16 replies to this topic

[goGoGene]

I keep hearing about NART, like NART Ferrari 512S, but what is/was NART?

ggg

[byrkus]

North American Racing Team, IIRC.

[ray b]

North A merican Race Team was run by ferrari importer in New York Lou Chittie {sp]
at one point NART entered ferrari's F-1 cars in GP's painted blue and white

[scheivlak]

Originally posted by ray b
North A merican Race Team was run by ferrari importer in New York Lou Chittie {sp]

Also known as Luigi Chinetti, see some other threads: http://www.atlasf1.c...hlight=Chinetti
and http://www.atlasf1.c...hlight=Chinetti
and http://www.atlasf1.c...hlight=Chinetti

Very succesful sportscar entrant (Ferrari), including the legendary Le Mans win of 1965 (Rindt/Gregory). BTW Chinetti won Le Mans himself in 1949 - both Overall and the Index of Performance! One of the earliest big wins for the manufacturer.
Still awaiting a good biography?

[stevew]

Originally posted by ray b
North A merican Race Team was run by ferrari importer in New York Lou Chittie {sp]
at one point NART entered ferrari's F-1 cars in GP's painted blue and white

If I remember, Ferrari did this when he was having some kind of disagreement with the FIA.

[scheivlak]

BTW in 1957 there was not only a NART entered Ferrari, but -according to Stefan Ornerdal's site, also a provisional entry ("DNA") of 2 Ford Thunderbirds (8.0 litre) for Le Mans by "Luigi Chinetti sr."!
Anybody knows what's the story behind that?

[maxim]

Originally posted by stevew


If I remember, Ferrari did this when he was having some kind of disagreement with the FIA.

The disagreement was with the Italian authority, who didn't homologate as a "road-car" the 250GT model.
In protest, Ferrari entered the team for the '64 Mexican GP, painting his cars with the NART livery white&blue instead of the national red.

[Stefan Ornerdal]

Yes, please, I want to know!
Here is my big mistake - when I started collecting information on Le Mans, many years ago, I did not make a register of sources. Oh, how I regret this! I do not know where I found the info on the T-birds! This is what makes the difference between the real historians and amateurs like me.
Everybody, follow the advice of Hans Etzrodt and keep records of your sources!



Stefan

[scheivlak]

Originally posted by Stefan Ornerdal
Yes, please, I want to know!
Here is my big mistake - when I started collecting information on Le Mans, many years ago, I did not make a register of sources. Oh, how I regret this! I do not know where I found the info on the T-birds! This is what makes the difference between the real historians and amateurs like me.
Everybody, follow the advice of Hans Etzrodt and keep records of your sources!



Stefan

Still you've done a very nice job, both on LM and the Targa! It's still fascinating to see an entry like "Rolls/Bentley Corniche 1939" on your site - the no.6 Le Mans finisher of 1949, or wonder about the story behind the Delettrez Diesel entry of 1951.....

More on topic: Chinetti's 1949 Ferrari win was his third in Le Mans. He was already a winner in 1932 and 1934, and 2nd in 1933. His last entry as a driver was in 1952!
As a, more or less semi-works, entrant he brought a lot of interesting people to Le Mans, from the Rodriguez brothers to Dan Gurney and even 'Fireball' Roberts....

[Mike Argetsinger]

Originally posted by maxim


The disagreement was with the Italian authority, who didn't homologate as a "road-car" the 250GT model.
In protest, Ferrari entered the team for the '64 Mexican GP, painting his cars with the NART livery white&blue instead of the national red.

That is correct - I would only add that they appeared in this livery at both Watkins Glen for the USGP and Mexico.

[cabianca]

Some comments. Chinetti not only won Le Mans in 1949 for Ferrari, but also won Le Mans in 1932 and 1934 for Alfa. He gave Nuvolari such a battle in 1933, when he finished second to Nuvo at LM that his sponsor paid him the agree-upon winning bonus.

When sports car racing really got going in America after WWII, it was strictly amateur. No prize money, no starting money, no motor trade money. That didn't interest Chinetti at all and he rarely entered cars. Chinetti's business was never exactly well-financed and there were a number of willing and unwilling "silent partners" over the years. In 56 or 57, two of these, Jan de Vroom and George Arents joined with Chinetti to form NART (North American Racing Team). The object of the exercize was to have a team that entered the big international events and sometimes smaller club races in America. The team had most of its successes overseas because by that time Ferrari was not really making cars suitable for winning overall in American sprint races. NART did win its class in the big American enduros like Sebring and Daytona however.

The 1964 appearance of Ferrari's F1 cars at Watkins Glen and Mexico in NART colors was due to one of Ferrari's operatic farces where he turned in his license with the Italian Automobile Club because he didn't feel they gave him enough support in his battle to try to get the 250 LM homologated as a GT car. Since the 250 LM, which Ferrari tried to pass off as an "evolution" of the GTO, had about as much to do with the GTO as a 707 resembles a Piper Cub, the FIA never fell for the ruse, even though they had let Ferrari slide on many other issues. All this happened near the end of the season, and since the Championship was at stake, Ferrari couldn't pull his usual no show to protest. Instead, he painted the cars blue and white and Chinetti cleaverly put NART stickers on their flanks. It must have worked, because John Surtees won the World Championship that year.

Another use of the NART name is on the ten 275GTB/4 Ferrari coupes that Chinetti had chopped in Modena to become "NART Spyders". It is interesting that these are now one of the most collectable of all Ferraris, especially considering that they were almost unsalable when new.

I have never heard the T-Bird story. However, Chinetti was on exceptionally good terms with the Le Mans organizers and often smoothed the way for American entrants (can you say, cross my palm with silver with an Italian accent). If someone was crazy enough to want to enter T-Birds at Le Mans, Chinetti would have been a good place to start to ask about how to get an entry.

[Ray Bell]

Ferrari had three homologation issues with the FIA in that era. First, it's reported, the counting of the GTOs was interrupted by the serving of lunch for the FIA officials, who sat and ate while Ferrari employees moved the cars that had already been counted to another warehouse so they could be counted again...

Be that correct or not, I believe there were doubts expressed about the GTO production numbers and though it might only have been, say, ten short of what was required, the FIA thereafter had to be on their guard with Enzo and the boys.

The 250LM went through two homologation crises... as mentioned by cabianca and also when Enzo decided it need to have the larger (3.3-litre) engine.

Entries of all cars were suddenly switched from '250LM' to '275LM' as Ferrari tried to convince the world that the cars were all built with that capacity or changed over to it. There was quite a bit of fuss about that, but I think it all took place in either late 1966 or during 1967. The purpose, of course, was to meet the GT40 head on in their class.

If you ever ask David McKay, he's sure to tell you his 'grand old lady' was a 275LM...

[cabianca]

Ray,
I believe all 250 LMs were 3.3 liters. David may call his car a 275 LM, but I don't believe there is any factory literature that refers to a 275 LM.

[Roger Clark]

I think GTO production was more than 10 short of requirements; 100 were required and only 34 were made, I believe. Ferrari presented the GTO as an evolution of other GT Ferraris stretching back to the Europa and got round the rules that way. Everybody did it at the time until Shelby played by the rules with the Cobra and Porsche did the same with the 904. That spoiled it for everyone.

As Cabianca says, claiming that the LM was an evolution of the GTO was taking things a liitle too far. I believe Ferrari's main problem was not that he had been caught cheating, which he plainly was, but that the Italian Federation had led him to believe that they could fix things with the CSI and then let him down.

I always thought that the original LM had a 3-litre engine, but I may be wrong.

[Milan Fistonic]

Marcel Massini's book on the Ferrari 250LM has an appendix detailing the sales brochure for the car.

Since only 32 Ferrari 250LMs were built and the factory cannot have realistically expected to have produced many more, it perhaps seems strange that a sales brochure should have been printed. Evidently, Ferrari thought it would help convince the FIA that the car was indeed a true volume production model and thus deserving prompt homologation as a true Gran Turismo machine.
The 250LM sales brochure issued by the factory was a simple four-page folder. In fact Ferrari produced three different versions [of the brochure] for the LM; 3.3-litre 'notchback' Berlinetta, 3.0-litre 'notchback' Berlinetta, 3.3-litre 'fastback' Berlinetta, the only difference being the drawing under the photograpgh on the second page. All cars, except the very first (and this was refitted later), were fitted with 275 engines and the term 275LM is often used although the factory insisted on staying with the original designation.

[Ray Bell]

Remember that McKay was angling for the Australian distributorship at the time (it being in the hands of W H Lowe, who had his own green 250LM and showed it at the Sydney Motor Show), and I think anyone who cares to look at his writings will find he refers to the car as a 275LM more or less constantly after a very short time from his purchase.

I'm also fairly sure it arrived with the three-litre engine and had a transplant later. First race was at Sandown Park in February, 1965.

[Milan Fistonic]

I quote from McKay's recent book Suderia Veloce.

It might be as well to explain here why the car was often referred to as an LM275. The first LM250, the Paris show car of 1963, was indeed a three litre (250ccs per cylinder) whereas all subsequent cars were fitted with 3.3-litre (275ccs per cylinder) engines. The factory persisted with the original 250 tag in all correspondence but the thing that mattered most was was the chassis number, in this case 6321.

In the book he refers to the car as the "LM", though a photo caption calls it the LM250.