FERRARI 750 MONZA
This Ferrari 750 Monza Spider was raced by American legends Carroll Shelby and Phil Hill. Even Chaparral genius Jim Hall owned and campaigned it. Now it’s ready to race again
Raced in its heyday by Carroll Shelby, Phil Hill and Jim Hall – now starring in Octane
WWhile the cognoscenti dribble over GTOs and Testa Rossas, it seems that one of the prettiest, most glorious and most honoured of all Ferraris is destined to languish in their shadows. One has to wonder how such a fate has befallen majestic cars that clearly deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as those titans, yet never are. Seriously, how could you not go weak-kneed at the thought of a Ferrari 750 Monza?
Of course, it’s well-known that Ferrari fans have always struggled when the Maranello marque strays from its V12 heartland (they still do), but that is no reason for the spectacular four-cylinder sports racers that burst onto the scene in the 1950s to be quite so under-appreciated. Aurelio Lampredi’s engine may not have the resonance, power or noise of the Colombo V12, but it deserves to be similarly revered. From the 625 TF to the 500 TRC, these svelte sports racers were a sensation adored by A-list racers and aesthetes alike. Of them all, and we are including the original Mondial in that, the 750 Monza Spider is the pinnacle of the fourcylinder Ferraris. And the 750 Monza Spider you see here is the zenith of the model.
First, though, some history. The 750 first appeared as a prototype in 1954, the model acquiring its Monza moniker after a maiden victory by Mike Hawthorn and Umberto Maglioli in its first race at the eponymous circuit. Achingly gorgeous, the body was built by Scaglietti from an original design penned by Enzo’s son Dino. It featured a three-litre version of Lampredi’s inline four-cylinder engine with twin gear-driven overhead camshafts, notable for its cylinder liners screwed into the cylinder head. In this form it developed 245bhp at 6000rpm, an output channelled to the road via a four-speed transaxle.
The new car weighed a flyweight 750kg thanks to a tubular steel frame, made by Gilco, and aluminium skin panels. It was also nimble, with coil-and-wishbone front suspension, a de Dion rear axle with a transverse leaf spring, and four massive Alfin hydraulic drum brakes. Along with glory, however, tragedy also became associated with the 750 Monza when Alberto Ascari was killed in one during a test session in 1955 – which took place, with cruel irony, at Monza.
As for the 1955 Ferrari 750 Monza featured here, chassis 0510M, it has a remarkable history. Most such race cars were run hard and worn out. Crashes, engine swaps and abrupt retirements were fates that the majority of ’50s race cars had to endure. Not this car, though. Not by a long shot.
Chassis 0510M was sold new to Allen Guiberson, a Dallas businessman in the oil industry. He had owned other Ferraris before this, including a 375 MM raced at the Carrera Panamericana
in Mexico by Phil Hill and Richie Ginther. This 750 was purchased from Ferrari importer Luigi Chinetti and was the latest ‘tool’ to contest races in the US. Its first race was the 1955 Sebring 12 Hours, for which Guiberson once again secured the services of Phil Hill and paired him with an up-and-coming young driver named Carroll Shelby, also from Dallas.
Things were primitive back then; Shelby drove a pick-up truck with a trailer from Dallas to New York to collect the Monza and deliver it to Sebring, Florida, for the race. These two soon-to-be legends took the chequered flag but, on recount, they were relegated to second place behind Briggs Cunningham’s D-type Jaguar raced by Mike Hawthorn and Phil Walters.
Carroll Shelby drove this race with his arm in a plaster cast. In Sports Illustrated, 25 March 1957, he explained why: ‘Remember the Pan-American road race in 1954? I was driving a little AustinHealey on the second day, lying third overall to [Umberto] Maglioli and [Phil] Hill. I guess I got smart-alecky. I started driving too fast, trying to catch up with the leaders, and flipped on a curve. It was just a lucky thing that I happened to go off at a place where there was a wall along the road, because the mountain went straight down. The wall stopped the car.
‘I shattered my right elbow in the wreck. It didn’t hurt too much at the time; I guess I was in shock. But I had to lie there beside the road for six hours until all the cars went by. After all that I got the dang’dest ride of my life in a Mexican ambulance, going down to the hospital at Pueblo.’
So, what was the outcome? Did the arm eventually mend itself ? ‘I drove my next four races with my arm in a cast. One of them was Sebring in 1955 in Allen Guiberson’s Ferrari. They told Phil and me we had won, then changed their minds right away and gave the race to the D-type. My regular doctor had put a plaster of Paris cast on my arm. W hen I’d drive, I’d have another doctor cut off that cast and put on a lighter one. I’d put my hand on the steering wheel, and then he’d slap on a quick-drying cast made of something like fibreglass. I paid for it, though. They had to take a bone out of my leg to rebuild my elbow. That’s why my golf isn’t so good now.’
Chassis 0510M’s next race was in Pebble Beach, California. Hill trailered the car to Southern California to his friend Bob Sorrell for a quick repaint, to freshen it after 12 hours of sandblasting at Sebring. Sorrell and Hill then trucked the car to Pebble Beach, rolled it off the trailer and won the Del Monte Trophy in the wet. The livery that the Ferrari is painted in today, white and blue with the number 2D, is the one it wore for that victory. Within two months of 0510M’s arrival on American soil, two drivers had hauled it over 5600 miles, almost circumnavigating the US, and the Ferrari had taken two wins – even if one was very short-lived.
That would not be the end of its travels that year. After the race, Guiberson gave Hill and Richie Ginther the task of barnstorming the Monza through the European summer racing season. They set sail from New Orleans on the USAT Frederick Lykes with 0510M in the hold. Unloaded in Genoa, it was sent by train to the Ferrari factory in Modena for refreshing. This done, Hill and Ginther did shakedown runs at the Aerautodromo di Modena, but fate then intervened. The tragic accident at Le Mans in June 1955 in effect ended any real racing in Europe that summer, and the Ferrari found itself returned to Dallas.
In October that year, Guiberson sold the 750 Monza to Jim Hall (later of Chaparral racing car fame) and his brother Dick. They were the financial backers of the Carroll Shelby Sports Cars business in Dallas, so naturally they selected Shelby to drive their new car in 1956’s Del Monte Trophy race at Pebble Beach. He won, the second straight victory at this race for 0510M.
After the race, Shelby trailered the Ferrari back to Dallas, stopping along the way at an SCCA race in Dodge City, Kansas. There he won again, the second victory in a week. The Monza had undergone yet another 2000-mile trip, chauffeured by a racing legend, but it was proving well worth the effort.
Jim Hall, just 19 years old when he purchased the car, drove 0510M as well. ‘I remember driving it for the first time and was amazed by it,’ he reported. ‘It had lots of torque and you had to shift through the gears quickly, and it had lots of go. The brakes were fantastic, even though they were drums. I thought it was a fabulous race car.’
Jim Hall belongs with the most important figures in motorsport history. After racing two original Chaparrals built by Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes, he began building his own cars with Hap Sharp and, with permission, took the Chaparral name. He went on to be a pioneer in wing technology on race cars, including movable aerodynamic devices and ground effects along with many other innovations such as a semi-automatic gearbox. His 1960s race cars, whether CanAm machines or endurance racers, were frequently successful and always fascinating.
His Ferrari Monza exploits came long before that. After Hall had won several regional races in the US Southwest, he and Shelby decided they would like to contest the 1957 Sebring 12 Hours. For this, the Ferrari would require significant upgrading to the new
FIA Index C specification for that year. The Halls sent 0510M back to Maranello for a second time in two years to carry out the work, which included adding a full-width windscreen, a second door on the left side, and a mandated top. Scaglietti painted the bodywork red, and the engine was overhauled at the same time.
As it turned out, the work was completed too late for the Sebring race, but Jim Hall did get to race his Monza several times towards the end of 1957 and beyond. It was after his win in Mansfield, Louisiana, in March 1958 that fortune smiled upon 0510M. Hall offered the car for sale at $7500 but a deal never materialised, so it was placed into storage at the Chaparral facility in Texas.
In the mid-1990s, Troy Rogers, Jim Hall’s former chief mechanic at Chaparral, gave the Monza a cosmetic restoration and returned it to the white-and-blue colour scheme prior to display in a special Carroll Shelby exhibit at the 1997 Monterey Historic Automobile Races. Eight years later it returned to Monterey – Pebble Beach this time – for another special Phil Hill exhibit.
In 2016, Patrick and Carolyn Ottis bought 0510M from Jim Hall via the RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction. Anyone in the US who has owned an Enzo-era Ferrari will surely have heard of Patrick Ottis and his company in Berkeley, California, one of the preeminent Ferrari engine and mechanical restoration shops in North America. At the start of his career, Patrick apprenticed with Alf Francis, Stirling Moss’s mechanic in the 1950s and the chief mechanic at Rob Walker Racing. Beyond his restoration work, Patrick is an expert Ferrari concours judge. Patrick’s son Tazio, a successful racer with four Formula Mazda championships to his name, joined the company in 2015. He raced in the US IMSA Prototype Challenge, too.
Many of the cars they work with live their lives in collections, seeing neither open road nor racetrack. As evangelical proponents of the doctrine that cars are meant to be driven and racing cars are meant to be raced, Patrick and Tazio wanted to buy and restore this pedigree Ferrari racer to demonstrate that they can restore and exercise such vehicles while showing total respect for them and their history. Patrick used to own a pre-war Alfa Romeo, which he drove on many rallies in North America and Europe, but it was still good enough to win its class at Pebble Beach. He has the same plan – maintaining, showing and vintage racing – for the 750 Monza.
‘It has always been our intention to run our car on the racetrack and share that experience,’ Patrick says. ‘Tazio has proven to be a talented driver, so we chose a car that would allow him to showcase that as well as what we do in our workshop. We want to let people know that it is OK to use your car.’
Patrick goes on to explain what needs to be done after acquiring such a significant machine. ‘The first step in any comprehensive restoration is to search for any and all existing period photographs. In this instance it was a little easier for us, in that our car’s history was for the most part contained in the US. There are some particularly good photos taken by Ozzie Lyons at Sebring in 1955,
‘Patrick and tazio ottis insist that cars are meant to be driven and racing cars are meant to be raced’
as well as some by Julian Graham at Pebble Beach in ’55 and ’56.’
While the process of researching any vehicle is vital to a proper restoration, Patrick emphasises the uniqueness of 0510M. ‘We chose to take it back to how it stood in Pebble Beach at the 1955 race. It was a terrific gift to be able to start with an unviolated, non-abused car with impeccable provenance and history. We needed to do some body repair but everything else was completely untouched. That is unbelievably rare for this type of car.’
Tazio Ottis, the racing driver of the family, also shared his thoughts on the 750. ‘Modern vintage races here in the States are primarily sprint events of 20 to 30 minutes,’ he says. ‘A 750 Monza is an ideal car for these events, as it has great torque and speed out of the corners, which gives it a competitive edge.’
He added: ‘When I sat in the car for the first time, a feeling of fear, anxiousness and excitement fell upon me. The unknown of what I was getting myself into had me very eager to learn what this type of car could do. If Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby and Jim Hall could manage it, I thought I might as well be the next American to give it a shot. When I got it on a track, to my surprise and enjoyment I found it one of the most balanced cars I have had the pleasure to drive. Although it lacks the downforce and big sticky tyres of a modern-day race car, it gives you immediate confidence and pleasure. It just wants to keep on going faster.’
Patrick frequently mentions his desire to be a good custodian of 0510M and to share it with the world, and so far he has been as good as his word. Its first post-restoration foray was a successful run at the 2019 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. A few hours after leaving the track it headed over to the lawn at Pebble Beach for the Concours d’Elegance where, still wearing its dirt and rubber from the race, it took first place in the Ferrari M-2 Competition Class.
This year it is travelling to Amelia Island and some race events in the US and Canada. You may even see this car blasting through the chicane, down the pit straight and into Madgwick corner at Goodwood. It would seem that this 750 Monza’s return to the spotlight is beckoning. Not before time. End