Hey John, Frank.....
Nice Stanguellini story, sister car to the one Jim restored?
https://petrolicious.com/articles/italy ... anguellini
Colin the older

What a beautiful car.

Not a sister car, but a first cousin.
Stanguelini made his own race cars and fitted them with various engines. He made twin-cam 750s and 1100s but his great success (by number of cars and races won) came from the 1.5L FIAT class. He took the commercial FIAT compact sedan chassis and shortened it, strengthened it, completely modified the entire suspension and trimmed everything down to tiny weight. Then he worked-over the standard 1500cc FIAT OHV engine (which FIAT had over-built to standards far beyond family use), but crowned it with a DOHC Hemi-head of his own design. That gave him a winning engine in a balanced platform for several years, until Porsche and other corporate names created their own 1500cc engines and pushed Stanguelini off the podium in that class.

This little car was a 750cc in a lightweight fiberglass body. While most racers in the 750cc class used existing motorcycle engines for their cars, Stanguelini created his very own DOHC 750 design from scratch. It put out nearly 100hp and was the best engine in the class. He commissioned several coach builders to fashion sleek little fiberglass roadsters to fit over the frames he had created. This little 750cc car won many races and a manufacturers' championship.

The car we saw at Jim Kinsella's was a very special 1957 (made in 1956) two-off roadster made for the FIAT 1500cc class of that year. One roadster raced (and won) in Europe during the '57 season, while the second car (the one we saw) raced here in the USA (and won). Europe created a specific racing class around the popular 1500cc FIAT engines, but here in the USA Stanguelinis had to race against 1600cc cars......and they still won.

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1970 240Z

I remember the post about the Stanguellini at Jim's place when it was being worked. Did you post any completed pictures of it? I don't remember seeing them, I'll bet it looked great.

Jay

I was lucky enough to see it once in a single lifetime!

I never saw it again, but Colin caught up with it after it had been completed and got some really good photos of it.

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1970 240Z