Barchetta
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
style of open 2-seater sports car which was built for racing. Weight and wind resistance were kept to a minimum, and any unnecessary equipment or decoration were sacrificed in order to maximize performance.
Although most barchettas were made from the late 1940s through the 1950s, the style has occasionally been revived by small-volume manufacturers and specialist builders in recent years.
Typically hand-made in aluminium on a tubular frame, the classic barchetta body is devoid of bumpers or any weather equipment such as a canvas top or sidescreens, and has no provision for luggage. Some barchettas have no windscreen; others, a shallow racing-type screen or aero screen(s).
The classic barchetta either had no doors, in which case entry and exit entailed stepping over the side of the car, or very small doors without exterior handles.
Origin and examples
Giovanni Canestrini, when editor of La Gazzetta dello Sport, a popular Italian sporting newspaper, was the very first to bestow the sobriquet "barchetta" on a car, using it to describe the new FerrariFerrari
Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, as Scuderia Ferrari, the company sponsored drivers and manufactured race cars before moving into production of street-legal vehicles as Ferrari S.p.A. in 1947...
166MM displayed at the 1948 Turin Auto Show
Turin Auto Show
The Turin Auto Show is an auto show held annually in Turin, Italy. The first official show took place between 21 and 24 April 1900, at the Castle of Valentino, moving to Turin in later years....
. The name has been associated with the model ever since.
The MM in the car’s designation had stood for Mille Miglia
Mille Miglia
The Mille Miglia was an open-road endurance race which took place in Italy twenty-four times from 1927 to 1957 ....
and the race it won in 1948 and 1949. In 1949 the 166MM barchetta also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans
1949 24 Hours of Le Mans
The 1949 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 17th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on June 25 and 26 1949.This was the first race held following the end of World War II...
(driven by Luigi Chinetti
Luigi Chinetti
Luigi Chinetti was an Italian-born racecar driver, who emigrated to the United States during World War II and became an American citizen....
and Lord Selsdon) and the Targa Florio
Targa Florio
The Targa Florio was an open road endurance automobile race held in the mountains of Sicily near Palermo. Founded in 1906, it was the oldest sports car racing event, part of the World Sportscar Championship between 1955 and 1973...
(with Clemente Biondetti
Clemente Biondetti
Clemente Biondetti was an Italian auto racing driver.-Biography:Born in Buddusò, Sardinia, into a working class family, Biondetti began racing motorcycles in 1923 but in 1927 turned to automobiles...
and Igor Troubetzkoy
Igor Troubetzkoy
Prince Igor Nikolayevich Troubetzkoy was the driver of the first Ferrari to ever compete in Grand Prix Motor Racing. He drove a 2-litre Ferrari "Tipo" 166 in Monaco on May 16, 1948. Earlier that year he had won the Targa Florio with the Ferrari 166 Sport Allemano Spyder...
), the only car ever to win all three races in the same year. It also won the 1949 Spa 24 Hours
Spa 24 Hours
The Total 24 Hours of Spa is an endurance racing event held annually in Belgium at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. Conceived by Jules de Their and Henri Langlois Van Ophem just one year after the first 24 Hours of Le Mans, the race was run under the auspices of the Royal Automobile Club Belgium...
. The car’s unadorned, lightweight aluminium body was designed by Carrozzeria Touring
Carrozzeria Touring
Carrozzeria Touring is an automobile coachbuilder established on March 25, 1926 in Milan, Italy by Felice Bianchi Anderloni and Gaetano Ponzoni...
’s head of design, Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni
Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni
Carlo Felice Bianchi "Cici" Anderloni was an Italian automobile designer, known for several designs for the Carrozzeria Touring company....
.
Motor Trend Classic
Motor Trend
Motor Trend is an American automobile magazine. It first appeared in September 1949, issued by Petersen Publishing Company in Los Angeles, and bearing the tag line "The Magazine for a Motoring World". Petersen Publishing was sold to British publisher EMAP in 1998, who sold the former Petersen...
rated the 166MM barchetta sixth out of the ten "greatest Ferraris of all time".
O.S.C.A.
Officine Specializzate Costruzioni Automobili - Fratelli Maserati SpA was an Italian brand of sports car automobiles, usually abbreviated to O.S.C.A., OSCA or Osca.- History :...
MT4, a 1452 cc, 130 bhpbarchetta made by the Maserati brothers, was for eight years the most successful under-1500 cc sports racing car in the world.
Other, even more diminutive OSCA barchettas were powered by engines of 750 cc and 850 cc.
Giovanni Moretti
Moretti Motor Company
Moretti Motor Company is a now defunct automobile manufacturer formerly based in Italy. It was founded in 1925 and ceased operations in the mid-1980s. Today, many of its sportscar models can still be found at various European auto shows...
, another designer and manufacturer, also made several small barchettas in the 1950s.
The 1966 Abarth
Abarth
Abarth is an Italian racing car maker founded by Austrian-Italian Carlo Abarth and Italian Armando Scagliarini in Turin in 1949. Its logo depicts a stylized scorpion on a red and yellow background.- History :...
1000SP barchetta was a successful race car, and in 2007 the car design firm Carrozzeria Bertone celebrated its 95th anniversary with the Fiat Panda-based Fiat Barchetta Bertone, an "open-topped strictly two-seater sports car that calls to mind the Italian racing cars of the 1950s. In this case, the design explicitly cites the Fiat 500 with the barchetta bodywork created by the young Nuccio Bertone in 1947 as a one-off for his personal use in races [...and] projects the concept of the barchetta, a historic icon in the legend of Italian motorsports, into the future with purposeful elegance and sophisticated irony."
Ferrari 550
The Ferrari 550 Maranello and 550 Barchetta are 2-seat grand tourers built by Ferrari. Introduced in 1996, the 550 was an upmarket front-engined V12 coupe of the kind not seen since the Daytona. It shared its platform and 5.5 L engine with the 2+2 456 but was positioned as the company's...
, which marked Pininfarina
Pininfarina
Pininfarina S.p.A. is an Italian car design firm and coachbuilder in Cambiano, Italy.Founded as Società anonima Carrozzeria Pinin Farina in 1930 by automobile designer and builder Battista "Pinin" Farina, Pininfarina has been employed by a wide variety of high-end automobile manufacturers,...
’s 70th anniversary. The car was first shown at the 2001 Salon de l'Automobile and 448 examples were built. It is "[i]n many ways...the legitimate successor to such legendary open Ferraris as the 166MM..." Designed as a roadster for use on public roads and not as a full-bred racing car, the 550 Barchetta has a rudimentary convertible top "whose mechanism is said to require strength, skill, and patience." The top is intended only for emergency use in a sudden downpour and the manufacturer advises against using it at speeds above 70 miles per hour (112.7 km/h). The top "doesn't look as if it would survive the sacrilege of an automatic carwash." The list price of the 550 Barchetta was $245,000.
Renault Spider
The Renault Sport Spider is a roadster produced by the French automaker Renault Sport between 1995 and 1997.-Project:...
, although mid-engined, was designed very much in the barchetta style, and also in the barchetta tradition, as it was intended for racing. Renault sponsored a one-make race series for it. Although the Spider is road-legal it has no weather protection, and drivers of first-series Spiders usually wear a helmet on the road as these early models were sold without the windscreen that came with the later models.
Despite its name, the 1995-2005 Fiat Barchetta
Fiat Barchetta
The Fiat Barchetta is a roadster produced by the Italian manufacturer Fiat from 1995 to 2005 . "Barchetta" in Italian means 'little boat'.-History:...
was not a sports car in the barchetta style or tradition.
In popular culture
"Red BarchettaRed Barchetta
"Red Barchetta" is a song by rock band Rush from their album Moving Pictures.-Synopsis:The song describes a future in which many classes of vehicles have been prohibited by "the Motor Law"...
" is the title of the second song on the 1981 album "Moving Pictures
Moving Pictures (album)
- Personnel :* Geddy Lee - Bass guitar; Minimoog; Oberheim 8-voice synthesizer; OB-X, Moog Taurus bass pedals, vocals* Alex Lifeson - Electric and acoustic guitars, Moog Taurus...
" by the rock band Rush
Rush (band)
Rush is a Canadian rock band formed in August 1968, in the Willowdale neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario. The band is composed of bassist, keyboardist, and lead vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart...
. It describes the future where motor vehicles are outlawed, but the narrator visits his uncle every week to race a barchetta through the countryside.