1965
Partial Restoration
Finished
This car was a mystery to us from the very beginning. Even finding any information on the vast internet was difficult. This is a sports car, or rather a racing car, with a body produced by the Italian family company Bertone. It was originally created for the homologation of rally cars.
Bertone's body makers added a bolt-on metal roof to the beautiful Fiat Spider convertible, giving the car the necessary rigidity. The small coupé, manufactured in 1970, was powered by a tuned 900 cm³ four-cylinder rear engine, and the interior was designed in a "Ferrari style."
This model has participated in the Monte Carlo Rally and just over a thousand of these were manufactured in total. Practically all road-going versions were sold in America, which is where our specific car also originates.
The major sheet metal work was done in Finland around 2007. We continued this process and completed the final finishing of the bodywork. A unique characteristic of the car is its exceptionally thin sheet metal, which makes the bodywork relatively difficult; even lead filling tends to deform the parts.
Once the sheet metal was finished, the entire car was cleaned down to bare metal and coated with Standox 2K epoxy primer. Getting the body perfect took about 200 more hours of work before it was ready for painting.
Finding the correct color shade was once again not easy. The Bertone factory line had painted this Racer in a dark yellow tone belonging to the Lamborghini Miura color palette: Giallo Miura. Finding the recipe and even a sample of this proved impossible; even the information we received from Italy was incorrect.
Finally, we discovered a previously unnoticed dark yellow paint color on the back side of an aluminum door hinge, and this proved to be the original color. Based on this sample, our colorist manually crafted the suitable shade. We now have the necessary recipe in the Standox system—a closely guarded secret that we will only reveal to those who own a car of this very color!
We painted the car's underside, interior, and exterior. The finished body was then transported to Finland for final assembly.
The leading classic vehicle company in Finland is displaying this body on stands in their showroom as an art object, and it is a point of great pride to see it exhibited this way. We sincerely hope that the car will one day be fully assembled and that we will get to see it driving — that is the goal, after all!
25 Dec 2009
