13 replies to this topic

[Martin Dewey]

Does anyone know the background of the Italian Jolly Club team, that was active in rallying from the 50s to the 90s?  There is a Wiki page, with a link to an Italian-language history (I don't speak Italian!), but I'm keen to know how it was formed.  I understand that the team was structured in a unique way?

 

[Vitesse2]

Does this document from Jolly Club's own website help? Trilingual history - the English version is a bit fractured, but mostly understandable.

 

http://www.jollyclub...i/JollyClub.pdf

[Sterzo]

Found this thread, as I had exactly the same question as Martin Dewey. Thank you, Vitesse2, for providing useful information (as so often).

 

Does anyone know more than is revealed on the Jolly Club website? I was always intrigued by the way they cropped up in many different formulae, and wondered whether it was a club or the name of a company. Either way, why Jolly Club - an odd name for an Italian organisation. The website implies there's an assembly of companies; is it a profit making group or is it a co-operative of some kind? Usually we have a person or a small group of people getting together to start a business, but this looks like something quite different.

[Tim Murray]

Here’s an earlier thread:

Jolly Club

It didn’t really get us very far in understanding how the operation worked, other than concluding that there was almost certainly no connection to the Italian hotel chain with the same name, and providing a link to another potted history of the team:

http://www.lanciaral...e-jollypage.htm

[Sterzo]

Ah, apparently set up by eighteen people if I've understood that link... curioser and curioser.

[F1matt]

Dario Cerrato’s Totip Delta S4 was one of the angriest cars I have seen, Lancia must have had faith in Jolly Club to let them run a works spec car in 1986......

[Thundersports]

You ask? 

[2F-001]

I may be mixing things up in my mind (a common occurence.. and I haven’t yet followed those links cited above...) but didn’t Finotto and Facetti sometimes run their fairly wild Group 5 machinery under the Jolly Club banner? If so, someone involved was not shy of complex and potentially-tricky machinery.

Green livery?

[jcbc3]

I only remember the Totip livery on the integrales.

[Dick Dastardly]

Oliver Speight [see his book "Speight of the Heart"] was asked to set up and run Jolly Club UK for rallying in the late 60s, in return for supplying 3 F3 Chevrons to their Italian team. 

[GazChed]

With Easter upon us my memory goes back to the Easter Monday Formula Two International races at Thruxton where Carlo Giorgio ran a March 742 most years from 1974 to 1979 under the Scuderia Jolly Club banner ( sometimes Scuderia Jolly Club Milano ) .

[Myhinpaa]

Dario Cerrato did many rallies during '86 in the Jolly Club run Delta S4, only in Italy and hence only the San Remo in WRC.

He came second in that tarnished event with Lancia's carefully planned protest and staged results.... Poor Markku!

 

Dario Cerrato appears many times during this footage : https://youtu.be/JD2uuvQjqLQ?t=142

[BRG]

Like others, I have sometimes wondered about the Jolly Club.  Reading the material linked above, I am little wiser!   I can only conclude it is some very Italy-specific entity that does not equate to anything in the Anglo-Saxon world.  It seems to be a lot more substantial than, say, Ecurie Ecosse,  yet it doesn't seem to be a substantive body like Prodrive or Joest Racing.   The pdf file that Vitesse2 posted mentions F1 as well as providing engines for series from F. Junior up to F1.   Anyone know anything about that?

 

Re the name, there was an odd little fun car called a Fiat Jolly - an open top sort of beach car, sometimes with a stripey awning.  Maybe the word 'Jolly' has that sort of connotation in Italian.  It is just as well that, back in 1957, they didn't decide to call the Gay Club.

[PayasYouRace]

I’m curious as to why they ran AGS’ initial entry into F1 in late 1986. As far as I know it was their only F1 involvement and AGS went on to run the cars themselves for 1987.