp and 374+ hp respectively. The other performance specifications also held up well, the top speed of the ZR-1 is ~180 mph, the same as the Testarossa and 5 mph less than a comparable Countach.

The 0 to 60 mph dash can be dispatched in 4.9 seconds in a C4 ZR-1, the Testarossa takes 5.8 seconds to do the same and the fastest production version of the Countach does it in 4.7.

Above Image: From the outside the C4 ZR-1 looks almost the same as the regular model, however its performance potential is vastly more impressive.

The LT5 engine proved difficult to build and assemble, so much so that Chevrolet didn’t have a factory capable of building it. Instead they contracted the engine building to Mercury Marine who had plenty of experience working with complex all-alloy engines.

The modifications made to the C4 ZR-1 were limited to the LT5 in the engine bay, the vehicle was fitted with a unique 6-speed manual transmission developed by ZF called the ML9. Power was sent to the limited slip differential rear end and out through the P315/ 35ZR-17 Goodyear Eagle Gatorback tires to the asphalt.

The Bilstein-developed suspension system was somewhat similar to the system used on the Porsche 959. It was called the FX3 system and it used a gas-over-oil shock absorber that allowed the driver to electronically control the flow of oil inside the hollow center shaft. This gave the car six damping settings in each of the three driving modes: Touring, Sport, and Performance.

The C4 ZR-1 also came with the UJ6 low tire pressure warning system and an ABS braking system developed by Bosch.

The rear end of the car was notably wider than that on the regular C4 Corvette however there were very few external clues that the car you were looking at was something special – a criticism that was made at the time by drivers who wanted there world to know their car cost twice as much as a normal C4 and had supercar levels of performance.

Over the course of the 1990 to 1995 production run the ZR-1 came in two major iterations, the earlier cars with 375 hp and the later cars with 405 hp. The engine had been upgraded in 1993 by Lotus to take the challenge to the Dodge Viper which had been introduced in 1991 with a 400 hp V10.

A little over 6,900 examples of the ZR-1 C4 Corvette were built during its production run. After it was discontinued in 1995 Chevrolet wouldn’t have another Corvette capable of matching its performance until the release of the Z06 C6 Corvette in 2001.

Above Image: The quad cam 32 valve V8 is capable of between 375 and 405 hp depending on model year – on par with the Ferrari Testarossa and Lamborghini Countach from the same era.

Today the C4 ZR1 remains one of the best bang-for-buck performance car bargains in America. Good examples can be bought for under $30,000, some selling for under $20,000, largely due to the lack of popularity surrounding the C4 Corvette in general.

This does seem to be slowly changing as 80s-era cars become Radwood cool, and you have to wonder if the C4 ZR-1 is poised to see a rapid gain in value when it’s rediscovered by the car community at large.

The 1990 C4 ZR-1 Corvette Shown Here

The car you see here is a first-year model from 1989 (1990 model year), it’s once of just 3,302 built that year and it’s accumulated only 3,335 miles on the odometer since new.

With its black over black color scheme the car has an almost Knightrider feel to it, and it comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect including power steering, power disc brakes, air conditioning, tinted glass, power windows, locks, and seats, and a Delco Bose cassette stereo.

If you’d like to read more about this car or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing. It’s due to roll across the auction block with Mecum mid-May with no reserve.

Images courtesy of Mecum

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