VINCENT FANTAUZZO A DAB HAND
O ne of Australia’s premier painters, Vincent Fantauzzo is just as skilled with a spanner in hand as a brush. Fantauzzo is one of the perennial fan favourites at the Archibald Prize, with well known portraits of Heath Ledger and Australian actor Asher Keddie, who is also his wife.
Fantauzzo and Keddie are ambassadors for Alfa Romeo — but there is some consternation about who drives which car.
“We don’t define whose Stelvio is whose because one is a QV and the other one is a Ti. They are both amazing but obviously we both want to be in the QV. So let’s just call that one mine,” Fantauzzo says.
The artist who lends his name to the latest Art Series hotel in Brisbane always had a passion for cars.
“As a kid I was obsessed with cars; remote control cars, building billy carts, I dreamt of having a go kart but never really got one until I was an adult. I just did whatever I could to get behind the wheel,” he says.
A self-taught mechanic, Fantauzzo really loves getting his hands dirty and working on cars himself. It didn’t always come easy.
“With my dyslexia I forget things very quickly,” he says. “So if I was to change the gearbox I’d have to put it back in the same day, otherwise I’d have to call a mate who is a mechanic to come help me out.”
He quickly learnt that fitting in new parts isn’t too easy: “I didn’t realise when you put different parts in you need different engine mounts and everything. So I had a few disasters and learned along the way.”
He reckons the hands-on approach made owning a car so much more rewarding and memorable — especially when the car you’ve worked on is your first.
“The first car I bought — I wish to this day that I had it still — was a 1971-72 Valiant Pacer. I worked on the car a lot. I didn’t understand that keeping them original was the way to go, so I put in a bigger motor and a new gearbox.
“I eventually crashed it in the wet and couldn’t afford to repair it so I just got it towed away. I didn’t realise what I had. Now I think they are about $80,000.”
Tinkering started much earlier. Fantauzzo recalls his mum’s old Toyota Celica, which required him to hit the starter motor with a hammer just to get it turning over.
Failing to conceal his mirth, he says that as an ambassador he is under strict orders not to remap the Stelvio. But he reckons the car is a beast and wouldn’t need any modifications.
When he was younger he dreamt of owning the world’s fastest supercars. No longer — he wants something more family inclusive. “Having kids, a fast car … doesn’t do it for me any more,” he says.
“Finding a classic rally car and rebuilding it with the kids and racing it with them, I think that would be the dream car.”
As well as rallying in his younger years, he has owned 20 to 30 cars, including a Datsun 1600, Toyota Celica and Mazdas — RX-7 and RX-3. He wishes he had kept every single one of them.