Ex-GP of Gibralter Fanfini/Fandango race car...BARN FIND!

A friend in my local Jeep club has been following TPC's tepid success building the Cherokee and efforts at TH and mentioned to me the other day that his parents have "some old Italian car" in their garage that his mom brought back from her year abroad in college; supposedly it was some kind of a race car.  As a rabid car geek, this set off immediate barn find alarm bells.  I had to tell myself to calm down and not get carried away, and that it was probably some rusted out '76 Fiat Spider or something.

None the less, I arranged to go take a look at it last week.  It was a clear, crisp morning, the white paper cup full of black Starbucks coffee barely overcoming the cold seeping into my fingers.  We chatted with my buddy's folks for a bit and they expressed their desire for the car to go somewhere where it would be appreciated; both doctors, they had little interest in what the non-running car might be worth and were impressed at the modest sum of money TPC had raised for Seattle Children's Hospital at TH.

With little more ado, they punched the button on the garage remote and we watched as the door retracted, coyly hiding a full glimpse of what was behind for a few agonizing moments.  What I saw was a typical garage for the Northwest; kayaks, skis, mountain bikes, 13 recycling bins, tents, snow shoes, a dozen Thule racks.  What I almost missed was a patch of red paint under a pile of boxes that doubtlessly held baby clothes and forgotten soccer trophies from their now adult children. 

The red swatch might as well have been a bull fighter's cape; I was locked on target.  While the mother explained about her time studying abroad in Italy, I moved towards the red paint, almost without noticing.  Again not completely aware of my actions, I found myself ignoring the stoies of speedboats on Lake Como from the 50's and instead increasingly frantically rearranging cardboard boxes.

Gradually, a clear picture emerged.  I was now totally entranced, as I drank in the smooth lines of a car designed when aerodynamics wasn't determined by a computer, but what looked right to an aesthetic eye.  I'd seen some pictures (I think in Drunken Duncan's book) of the storied Fanfini Gibralter GP car, driven by the passionate, fiery Italian driver Fandango; now it was sitting before me.  Much like a not so gracefully aging one-legged Parisian Lady of the Night, the car had seen better days, but the underlying allure stille shone through as bright as the hookers' make up or the Fanfini's paint.

Aw screw it, I'm out of played out, painfully cliche metaphors.  And yes, it is just a rusted out '76 Fiat Spider that hasn't run in a decade that my friends' parents want out of their way so they can fit a few more cases of Walla Walla wine.  I am really diggin' the Ustinov theme though. 

To Lemons, or not to Lemons...we'll see.

-Matt