In the beginning, growing up in Detroit in the ‘50s, I knew of foreign sports cars but rarely saw them. It was the weather, rain and snow in winter, too hot in summer, that dampened their popularity and those who worked for Detroit’s Big Three were frowned on by management when they showed up in a European sports car (Oh, the horror!)
I dabbled in them myself—a 300SL gullwing for instance but Detroit wasn’t sports car friendly.
In college I was a poet (even won a national prize) and it was while I was in the library looking for a poetry magazine that I came across a Motorsport magazine that had a test of a sexy Italian made two seater called the Iso Grifo A3/C (later became the Bizzarrini). Upon seeing those pictures, I immediately forgot about poetry and became a car nut
Then only a couple years later, around ’67, I came across a descendent of that car in person. Seeing one in person made me much more zealous in my pursuit.
My boss, Dick Wingerson, at the ad agency where I wrote Chevy ads, had a side gig promoting a place called The Vette Shop. A customer had brought in a car for repair, a car my boss described as “some weird foreign car with a Corvette engine.” He said I should go look at it.
The car was a Bizzarrini. (pronounced BITS-A-REEN-E”) ,which was built by Giotto Bizzarrini, a former Ferrari engineer . He was famous in the Ferrari community for designing and engineering the immortal 250GTO, a car that at last count was worth about $70- million plus. He that was part of the famous “palace revolt” when Enzo Ferrari fired an engineer named Carlo Chiti, and the other engineers ,in sympathy, walked out.
Giotto tied in with an upstart rival to Ferrari—ATS—but that failed. Then he was hired as chief engineer by Iso, the company whose first car was the tiny Isetta “bubble car” and after that they moved into grand touring cars using the dirt cheap Chevrolet V8 engine. They wanted to do four seaters but Bizzarrini talked them into also making two seater coupes with designs by Bertone’s Giorgetto Giugiaro, then the wunderkind of the car industry (he started designing cars as a teenager!) . Giotto wasn’t content with luxury four seaters, he even talked them into making a race car and it briefly threatened Ferraris at Le Mans.
Then there was the inevitable parting of the ways. Iso did not want to make aluminum-bodied cars so Bizzarrini said “I’m leaving” and he left with the design for the Iso Grifo A3/C (for competition) and A3/L (lusso for luxury touring), a svelte 170 mph car that he had talked them into producing.
He was able to keep the design because he had copyrighted the name “Grifo” under his name and Iso had already introduced at auto shows a tamer steel bodied Iso Grifo to use it on a redesigned tamer street car, so it was too late to change the name. They reluctantly let him take the race car design.
Bizzarrini Builds a Factory
He began producing it his native Livorno under the Bizzarrini name. Among the cars he made were three open models, with a targa roof, and it was one of those I saw in Detroit. I tried to buy it then but the owner was a true believer in Bizzarrini and as far as I know owns it to this day, over 50 years later!
A Move to the Coast
Flash forward, to California. In 1970 I moved permanently to California. Sports cars galore. In succession, I owned a Porsche 356 Convertible D, a Mercedes 450SL, a Karmann Ghia convertible, a gullwing again and a Ferrari 365GTC/4. Though I always wanted a Bizzarrini—at about $11000 in 1970 , they were always a little out of my reach.
But I diligently searched for them. In the 1980s I was writing and publishing car books (one a success, at 50,000 copies, a bio of Carroll Shelby) and came across a group of car collecting investors in NYC that would send out barn finders to find them cars.
At the time, I had a wife that worked for the airlines so that solved the traveling problem (remember their slogan “Marry me. Fly free”) so I went around the US looking for exotic cars.
My technique was to run ads in Auto Trader all across the country, showing a picture of a trashed example and saying “WANTED: Bizzarrini. Any condition, etc.” and then ,when I got a bite, I would show up at their house with a cashier’s check. I wouldn’t even ask if it was still for sale . My opening line was “Let’s go to the bank and see if they will cash this check.”
Along the way I bought Bentleys, Rolls Royce’s, Ferraris, Iso Grifos, Ghia 450SS’s, Bizzarrinis, etc.
The Stunt Man’s Ride
The Bizzarrinis were the most memorable cars I bought. One I bought from a legendary movie stunt man Carey Loftin who had snuck his own Bizzarrini (he eventually is recorded owning five in a row) ino every movie he could. A fleeting glimpse but often more interesting than the movie,. He got long racing scenes in the Disney Herbie movies about a VW beetle with a mind of its own,
How my purchase of the stunt man’s Bitz happened was he had invited the Iso Bizzarrini Club to his house in Huntington Beach for lunch. All during the lunch, I thought the piece de resistance would be him unveiling his last Bizzarrini. But no mention of it. Finally the guests left except for me and I said “I thought we were going to see your cars.”
He said’ “sure” and led me out to the garage and began opening doors. The first door revealed a DeTomaso Pantera but as I had written three books on DeTomaso I was bored with them. And they made too many for it to be really rare (At least 7000…) The next door he opened revealed the prize– a faded Bizzarrini, laid low by an uncompleted self upholstery job. I asked how much he wanted for it and he said $60,000. I called my sometime employers in New York and they said “We’ll send the check.”
A week later I was back with the cashier’s check and a tow truck. His wife was crying as I towed it out. He kept trying to reassure her. “I’m over 80 years old,” he said patiently. “nobody’s writing checks like this to me anymore.”
That one I shipped without trying to get it running. But another –a clean white one I bought out in Lancaster from a member of the club–I think it was about the same price–I got the keys to a perfect running car. I got to drive it until the shipping truck was scheduled to arrive. I drove the bejeesuz out of it. Even made a video of me driving it with music stolen from a Spaghetti Western movie. Never have I driven a car that looked so good that was so cheap to maintain!
Another one I bought was in Ohio or some other Midwest state. You know the Midwest, where cars rust like crazy. Now how could it rust with an alloy body? Easy. Everything underneath rusts. The guy wanted $30,000. We went to the bank and the bank manager couldn’t believe his town’s biggest loser could ever own anything worth $30,000. But he did. The check cleared. One more for my New York buyers.
Career Switch to Fine Art
Now I am a fine arts painter. Goodbye to books (well, to car histories, I do have a novel I am promoting, Ferrari Hunters, in case you out there know any movie producers…)
Though probably 80% of the 100 car paintings I have completed since 2009 are of Ferraris , there are ten of Bizzarrinis (including Iso Grifo A3/C_) paintings, and I’ve sold a couple. But of course there are damn few owners. Not even enough to fill a Starbucks!. I figure out of the original under-150 plus cars there are only sixty cars still out and about and some have suspicious historical backgrounds (for instance, one was torn in half in a race crash so there’s probably two rebuilds that could claim that SN,one from the front half’s wreck and the other from the rear half’s wreck) It’s hard to check on a car’s history when the original automaker closed their doors decades ago (I do actually have a roster, published in 2014, which is as close as I can get to authenticating a Bizzarrini if I am ever lucky enough to find another).
I was surprised as anyone when I discovered at least ten videos on Iso Grifo A3/C and A3/L models and Bizzarrini on You Tube. Apparently the videographers are not so restrained as the magazine writers ( I guiltily remember personally being at Motor Trend in ’65 and sending the Iso representative packing as far as him hoping we would do a road test of the Rivolta, the firm’s first model , If they weren’t going to buy ads…they could forget about coverage,.,,
Amazingly as beautiful as the Bizzarrinis were, as convincing a sports car as they were, as ingenious as they were in using an American-made V8 as power, there are millions of sports car fans who have been Ferrari fans for decades but never heard of that obscure Italian marque created by one of Ferrari’s former engineers (the one with the 250GTO on his resume….). It takes an educated aficionado to buy the painting. A true cognoscenti. But I’ll keep painting them… after all, they were the car that started me down this long, winding automotive historian road.
EDITORS NOTE: Author/Artist: Wallace Wyss, an octogenarian, would like to hear from a brick and mortar gallery interested in consigning his Bizzarrini art. He can be reached at malibucarart@gmail.com
