[Giampaolo] Dallara, who also engineered 370hp, although Dallara later “civilized” it

Ferrari but was working at Lamborghini, to a mere 336 (SAE) in their 350 GT. The
and we got the four-liter racing engine from
Dallara, and we put it in the Bizzarrini, the
P538, and it had a top speed of about [140
mph]. It was very competitive.”
While the A3/C and 5300 GT borrowed
liberally from the Iso, the P538, in either
V-8 or V-12 configuration, was unusual to
the point of being alien. Giugiaro drew
a fiberglass body that one contemporary
review described as “a hunkered-down
lizard,” almost exactly twice as wide as it
is tall. FIA regulations dictated some ele-
ments of the design, such as a passenger
seat and room for a suitcase (as the class
was for production-based cars). But no one
said anything about putting the driver in the
center, the passenger on his left and equip-
ment on his right.
The trunk and flat front profile required
a minuscule radiator, not ideal for endur-
ance racing, and the rear-mounted engine
required some fancy plumbing, so Bizzarrini
routed the coolant though the round-sec-
tion frame rails, as a sort of supplemental
radiator, and, we suspect, supplemental
foot heater. The frame itself is a spaceframe,
a little beefier than Touring’s Superleggera,
but the fiberglass body is bonded directly
to it as in a Lotus, helping stiffen the wide-
open car. Either engine works with a de
Dion rearend and Girling disc brakes,
inboard in the rear.
The 3.5L Lamborghini engine in our fea-
ture car—the 18th V-12 they built, #0127—
is fed through six Weber twin-throat carbu-
retors. Estimates of the power output vary,
and current owner Van Horneff plans to test
it on a dyno, but when Lamborghini first
put the engine on a dyno in 1963, it put out
transmission is a transaxle in unit with the
engine, and suffers in feel somewhat from
the distance to the shifter.
Gammino raced the first 4.0-liter V-12
car once, after which he retired from rac-
ing. Bizzarrini must have liked the idea,
however, because he commenced con-
struction of this car with a 3.5-liter engine:
Le Mans 1967 was the target. Bizzarrini’s
operation was on a shoestring at best, how-
ever, and after finishing 1966 with neither
a result at Le Mans nor anywhere else, they
failed to get the new car built in time for Le
Mans 1967.
As the spring of 1968 approached, it
looked as though they’d be ready for the
race, but the Automobile Club de l’Ouest
revised the engine formula for the new
season, dropping the displacement limit
for their Sports Prototype class to 3.0 liters,
and ending the competition hopes of the With more than five feet between the wheels,
V-12 P538s. there’s plenty of room for center seating.
Nineteen-sixty-eight did not turn out
to be a good year for Bizzarrini at all.
“Bizzarrini was a character, he was never
a very good businessman,” Gammino told
us, and his finances disintegrated to the
point where he was forced to declare bank-
ruptcy. It’s unclear how much of the car
was built when he ran out of money, but
in the eyes of an Italian bankruptcy court,
it should have been sold to help settle his
debts. Bizzarrini had other ideas.
When the assets of Scuderia Bizzarrini
were sold off in 1970, including at least
one V-8 P538, the 3.5-liter car was not only Campagnolo knock-offs are in magnesium alloy,
not among them, it had disappeared alto- Lamborghinis generally used wire wheels.
gether: Before the court locked the doors,
Bizzarrini took #002 apart and, along with

Chevrolet V-8 powered cars

B izzarrini used the first P538 built for development work in the beginning of 1966, and it prob-
ably crashed that winter. The car that appeared at Le Mans four months later may have been
this car, it may have been a second car or, more likely, it reused any and all salvageable parts of the
original car, whatever those were.
In 1967, Bizzarrini rebodied at least one V-8 as a coupe and sold it to the Duca d’Aosta. Some
sources suggest this was a third V-8 car, possibly constructed as a second 1967 Le Mans entry.
Another, possibly the 1966 Le Mans car, was also rebodied; it ended up in the hands of Giugiaro at
ItalDesign; he rebodied it a third time (at least) as his Manta show car. Both the Duca d’Aosta and
ItalDesign cars have remained in those configurations, and are the only V-8s that can be reliably
confirmed as Bizzarrinis built in the 1960s.

Lamborghini V-12 powered cars

M ike Gammino’s 4.0-liter car, often called 001 but actually un-numbered, was completed in
1965, after which he imported it into the U.S. He ran it once at Bridgehampton, where “we
had some problems with it.” He gave it to his mechanic, Liberto Girardi, and at his death, it passed
through a series of owners until it landed at the San Diego Automotive Museum.
Van Horneff’s feature car is stamped P538 002 on a front stabilizer. It was built for the 1967 Le
Mans 24h but never completed. Disassembled by Bizzarrini by 1970, it was finished it as a com- Passenger bubble doesn’t actually match passen-
mission in 1974 or 1975. ger seat. It’s Italian, it doesn’t need a reason.

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• HEMMINGS SPORTS & EXOTIC CAR

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