Re: The wheels of (requisite content) former Alfa-person Enzo F.

[George Graves <gmgraves@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Actually, I wasn't thinking about the several late 40's Ferraris which 
came with disc wheels when I wrote that, but I do know of them and do 
not find the wheels either attractive nor do they aesthetically "fit" 
the cars upon which they were mounted. I did, however stop with the mid 
'60's on purpose. While a '63 Lusso would look ludicrous with alloy 
wheels, it's successor, the 275 GTB was available with both Borrani 
wires and the star-patterned Compognellos, and looked fine with both. 
Most Ferrari designs through the middle Seventies were that way. 
Available with either and looking good with both. I have seen 206/246 
Dinos with wires and thought they looked good, Likewise I've seen 
Daytonas with both and thought they both looked great too. But with the 
308GT4 and newer cars, wire wheels just no longer looked 'right.'

While somewhat off the subject, when I was  in college, I knew an 
East-Coast dentist and "gentleman racer" named Dr. Richard Thompson. He 
was a friend of Arkas-Duntov, and Briggs Cunningham, and even drove a 
Corvette in Chevy/Cunningham's ill-fated 1960 assault on Le Mans. 
Anyway, Thompson showed up at VIR one fall (I believe it was 1966) with 
a brand new Ford GT40. This car was a deep cobalt blue and sported - 
you guessed it - Borrani wire wheels. These wheels were NOT chrome or 
nickel or any other bright finish (except for the three-eared 
knock-off) but were factory-painted a very highly lustrous gray color 
(NOT silver -in my opinion the tackiest thing that anybody can do to a 
set of wire wheels) ! Believe it or not even a GT40 looked good in wire 
wheels.

Also. You are too modest. Contrary to what you wrote, you seem to know 
a great deal about Ferraris.


George Graves
'86 GTV-6 3.0S

On Thursday, May 22, 2003, at 08:41 PM, alfa-digest wrote:


> Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 23:43:15 -0400
> From: "John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>
> Subject: The wheels of (requisite content) former Alfa-person Enzo F.
>
> George Graves, responding to a Michael Smith provocation, writes 
> "Maybe, but
> there are some cars that I simply cannot imagine without them. Can you 
> see any
> 50's or early 60's V-12 Ferrari without wires?"
>
> Have to admire the precision of the chosen dates, neatly slicing off 
> 1949 and
> 1965. I know little about Ferraris, but among the 166 Ferraris several 
> of the
> early road cars apparently had steel discs with riveted alloy rims; 
> Count
> Marzotto (the father of the four brothers who were so prominent in 
> early
> Ferrari racing history) had a few, including one of a couple of 
> Touring-bodied
> 166s he had which took the Coppa d'Oro di Villa d'Este (i.e. first 
> prize at
> Italy's most prestigious concours) in September 1949, and there was 
> also a
> steel-disc wheeled similarly early Michelotti-designed Stabilimenti 
> Farina
> bodied Ferrari 166 which, except for an awkward grill, could have been
> mistaken for one of the Pininfarina Cisitalia 202s. (The Cisitalia 202 
> had
> wires, and are usually shown with exposed wires today, but early 
> photos often
> show rather ornate wheelcovers completely concealing the wires.) At 
> the other
> end of George's time-frame Batista (Pinin) Farina's personal 1965 
> Ferrari 275
> GT wore alloys which were a conservative precursor of the Alfa 
> Turbinas -
> shallower ribs a bit more widely spaced, but with the same basic 
> architecture
> of an alternation of rectangular apertures between the outer ends of 
> alternate
> pairs of ribs- very handsome, and certainly reflecting Farina's tastes 
> and
> imagination. The 1966-67 GTB4 seems to have worn very understated 
> alloys which
> were twins of the archetypal Alfa plain dish and sequence of round 
> holes,
> which were then followed by the first of the ubiquitous five-spokers, 
> and from
> there on it was Katie-bar-the-door, alloys galore as fashion 
> expressions,
> which one could argue the wires on Ferrari (and other) road cars had 
> been.
> Nothing wrong with that, of course.
>
> Enjoy yours,
>
> John H.
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