Molto Bella: 7 Fantastic Cars from the 2013 Concorso Italiano [Photo Gallery, 2013 Pebble Beach]

With the Friday before the annual Pebble Beach Concours D’Élégance becoming increasingly crowded with events, the Concorso Italiano now has serious competition as the premier kickoff event for the weekend. Even so, the event seems to thrive, as the this year’s field of Italian classics seemed better than ever.

We don’t know if the raw numbers of show cars or attendees was up or down, but the cross-section of models seemed more complete than last year. Two 50th anniversaries were celebrated, including that of Automobili Lamborghini; about 130 raging bulls turned up, a gathering that organizers claimed to be the largest assembly of Lamborghinis ever in North America. Also celebrated was the Apollo 5000GT, initially built by the Oakland, California–based International Motor Cars, which merged an American chassis and an aluminum 215-cubic-inch Buick V-8 with an Italian-made body. About 90 GTs were produced in three phases as the company lurched from owner to owner from 1962 to 1965. We counted 15 Apollos on hand, or 17 percent of the total production run. Also on hand was Fiat, to show off two new variants of the 500, the Cattiva, a sports appearance package available on both the 500 Sport and 500 Turbo, both of which go on sale this fall, and the GQ Edition cabriolet, which hits lots next January. Here are some of our favorites from the field:

Every Lamborghini model was represented at Concorso, but Mark Jansen’s electric green, ultra-rare right-hand-drive Miura P400S was a standout. Jansen, from Brisbane, Australia, purchased the car in the U.K. two years ago and put it through a road-to-roof restoration at Gary Bobileff’s well-known shop in San Diego, California. Miura history was on parade this weekend as the original prototype rolling chassis, which debuted on the Lamborghini stand at the 1965 Turin Motor Show, was offered for sale at the Gooding & Company auction this same weekend. When Ferruccio Lamborghini asked Nuccio Bertone what he thought of the chassis, Bertone replied, “All my life I have been looking for the right pair of shoes, and I think I have just found it.” With its Marcello Gandini–designed and Bertone-supplied body and its famously transverse 350-hp 3.9-liter V-12, the finished Miura caused a sensation at its 1966 debut at the Geneva Motor Show. It’s believed that only 20 right-hand-drive cars were made out of the 764 Miuras built. Apparently the judges thought Jansen’s car was spectacular, too, because they awarded it Best in Show.

Sure, money can’t buy taste, but what do you expect when the owner of a nightclub not far from the Ferrari factory commissions a car built to his own design? Well, you might expect gold-flake paint and tailfins that you could hide the city of Dallas behind. Apparently, some time around 1966 or ’67, local nightclub impresario Norbert Navarro walked into Piero Drogo’s Carrozzeria Sports Cars shop in Milan and put down the cash to have his beautiful 330 GT made into this flaring fountain of bad taste. “There could have been women and alcohol involved,” says owner John Goodman of Seattle, who bought the car several years ago at an auction in wretched condition and restored it. Eventually the car ended up in the hands of U.S. Ferrari distributor Luigi Chinetti, which is how it came to the States. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the featured prominence of this car at the show proves that Italy claims all of its children, but we’re told that they’ve refused ever to take this one back.

With a similar car selling that same day at the Bonham’s auction for $836,000, this early black Countach, owned by John Kolka of Los Altos, California, proves that a gift from a Saudi princess can indeed be enriching. Kolka explains: This particular Countach was purchased new in Milan by the Saudi royal family, which air-freighted it to San Francisco to be the personal car of one of the princesses. It was painted her favorite color, purple, to match an identically hued Rolls-Royce in the royal garage. “Think ‘Plum Crazy’ purple, like a Challenger,” says Kolka. Back in the early 1980s, Kolka was doing some construction work for the Saudi royals when they offered him the car as a gift. “Well, there was some money exchanged,” he says, but it probably rounds to zero in light of what these cars are worth today. Kolka did a restoration that took him “six or seven years” and repainted the car to its current, more sinister color. Just 158 of these early Countach models were produced, making them extremely rare and highly valuable. A replacement for and development of the Miura, the first Countach featured a 3929-cc V-12 turned longitudinally but facing backwards, with the gearbox between the seats and a propshaft running through the sump to the differential, mounted on the front of the engine. The body was designed at Bertone by the Miura’s author, Marcello Gandini. Originally, the rearview mirror was going to be a prismatic periscope in the roof, but the idea was eventually scrapped. Still, these early Countaches are called “periscopo” cars.

One of the rarest cars in a show full of rare cars was this Ghia-bodied Fiat coupe. In the early 1960s, Fiat attempted to build a touring coupe that would be much larger and more luxurious and expensive than the small Cinquecentos for which it was known. Fiat tuner Carlo Abarth took a Fiat 2200-cc six-cylinder and bored and stroked it to 2300, then placed it in the body designed by Ghia. Just 50 of the original Abarth-built 2300 S models were produced (11 of which are known to have survived) before the project was turned over to Fiat, which made 2500 regular production cars. Owner Chuck Maranto of Indianapolis bought the car from the family of the original owner in Rome. Parts? “Impossible,” he says.

In the early 1960s, it seems, you could start a car company with not much more than a warehouse and a boundless supply of optimism. Apollo began that way, using an all-steel body built in Turin by Intermeccanica and an aluminum-block Buick 215 V-8. The cars were sold out of a Buick dealership in Oakland, California, for around $6000. This particular Apollo is number two of the first batch of 35 made before International Motor Cars ran short of funds and stopped production. Owner Bud Bourassa of Scottsdale, Arizona, bought this rare automatic—just two were thought to have been made—from the family of the original owner, who drove it every day until she was 82. “There wasn’t a corner on it that she didn’t hit,” says Bourassa, who put the car through a complete restoration. “It basically drives like a ’56 or ’57 Corvette,” he says, although he admits that almost nobody knows what it is.

• Official Photos and Info: 2013 Fiat 500 Cattiva
• Archived Road Test: Lamborghini Countach 5000S
• Instrumented Test: 2013 Fiat 500C Abarth

The small motorcycle, bubble-car, and sports-car maker Iso Rivolta put this four-seat grand touring coupe into production in 1969 with a Chevrolet 327 V-8, eventually switching to a Ford 351 V-8 before production ended in 1974 with just 285 cars built. The styling was based more than a little on the early prototypes of the contemporary Lamborghini Espada four-seater, with both cars having been penned by Bertone chief designer Marcello Gandini. Underneath was a ZF five-speed gearbox and Jaguar XKE rear differential and suspension. Owner Steve Childs of Placerville, California, knew nothing about the car until his neighbor put it up for sale. “I’m a Porsche guy. I’ve got 16 Porsches. When I brought it home, my wife said, ‘What did you do?’ ” The best part of the Lele, which was named for Rezo Rivolta’s then girlfriend, is that “I can buy parts for it at NAPA,” says Childs.

Owner Bill Scott said his wife wouldn’t let him buy a Lamborghini car, so he sought out another type of Lamborghini, a “classic vineyard tractor.” Agricultural equipment was Ferruccio Lamborghini’s original path to financial success following World War II, and the 8000-pound R485 represents Ferruccio’s tractor company fully flowered, with its own 5.0-liter four-cylinder, 85-hp diesel engine and 12-speed gearbox castings featuring Lamborghini’s famous script logo. “Ferruccio was not bashful about his name, he put it on everything,” says Scott, who found his tractor rusting in the back of a wrecking yard in central California.

Source: CarAndDriver