Art and words by Wallace Wyss - 08/04/2022
So at least half a century ago I was a budding poet, had won a poetry award and thought "This my life’s destiny." Then I went to a University library in search of a poetry journal only to find a copy of Autosport, a British magazine, which had a story on an obscure Italian car called Iso, this being their race car, separate from their four-seater coupe, the Rivolta.
I had never seen a car so wanton, so rakish, almost obscene. It was like a streetwalker in 8-in. high heels. What amazed me then was that it had a Chevy V8 as an engine. Iron block. pushrod. Detroit crudity in an exotic. I forgot poetry and instantly became a car guy. A couple years later I was writing car ads in Detroit and a boss mentioned an obscure Italian car was down at a Corvette shop. I might want to take a look at it,
It was a Bizzarrini targa. Long story short, the Iso company, which had started with the tiny Isetta “bubble car” during the Suez oil crisis, had hired an engineer (ex-Ferrari) named Giotto Bizzarrini (BITZ ER-EEN-E) to do a four-seater saloon, which he did. But to keep him happy they indulged him by letting him build a two-seater race car on a shortened Iso Rivolta chassis and that raced at LeMans where it hung in there with the Ferraris enough to finish 9th in 1965.
But the owner of Iso, Renzo Rivolta, didn’t like the race car's aluminum body -- too expensive to build, so he had a tamer design, the Grifo, done by the coachbuilder’s in-house designer, Giorgetto Giugiaro, and Bizzarrini went off to his native Livorno to build the race car under his own name.
Later on, I join the fledgling Iso-Bizzarrini club and started making rosters of Bizzarrinis and Isos. Then at a Ferrari owner's convention, I met a New York apartment house owner who weekly met with a cabal of fellow enthusiasts and the conversation would go like this.
“Hey, Al, I gotta Ghbli comin’ in from the Coast,”.
“Manual or automatic.”
“Manual, SS, yellow,”
A price would be tossed out, accepted and somewhere in America an 18-wheeler would come to a stop and the car offloaded to another truck going toward the buyer’s city, They liked my knowledge of cars and would send me all over the country to look for cars.
So besides Rolls Royces, Ferraris and Maseratis, I bought four of these Bizzarrinis, The best one was a white one belonging to a club member, who had bought it new in Italy. I didn’t even talk price, I just showed up at his desert house and said ”I’m here for the car” ” handed him a cashier's check for $60,000 and drove it away.
Then there was one all apart, sold by a guy who had started a restoration on it but didn’t want to continue. The third was none other than one of Carey Loftin’s cars. The Iso Bitz club was invited by his gracious wife to lunch at his beach townhouse.
At the party, I kept thinking that the party would end with him showing us his latest cars. . But instead guests began to leave, so I up and said “Do you still have any of your old cars?” He said “Yup” and led me outside to the garage and opened the door to reveal a dusty old Bitz, with the dashboard all ripped up. His wife had volunteered to sew it but probably discovered sewing leather was not like sewing cloth.
I called my New York contact and a week later went back with a cashier’s check and a flatbed truck. His wife was crying as I towed the car out onto a flatbed. realizing owning five of those exotic Bizzarrinis had, over the years, earned her husband a lot of movie work, such as driving the Mustang in Bullitt. His counter-argument was that he was over 80 and movie jobs weren’t coming his way anymore.
A fourth Bizzarrini I found in Ohio In a small town. Parked outside at least two winters. Rusty under its alloy skin. But my New York customer wanted it, The local bank manager was incredulous that the loser car owner had such a treasure but they took the check and I took the car. That was one flaw in our buying arrangement. I would take a check and if the car wasn’t worth it, I couldn’t wait for a second check, I just bought it.
Eventually I met the owner of the Detroit-based Targa, His father had bought the car from his business partner, an early investor in Bizzarrini . The partner had met Giotto Bizzarrini in a bar. His investment was rewarded with the open car. He sold it to my friend’s father who then gave it to his older son. The son, needing a daily driver to drive in Detroit’s winters, sold it to his younger brother for the heady price of $3000 and the son kept it, restored it, and now, in 2022, I’d say it’s worth what—2 to 3 million? Give or take.
On the long walk to the car, I tell myself “You gotta learn to make prints. You can’t sell your originals.” So now it’s 2022, and I’ve painted over 100 car portraits, I have clients around the world that commission portraits of their cars.
Most of my work is Ferraris, with the occasional Maserati or Porsche. I even did a run of prewar streamlined modern cars. Then one day I had an epiphany. "Why," I ask myself, " is there no Bizzarrini art?" It figures. First, the car is ignored by all except a few cognoscenti for fifty years. Now there are some beautifully restored ones appearing, But there's no art, no jackets, no memorabilia. The books that appear now and then die off, and go out of print.
- GT5300 rear 3/4 at the beach. "This was a car fresh from a restoration in France. I was at Paradise Cove in Malibu at 7 as the sun rose to reveal my favorite car.
- GT5300 side view, at the beach A different Strada set into the same Malibu setting
- GT5300 front 3/4 dark blue, foggy background "This car I saw at Monterey, probably when Pebble Beach created a class for Bizzarrinis."
- GT5300 rear 3/4 red T-top Targa "I tried to buy this car in the early ‘70s when I found it at a Corvette shop in Detroit, being serviced. I didn't realize then how rare it was.
- GT5300 rear 3/4 blue t-top Targa "I saw this car at Monterey when they displayed all three Bizzarrini Targas."
- Iso A3C race car. Bought by Bruce Meyer, Beverly Hills’ most prominent car collector. who found it in Europe. He owns beaucoup Porsches, and Ferraris but this is getting to be his favorite driver.
I’ve even started copying the paintings onto leather jackets for those clients who order a big canvas. It may well be I’m going down a road no serious car artist goes on, celebrating a marque still unknown and unrecognized by 99% of enthusiasts. But I feel a small sense of pride, that this obscure marque, once lambasted by Ferrari folk as being low class because it had a common-as-dirt Chevy V8, has emerged to become celebrated.
It’s the least I can do….
_websize.jpg)
