The automobile as art begins with the shape, but the engineering and performance must match the beauty of that shape. Iso and Bizzarrini cars do that, blogs Mike Gulett.
Marty Schorr's Iso Grifo, top, and Mike Gulett's Bizzarrini GT 5300 Strada, above, are stunning examples of coachbuilt Italian Grand Touring cars.
Renzo Rivolta, followed by son, Piero, challenged the Italian GT car community by merging the best of “domestic” styling and engineering with bulletproof American powerplants. They pioneered the building and worldwide marketing of Grand Touring cars powered primarily by Corvette engines. Their two and four-place GTs set new standards for luxury, performance and most importantly, reliability.
While tooling was created for the two-plus-two Rivolta GT & Lele and four-door Fidia bodies, the Grifo, below, originally designed for a 50-car-build, was a handcrafted car. Body panels were hand-formed over wood bucks by Silvercar, even after the car was given production status.
After projects for Ferrari like the 250 TR and GTO and some short detours, Giotto Bizzarrini, joined Iso to work with its Chief Engineer, Pierlugi Raggi, developing a then-sophisticated unitized platform/chassis with boxed steel rails with incredible structural integrity. Suspension was IFS with coil-over Konis and big disc brakes and DeDion rear with inboard disc brakes. With its front/mid engine location, below, the Grifo boasted 48/52% (F/R) weight distribution. First used for the Rivolta GT, the platform was later modified for the two-place Grifo that became the company’s flagship product. Approximately 412 were handcrafted over ten model years.
Giotto Bizzarrini, a native of Livorno, Italy, was Chief Engineer at Ferrari in the 1950s. He left Ferrari in 1961, worked with ATS, then started his own company, Societa Autostar (later changed to Bizzarrini in 1962) and landed at Iso. After his chassis development work and racing projects at Iso, he moved on and concentrated on the Bizzarrini brand.
Bizzarrini’s ground-hugging GT cars, above, powered by Corvette small-blocks, had stunning bodies and delivered racecar performance and handling. Engines were set back so much that distributor tuning and servicing was handled from inside the cockpit! Some GT 5300 Stradas had four-carb Weber induction systems and in many ways were more street legal racecars than GTs. Bizzarrini Stradas had Iso Grifo engineered platforms with IFS and DeDion rears, mostly 327 engines from Chevrolet and bodies from BBM in Monza. Mike Gulett’s silver Bizzarrini with Webers, below, is a show-stopping example of the breed.
While best known for his chassis and suspension development talents and his low volume Bizzarrini GT cars, he also was involved in the design and engineering of powerplants such as Lamborghini’s V-12. His Societa Autostar was commissioned by Ferruccio Lamborghini to come up with a 3.5-liter V-12 for the 350 GT. Variations of Bizzarrini’s original engine have been used by Lamborghini ever since, including the 6.5-liter powerhouse used in the LP640.
Mike Gulett’s portfolio of of Iso and Bizzarrini’s greatest hits: Series I & II Grifos, Rivolta GTs, Bizzarrini GT 5300 Strada and Manta, Grifo A3/C and an Iso scooter, can be found on My Car Quest,
http://mycarquest.blogspot.com/2011/03/iso-and-bizzarrini-italian-art.html