Etceterini on my Mind

I've been reading an old Fawcett book on the "new" European sports cars (Sports Car Album by John Freeman, 1953) that really delivers a feel for the era -- a time when neither Mercedes Benz nor Ferrari were household names in the US, and the Corvette was still just a show car. The book is loaded with photos, and the author visited all of the major factories and many smaller marques. It's well worth picking up if you like that sorta stuff.

The fifties is my favorite era for sports cars, and the early part of the decade probably produced my favorite designs over all. I'm a sucker for low slung slipstream-bodied cars with skinny tires and a driver sporting a necktie.

Like pretty much everyone else, I'm entranced by the Ferraris, Aston-Martins and C-Type Jags, but I'm really fascinated by the etceterini.

"Etceterini" is a term first coined by John De Boer*, an expert on exotic Italian cars, to describe the varied smallbore Italian racers built by a whole group of small artisan automakers in Italy: names like Nardi, Siata, Stanguellini, Giaur, Bandini, etc. 

While each was a separate company producing unique designs, these builders did have one significant commonality: they relied heavily on Fiat components in the construction of their cars. Fiat was the closest thing to Detroit in 1950s Italy, and not coincidentally, many of these small automakers were located in Torino, near the Fiat factory. 

Though etceterini shared much of their internal hardware, each marque also offered their own specialties. Many of these builders were also speed-equipment manufacturers, offering hop up gear for otherwise stock Fiats. Nardi's custom steering wheels eventually became so popular that he abandoned the car-building business entirely.

If most of these small racers used hopped-up Fiat motors, a few experimented with foreign equipment; BMW motorcycle engines found their way into some cars, and a surprising number of Crosley motors wound up in these tiny Italian thoroughbreds. Bandini took it a step further, offering radically modified twin-cam Crosley engines. Lucky for me, there are two owners of Crosley-powered Italian racers involved in the West Coast Crosley Club, so I've been seeing these amazing cars - a Siata and a Nardi - up close for a quarter century.  Given that it was stories of my Dad's Fiat 600 that got me interested in tiny cars in the first place, these cars really occupy a special spot for me.

John De Boer may have coined the term, but Cliff Reuter has been the person most closely-associated with etceterini for years now. His father raced a Bandini (and owned a stable of other exotic racing machinery), and Cliff got the bug early. His website is the definitive source on the subject unless you want to start spending big money on small-press books, many of which are in Italian. (If anyone wants to buy me a copy of the $3000 two volume Otto Vu for Christmas I promise I was a good boy this year.)

There are other sources for etceterini coverage; The Chicane has a whole section on them, and one specialty auto restoration shop in Florida has a great set of photos on their website. There's plenty more out there - especially if you search individual marques.

There is also a good amount of video footage, although a bit harder to find. The Chicane shared this one, featuring a race in Brindisi, Italy (where my Dad spent a couple of months, right about the time this footage was shot), which sorta blew my mind. So much cool iron blazing around those tight turns!

Then there's this guy. I've been following along on his youtube channel for months now as he builds his own etceterini from scratch! I do wish he had included narration in the videos, but it's been amazing to watch him realize his vision --  this is exactly the sort of project I'd love to do someday, but my skillset is nowhere near that level. 

I can't wait to see the project finished, and in the meantime I'll just keep looking at more old pictures and track footage.

It's easy for me to go down the wormhole on these cars - Italian auto designers were so far ahead of the rest of the world in the early fifties that many automakers outsourced their show cars to Italian ateliers. The same stylistic flourishes that appear on the etceterini also show up on Chrysler Ghias and other lead sled "dream cars" from Detroit.

I'll probably never own one of these rare birds, but I love thinking about them dicing it up with Hotshots and Super Sports back in the day, all with the same Crosley engines under the hoods....

*Or perhaps Stu Schaller - there seems to be some debate about who came up with the term first.