A Ferrari 166 Under the Knife

Ferraris seem to be all the rage lately, what with the recent film generating headlines. I haven’t seen it yet and probably won’t for some time, as movies about cars and racing have almost always been a vast disappointment. What a letdown “Rush” was, after all the hype. The racing scenes were just as bad as in “Driven” (well, maybe not that bad)!

But recently there are tons of images of early Ferraris floating around and talk of the Mille Miglia is all over the place, so lets talk Ferraris! I have a bit of Ferrari imagery in my database, despite not working on them all that much. I did quite a lot of work on a 250 LM restoration, and I’ve done bits and bobs here and there on various Colombo V-12 cars. Then there was the ’69 312 F1 car that I looked after one year at the Historics.

In 2009 I did a small amount of work on an early 166 project, which was a major undertaking with several players besides Phil Reilly & Co. Actually, after investigating a bit I found that we had very little to do with it. The motor was done at Patrick Ottis’ shop and the major chassis and body work was done by Curtis Patience in Oregon. I recall looking at the suspension pieces as it first arrived, and it was just awful, hacked together. After vast amounts of work by many hands, the final assembly and sorting apparently happened adjacent to me, but I can’t for the life of me recall any of it. According to the RM auctions sales blurb,

Ultimately, Chiodo was sent to Ivan Zaremba and the inestimable team at Phil Reilly & Co. of San Rafael, California for final sorting, fettling and testing. This is one of the most critical stages in any ambitious restoration, but “Fortunately”, as Ivan says, “I’ve done this before”. This final phase was completed in January, 2012.

A classic Zarembolism! Searching for images, I found a video of myself and Ivan starting the 250 LM for the first time late at night in December of 2012, which reminded me how consumed I was that year with that car and its process… another story for another day.

Here’s a few images from the 166 basket case upon first arrival in 2009 and of bits and pieces during the process until 2012. I don’t have any pictures of the completed car! It went to the RM auction in Monaco in 2012 and was sold for a little more than one million Euros. The excellent description at the RM website covers the entire history of this very special Ferrari. (Click any image for a gallery with captions.)