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Italian Barn Find: An Fully-Functional, Amateur-Built Ferrari F92A F1 Car

Although this may look like a Ferrari F92A Formula 1 car it’s actually a fully-functional copy that was built by an Italian enthusiast named Gianni Pascal. Decades after it was built it was rediscovered in a barn covered in dust, and it’s now being offered for sale publicly for the first time.

Gianni Pascal’s favorite F1 driver was Jean Alesi, and so he was inspired to undertake an ambitious project to build a working replica of his 1992 Formula 1 car. Some Ferrari factory employees learned of Pascal’s project and they supported him by sending parts – including genuine front and rear carbon fiber wings.

Fast Facts – Gianni Pascal’s Ferrari F92A

This car was built by an Italian Formula 1 enthusiast named Gianni Pascal over a period of years to resemble the Ferrari F92A Formula 1 car. After he became ill it was stored away in an Italian barn, only being rediscovered again recently.
The original Ferrari F92A was developed by a team led by Jean-Claude Migeot, it competed in the 1992 Formula 1 season with drivers Jean Alesi, Ivan Capelli, and Nicola Larini.
Though it was beautiful, F92A wasn’t a successful car for Ferrari. It proved extremely unreliable and finished 4th in the championship with just 21 points.
Gianni Pascal’s Ferrari F92A was built to look as close to the real thing as possible, thanks to friends at Ferrari he was able to use real Ferrari F92A front and rear wings, and the car is powered by a 2.0 liter Alfa Romeo twin-cam engine coupled to a manual transmission.

Building Your Own Formula 1 Car

The idea of building your own car from scratch is an idea that appeals to many, it has largely fueled the popular kit car genre that gives people the opportunity to build their own car in the garage – often just using simple hand tools.

The car has a one-piece rear clamshell just like the original, for easy access to the engine, transmission, and suspension components.

Of course this isn’t for everyone, some people want to build a car for which no kit exists, which leaves them with the option of doing it the hard way. Italian Formula 1 fan Gianni Pascal was one of those latter types.

As an Italian, Pascal loved Scuderia Ferrari. He was also a big fan of Jean Alesi, a French racing driver of Italian origin who was driving the Ferrari F92A in the 1992 season. It’s not known exactly what made Pascal decide to build his own F92A but whatever it was, he threw himself into the project with total commitment.

Pascal built the car over four years from 1992 to 1996. As luck would have it he met some Ferrari mechanics who were on holiday in the resort of Val Chisone, not far from the small village of Perosa Argentina where he lived.

Power is provided by the Alfa Romeo 2.0 liter inline-four, mated to its 5-speed gearbox. Though obviously not as powerful as the original by quite a margin, it is far easier to maintain.

Once they returned to Maranello they sent some parts from the F92A spares collection, many of which would have been thrown out after the end of the season anyway – crucially the parts they sent included an authentic front and rear wing as these parts would have been exceptionally difficult to fabricate otherwise.

Gianni Pascal’s Ferrari F92A – Specifications

A tubular steel chassis was designed for the car, coilover suspension with pushrods was fitted, a detailed and functional cockpit was created, a set of wheels was custom made, then shod with Avon Historic F1 tires.

Using a real Ferrari Formula 1 engine was out of the question due to cost and complexity, even a Ferrari road car engine would have been too much, but Pascal realized that the venerable four-cylinder Alfa Romeo twin-cam 2.0 liter engine from the Alfa Giulietta would be ideal.

Once he had sourced a suitable engine and transmission he fitted it to the car, though it may not have sounded quite like the 3.5 liter V12 fitted to the original F92A, it does have a sound that is unmistakably Italian.

At first glance the car does look an awful lot like the F92A and the quality of work that went into it is clear to see. The fact that it’s fully-functional and not just a static model makes it all the more impressive.

The car is fully-functional and it can be driven on display laps, it’s fitted with Avon Historic F1 tires which are easy to source when the time comes for replacements.

Once completed Pascal showed the car at a number of shows and completed demonstration laps in it for curious crowds. Sadly it wasn’t long after this that he fell ill, and the car was rolled into a barn in the Italian countryside where it would remain for many years.

Out Of The Barn

Pascal’s remarkable F92A was rediscovered in its barn just last year, it was carefully cleaned and inspected and the drivetrain was recommissioned so it can be started and run.

It’s now being offered for sale out of the Netherlands, the listing states that the car can be used for exhibitions or demonstration laps, it’ll also obviously be vastly cheaper to maintain than one of the originals.

If you’d like to read more about this unusual hand-built car or place a bid on it you can click here to visit the listing. It’s being offered in a live online auction through Collecting Cars and at the time of writing there are a few days remaining.

Images courtesy of Collecting Cars

The post Italian Barn Find: An Fully-Functional, Amateur-Built Ferrari F92A F1 Car appeared first on Silodrome.

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For Sale: An East German Trabant 601 – “The Worst Car Ever Made”

This is a Trabant 601, by far the most prolific of the 3.7 million Trabants ever made. Known as the “Trabbi” in its native East Germany it was nicknamed “the worst car ever made,” and was often comically referred to as the “saxon Porsche,” “running cardboard,” or “the spark plug with a roof.”

Despite its somewhat unflattering reputation the Trabant is now almost universally loved in its native Germany, with classic car clubs keeping thousands of them on the road – good examples now sell for figures that would have seemed utterly impossible to the average East German back in the 1960s.

Fast Facts – The Trabant 601

The Trabant was developed in the mid-1950s and for the time it was a relatively advanced car, with a steel unibody chassis, a composite plastic Duroplast body, independent front and rear suspension, and front wheel drive.
The car was offered over four generations between 1957 and 1991, starting with the Trabant P50/500 followed by the Trabant 600, Trabant 601, and ending with the Trabant 1.1. Of these the 601 was the longest lived, running from 1964 to 1990.
The Trabant was largely unknown in the West until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Many thousands of Trabants crossed the border full of beaming East Germans, and as a result the car became a core element of this period’s zeitgeist.
Power was provided by an antiquated air-cooled, two-cylinder, two-stroke engine. Capacity was slightly increased over time but even at its most powerful it only made 23 hp – enough for a 21 second 0-60 mph time.

The Terrible, Wonderful, and Wonderfully Terrible Trabant

Despite its famously subpar build quality, low top speed, terrible tailpipe emissions, and almost comical unreliability, the Trabant always had a 10 to 13 year waitlist for prospective new buyers. This was due to the economic stranglehold that held East Germany back far behind its neighbors on the other side of the Berlin Wall.

Above Video: This clip from MotorWeek talks a little about the Trabant, with host Steven Chupnick talking about his own personal Trabbi.

East Germans would often place an order for a Trabant either when their baby was born or when their child first entered school, this way by the time the child was a young adult their car might be ready for delivery.

Back in the late-1950s when the Trabant was introduced there were high hopes for the car, at this time the Soviets were winning the space race with Sputnik reaching space in 1957 – the same year the Trabant was introduced.

The word “trabant” is derived from the Middle High German word “drabant” which means “satellite.” The car was named to celebrate the success of Sputnik and the presumed success of communism over capitalism, though within a few short years it would become a perfect four-wheeled example of all that ailed the Soviet states and their allies.

Designing The Trabant

Initially, the Trabant was only intended to be in production for a decade or so before it was replaced by something more modern. This replacement would never take place however due to the critical shortage of materials throughout the Soviet Union, and as a result the Trabant would stay in production with minimal updates for 34 years.

As a slightly more upmarket Trabant 601 S De Luxe model, this car has a better appointed interior than many.

The engineers who designed the Trabant back in the mid-1950s deserve credit for a job well done. They had to design a car that was cheap to mass-produce while using as little steel and other raw materials as possible.

They developed a simple steel unibody chassis with independent front and rear suspension sitting on transverse leaf springs. A body was developed using a material called Duroplast, it’s essentially a close relative of fiberglass that is made up of synthetic resins and pressed cotton fibers.

Inside the somewhat spartan cabin you’d find room for up to five on seats stuffed with horsehair, there was a small trunk in the rear, and up front you’d find a 499cc air-cooled, two-cylinder, two-stroke engine producing somewhere in the region of 18 to 23 bhp.

Upgrades & Legacy

The engine was upgraded over the next few years, first increasing in size to 594cc, then many years later in 1990 it was replaced altogether by a far more modern 1.0 liter four-stroke, four-cylinder engine from Volkswagen.

Over the course of the over three decade long production run almost all parts on the Trabant remained interchangeable – such was the limited development that occurred due to crippling shortages of funds and materials.

The Trabant is a tiny car by modern standards, partly to use the smallest amount of materials to build and partly because the anemic air-cooled, two-cylinder, two-stroke engine produces just 23 bhp.

Over 3.7 million Trabants would be made, the vehicle became the East German equivalent to the VW Beetle, though it remains far less famous everywhere in the world – except in East Germany of course, where the Trabant will always be king.

The 1978 Trabant 601 S De Luxe Shown Here

The car you see here is a 1978 Trabant 601 S De Luxe, the 601 was the most prolific of all the Trabants with over 2.8 million made from 1963 until 1991.

Many (if not most) Trabants didn’t survive beyond the 1990s, after East Germany opened up to the rest of the world there were so many vastly superior cars that Trabants were often abandoned – as people couldn’t even give them away.

This particular Trabant is one of the survivors, it’s listed as being well-maintained carrying its lime green exterior and its simple cloth interior.

We only rarely see these come up for auction outside of their native Germany, so it’ll be interesting to see what this one sells for when it crosses the auction block with Historics Auctioneers on the 12th of March.

If you’d like to read more about this car or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Above Video: This is an original commercial out of East Germany about the Trabant 601.

Images courtesy of Historics Auctioneers

The post For Sale: An East German Trabant 601 – “The Worst Car Ever Made” appeared first on Silodrome.

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Garrett Turbocharger Wall Lamp: $108 USD

This is the Garrett Turbocharger Wall Lamp by Berkay Erdoğan of Auto Decoration. As the name suggests, it’s a wall lamp made from a real (formerly operational) Garrett turbocharger.

The team at Auto Decoration specialize in making everyday household items from recycled car parts, apart from the turbo lamp they also sell clutch clocks, spark plug coat racks, piston business card holders, and connecting rod clocks.
Now known as Garrett Motion, the company that builds Garrett turbochargers started out all the way back in 1936 as the Aircraft Tool and Supply Company, founded by John Clifford “Cliff” Garrett in a small one-room office in Los Angeles.
Though the company is perhaps most famous today for their high-performance automotive turbochargers they actually started out building turbos for aircraft during WWII.
After the war they diversified into building forced induction systems for a variety of applications including for sewage purification operations and for the heavy vehicles built by Caterpillar.

These lamps are designed to be mounted directly to the wall, they make great additions to garages, sheds, and studies – not to mention they’re good conversation pieces.

In 1960 the Garrett T11 automotive turbocharger helped begin the turbo revolution, it was fitted to production cars like the Chevrolet Corvair Monza and the Oldsmobile Jetfire.

Over the years the company remained front and center as turbocharging became mainstream, and today they’re arguably the most famous turbo manufacturers in the world.

Each of these Garrett Turbocharger Wall Lamps is handmade, an original turbo is sourced and prepared, the electrical parts are installed as well as the lightbulb socket.

They ship without a bulb included to you can choose what kind of bulb you need – though Edison bulbs like the one in the display images will almost certainly look best.

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