Not only does Giotto Bizzarrini have the most beautiful name in automotive history, he is also responsible for some of the coolest cars ever made. And engines. But chances are, unless you’re a collector of classic Italian cars, you’ve never heard of him.
He is now 96 and started his career at Alfa Romeo before moving to Ferrari. He is one of the principal architects of the Le Mans-winning 250 Testa Rossa, he conceived the 250 GT SWB and oversaw the development of the legendary 250 GTO before becoming embroiled in the infamous Palace Revolution of 1961.
The idle at Ferrari
In that year, Enzo Ferrari fired its commercial director Girolami Gardini, and Bizzarrini was one of five veterans who decided to leave Ferrari out of sympathy with Gardini. The stubbornness and pride of the men in Maranello gushed in all directions and you can imagine the squabbling jawlines of those Italian owners.
Giotto, a gifted engineer, designer and test driver, started his own business and quickly got very busy. He collaborated with his former Ferrari colleague Carlo Chiti on the ATS 2500 GT, Italy’s first mid-engine supercar, and founded Società Autostar in 1962. He designed the famous V12 for Lamborghini and co-developed the captivating Iso Grifo for Renzo Rivolta.
The Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa was the result of a fight
But more quarrels eventually led to the formation of Bizzarrini, in 1965, from which the car you see here: the 5300 GT Corsa. A cranked up racing evolution of the Grifo A3C which at the time was a sort of supercar of sorts, with a body designed by the young Giorgetto Giugiaro. It can’t get much better.
That’s certainly what it feels like behind the wheel even now, although this isn’t so much a car, but more of a journey through time. Because the Bizzarrini brand has recently been revived with some venture capital and support from a wealthy benefactor from the United Arab Emirates.
These Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa are from the UK
What you see here is the latest and perhaps most intriguing model ever to experience a renaissance. The ‘new’ Bizzarrinis are being built by British motorsport and engineering specialist RML, using factory blueprints, input from living workers and materials from original suppliers. 24 copies will be built for a price of around 2 million euros. Excluding taxes and options.
A very well-known American sports icon has already signed up, and there’s bound to be a Japanese billionaire who puts it in his penthouse just to watch (and drool). With its GTOmeets-Grifo body, the Bizzarrini is a sublime Italian sculpture, topped off with a fabulous exhaust.
The Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa is just the beginning
Although it is a beautiful object, it is a harbinger of things to come: an all-new supercar to be released in 2023, followed by a number of new models. To complete the circle, those models are also designed by Giugiaro, whose GFG consultancy builds on the developments that stopped more than 50 years ago (just look up the Manta Concept from 1968).
But that’s phase two. At the moment we have our hands full with this hand-built one off from the 1960s, whose hood ends somewhere in the next province while the 5.3-liter Chevrolet V8 underneath makes enough noise to shift tectonic plates. It is fed by four Weber carburettors and starts with a button. A real high revving V12 is hard to match, especially in such a beautifully designed body, but the Chevy V8 comes pretty close. It tickles your neck when it’s idling and it clots your blood at 5,000 rpm.
how does the Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa drive then?
It doesn’t matter how many historic cars you’ve driven, or where; the first few meters are as unnerving as they are intoxicating. “Why can’t all cars have this living feeling?” one moment your brain is screaming, followed quickly by, “Why does it feel like my right leg is on fire?” This Bizzarrini is not street legal so we are limited to some loops at the Millbrook Proving Ground, a UK vehicle testing facility.
The Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa has 400 hp
That V8 is good for 400 horsepower and the whole weighs 1,250 kilos, so we’re talking about a very healthy power-to-weight ratio. You sit low – lower than in the original, because the new owner is probably a bit bigger than those little Italians from the past – and very far back. There are some dials visible looking through the large wooden steering wheel, but the main instruments are inexplicably centered on the dashboard.
The huge transmission tunnel is shrouded in leather – more luxurious than the original – and a small gear lever controls the rumble and roar of the Borg Warner gearbox whose shifting is vague to say the least, especially from two to three. That is still being addressed, says RML.
After some throttle it doesn’t take long before you really ‘offer’ the car at a bend, as the late Sir Stirling Moss once put it. It feels peerless, and you feel like you’re paying tribute to French drivers Régis Fraissinet and Jean de Mortemart, who scored a victory in the ‘over 5.0 litre’ class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June 1965, in their 5300 GT (with chassis number 0222). They finished ninth overall in a race that would be Ferrari’s last overall win at La Sarthe, with the 250 LM.
After the race he drove home in that car
Giotto Bizzarrini must have been happy with that win, and he may have waved to the Scuderia pit box with a famous Italian hand gesture. Although he may be too much of a gentleman for that. What we do know is that after the race he simply drove that car back to his home in Livorno, Italy.
Hats off to RML too, because this new Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa is sensationally well built. True to the 1965 original, with a carbon fiber composite body instead of the fiberglass that lined its ancestor’s steel frame. The fuel tanks were originally housed in the door sills and behind the driver: using 3D scans, less vulnerable space has been cleared elsewhere. And it is equipped with an FIA roll cage.
Lots of space under the hood
Unhook the hood and it’s clear that Bizzarrini knew how the hares run: the V8 is so far back that there is almost room for an extra engine. RML used modern measurement techniques to assess the car’s weight distribution and found that each corner bore exactly 25 percent of the total weight. The Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa also had fully independent suspension and disc brakes all round, which few of its rivals had. But this car has them.
Bizzarrini and RML have enlisted Brazilian endurance driver Tommy Erdos to smooth out the car’s final bumps and when he gets behind the wheel to give us a few laps at Millbrooks handling loop feel, the genius of the 5300 is fully revealed.
You don’t have to drive quietly with the Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa
It’s an astonishing demo of the symbiosis between car and driver: Erdos doesn’t like polite cornering. Instead, he rams the 5300 through it as if it were a buddy Alpine A110. If oversteer occurs, it is immediately suppressed by the enormous grip, but it also leads to juicy drifts. Above all, the car feels almost bulletproof, so robust: Le Mans 1965 must have been an amazing experience.
In summary: are you an eccentric Japanese billionaire and are you reading this story by chance? Please do not store your Bizzarrini as a museum piece. Bring it to Europe, preferably on twisty roads, and know that you have the world’s coolest racer. Can we have another round?
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