All photos courtesy Riccardo Grasso.
Typically it’s Americans who replicate Italian cars, what with all the Fauxrarris, Lampostorghinis, and Seventies kit cars built, not the other way around. One exception exists, however, and it rather makes sense, given that European coachcraft inspired it in the first place: Riccardo Grasso’s tribute to Edsel Ford’s 1934 Model 40 Special Speedster.
Edsel, whose sense of style far surpassed his father’s and who in many ways ensured the success of Ford Motor Company, commissioned a number of specials and speedsters for his own use throughout the years. Perhaps one of the more famous of his specials (aside from the one that would go on to influence the production Lincoln Continental), the 1934 Model 40 speedster, began as a directive from Ford to E.T. “Bob” Gregorie to build him something “continental,” by which he meant low, sleek, stylish, and racy. Gregorie started with a 1934 Ford chassis, but designed an entirely new aluminum two-seater body that positioned the driver far back in the chassis and that eliminated running boards, doors, and pretty much all unnecessary decoration. Originally built with a single vertical divided grille, the speedster later was fitted with its distinct lower horizontal grille to add cooling capacity.
The speedster remained in Ford’s possession until his death in 1943, was sold for $200, then bounced from one end of the country to the other, popping up in Hollywood in the Forties and Fifties, then in Florida from the late 1950s on. Amelia Island Concours founder Bill Warner owned it for a time, before selling it at auction to collector John O’Quinn, whose estate later sold it to the Edsel and Eleanor Ford Estate, which restored it in its current gray livery and debuted it at the 2011 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. It’s currently part of the Dream Cars exhibit which will make its way to Indianapolis later this year.
After reading about the speedster’s debut at Pebble, Italian collector Riccardo Grasso said he fell for its charm and couldn’t get it out of his mind. He read up on Ford, on the speedster, and finally decided in September 2012 he had to build a replica of the car for himself. Rather than start with a 1934 Ford chassis, which had to be next-to-impossible to find in Italy, Riccardo began by tearing down a 1951 Lincoln Cosmopolitan that he bought in Milan for parts. The frame ended up the wrong shape and size, he said, so he found a Twenties light truck frame of unknown origin that fit the bill. To it he added the Lincoln’s rear suspension and Dana 53 axle and a complete Ford transverse-leaf front axle and suspension that he imported from Southern California. For power, he decided to go with the Lincoln’s 154hp 337-cu.in. flathead V-8, backed by a GM four-speed manual transmission.
He couldn’t exactly make his way to the United States just to take measurements of the speedster, so he said he had to improvise. He started with a wheelbase measurement he found in published articles on the speedster – 112 inches – and the size of the wheels – 17 inches – and derived the rest of the dimensions from photos that he laid grids over. While Riccardo outlined the shape of the body with 6mm steel wires, he said he turned to his friend and retired aircraft master fabricator Marco Binetti to shape the body panels by hand from 1.26mm aluminum, a process that took him just three months.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after he had the body and chassis made to those dimensions – that is, too late to make any significant changes – that he discovered the car’s overall length, not its wheelbase, measured 112 inches. Still, he said, the proportions came out right, “but if the two cars park aside, mine should result bigger.”
Since finishing the speedster in April 2014, Riccardo has taken it on several classic car outings in northern Italy and Switzerland and shown it at the Milano Autoclassica car show, driving it to and from each event rather than trailering it. He said it drives well (“exhilarating performance, impressing me with its massive torque at an incredible low RPM”), but has found the power to be too much for the tube-style tires and has found the Cosmopolitan’s rear axle too short for such a light and sporty two-seater. “Consider that at 2,000 RPM my babe speeds 85 KMH (53 MPH), that’s good on a 5,600 RPM engine, but not on a 3,500 RPM flathead!” he wrote. Using adhesive to glue the tires to the rims has seemed to solve the former problem, he said, and he plans on having a more suitable ring and pinion set made for the Lincoln locally.
Riccardo said he’s taken it upon himself to educate the Italians about Edsel Ford’s speedster and his inclinations toward European automobile design. It seems he now has the perfect tool to do that with.
from Hemmings Daily - News for the collector car enthusiast http://ift.tt/1C6D47f
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