Haven't visited this site in a while, but this thread has me wondering...!
I purchased a basket case car a long time ago. It came from a farm outside of Spokane, Washington. It was clearly a race car and a search through Washington and Oregon State DMV records came up blank and the opinion was that it had never been registered for street use. The body is really pretty nice despite the many color changes: first Celeste blue, then red, orange, butterscotch, whitish, and red. It had a hoop roll bar mounted behind the driver, just like this #35 car. The engine was apart and in apparent unsalvagable condition. At least, that was my opinion in the early eighties when you could buy complete, running veloce spiders for less than two, or three, thousand dollars, so I found a good engine from a crashed '59 and forgot about the boxes of scraps on the basement shelf.
Then, The Racing Giuliettas came out and I read about some Virgilio Conrero wizard and saw some pictures of his work. That tickled a dim memory of some odd parts buried in the basement, now mostly forgotten. I dug through the boxes and was surprised to find some tantalizing evidence of this mystery car's past. The block had been cut way down and painted blue for some reason. The cold air box had a chunk cut out of the side that matched the pictures in the book. There were four short trumpets, velocity stacks, that apparently fit inside the cold air box and drew air through the window. The crank and rods had been polished and the cams were not stock. Finally, at the bottom of the last box, upside down and rubbing a hole through the cardboard bottom I discoverd a dirty Olio filler cap. When I turned it over, I saw it had a hexagonal badge riveted across the top that said "Conrero & Co. -- Torino" followed by "USARE OLIO CASTROL XL."
Hmmm...
So, my question to those with long memories and maybe old photos, does anyone have any clues about the history of this 750F, 1495-03417?
Bill Eastman
Portland, Oregon