Iso and Bizzarrini

Saturday, 03 September 2011 09:00

Renzo Rivolta bought Isothermos, a manufacturer of refrigerators, in 1942.

Renzo Rivolta realized that Italy needed inexpensive transportation after WWII so he went into the scooter manufacturing business and renamed the company Iso Autoveicoli. He moved up to motorcycles and eventually to high performance Grand Touring cars.

But before the GT cars Iso designed and built the Isetta, the “bubble car”. Iso had a difficult time selling this little car in Italy maybe because it did not fit the aesthetics of Italians.

Starting in 1954, the Isetta design was licensed to automobile manufacturers around the world and the most successful was the BMW Isetta. The Isetta was a financial success for BMW and the royalties paid to Iso allowed Renzo Rivolta to move on to developing GT cars and the income from the Isetta was very important for BMW.

Iso Rivolta GT

In 1962 Iso Rivolta made their first GT car - and what a car it was, and still is - the Iso Rivolta GT. With chassis design by Giotto Bizzarrini and styling by Giorgetto Giugiaro of Bertone, Iso made a comfortable four seater that handled like a sports car. It is powered by a Chevrolet Corvette 327 cid engine that puts out either 300 hp or 365 hp. The transmission is a manual Borg Warner 4-speed, the differential is a Salisbury and there are disk brakes on all four wheels with the rear being in-board, like a Bizzarrini GT 5300.

The motoring press loved this car and what's not to love? Italian styling and American power - a great combination. There were 799 Iso Rivolta GTs produced between 1963 and 1970.

Renzo Rivolta hired Giotto Bizzarrini as a consultant for the Iso Gordon GT project that later became the Iso Rivolta GT. Giorgetto Giugiaro designed the Gordon-Keeble GT, a British car, in 1960 and was also responsible for the Rivolta GT styling. Bizzarrini tested the Gordon-Keeble and was very pleased with the powerful V8 Chevrolet Corvette engine and the rear De Dion tube.

Bizzarrini has said that he liked the Corvette engine better than Ferrari engines. Clearly the Gordon-Keeble GK1 influenced the design of the Iso Rivolta GT.

Iso Grifo

Giotto Bizzarrini was focused on a racecar called the Iso Grifo A3/C at the time that other Iso engineers were working on the Iso Grifo A3/L.

This sounds confusing but the Iso Grifo A3/L became what we know as the Iso Grifo and the Iso Grifo A3/C became what we know as the Bizzarrini GT 5300. The two cars have completely different body designs, both styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro of Bertone.

Read more about the Iso Grifo here. Piero Rivolta took over management of Iso in 1966 when his father, Renzo Rivolta, died.

Iso Rivolta Fidia

The Fidia was initially called the Iso Rivolta S4 when introduced in 1969 but the name was soon changed to Iso Rivolta Fidia. "The World's Four Fastest Seats" was the Iso marketing slogan.

John Lennon liked the Fidia very much. The second Fidia made, and the first with right hand drive, was purchased by John Lennon. It is believed that Apple Corp (the Beatles record company) also owned two Fidias.

The Fidia body style is by Giorgetto Giugiaro when he was with Ghia. The engine is the Corvette 327 cid V8 producing 300 hp with either an automatic or manual transmission. A total of 192 Fidias and S4s were built between 1969 and 1973.

Iso Lele

The Lele is a 2+2 configuration that filled the gap between the two seater Grifo and the four door Fidia. The Lele continued to use the Corvette 327 cid V8 with either a manual or automatic transmission. Giugiaro of Bertone styled the Lele. The car is named after Lele Rivolta, wife of Piero Rivolta.

In 1972 the Chevrolet engine was replaced with the Ford Cleveland V8. There were a total of 285 Leles made between 1969 and 1974.

Iso went out of business in 1974 for various reasons including problems caused by the oil crisis.

Bizzarrini

Bizzarrini S.p.A. was founded by Giotto Bizzarrini after he split with Iso. The company produced a small number of high performance GT sports cars and racing cars.

Bizzarrini worked at Alfa Romeo and then Ferrari as a developer, designer, test driver, and chief engineer for five years. His work there included the Ferrari 250 TR, the Ferrari 250 GT SWB (Short Wheelbase Berlinetta), and the famous 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO.

Bizzarrini was fired by Enzo Ferrari, along with several others, during the infamous "palace revolt" of 1961. He briefly became part of Automobili Turismo e Sport (ATS), a company started by the ex-Ferrari engineers.

Bizzarrini's engineering company, Societa Autostar, was hired to design a V12 engine for a new GT car to be built by Ferruccio Lamborghini. This engine was used for the Lamborghini GT350, Lamborghini’s first car, and many other models of Lamborghini cars including the great Miura.

Bizzarrini GT 5300

In 1966 Bizzarrini S.p.A. released a beautiful street legal Grifo A3/C badged as the Bizzarrini GT 5300 Strada (or Bizzarrini GT America, depending on the market).

A race version of the Bizzarrini GT 5300 won its class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1965 and finished ninth overall.

Most of the GT 5300 Stradas had an aluminum body and most of the GT Americas had a fiberglass body. The mechanicals were basically unchanged from the A3/C except that a single Holly carburetor was available as an option in place of the four Weber carburetors that were standard on the A3/C.

There were a total of approximately 115 made combining the A3/C and GT 5300 versions. These are very rare and desirable collector cars today. No one knows how many GT 5300s are still in existence because the Bizzarrini factory records have not survived.

Bizzarrini made a few other cars but the GT 5300 was the highlight of the Bizzarrini marque. Bizzarrini S.p.A went out of business in 1969.

I wonder what Bizzarrini could have become if the company would have had more money and better management? By Michael Gulett

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