The noise it makes is fantastic

It has a 240 km/h top speed and shattering acceleration." When he starts its Fiatbased 1100 cc engine with avgas flowing through twinchoke Weber carbies, the sound is earshattering, too. The Stanguellini is identical to the factory race cars but this one was privately owned, apparently, and in 1960 won a formula junior race at Monza. "When he (the owner) finished racing in 1963, he just put it away." McDowell is only the second owner. Finally we get to his sleek, silvery blue ASA, the coupe with hints of Ferrari at the rear. McDowell opens the bonnet to reveal its neat, black 1000 cc engine. "That, effectively, is just four cylinders cut off the 250 V12 Ferrari," he says. "These produced 100 hp (75 kW) in 1959. It was equivalent to the racing formula at the time." The car had been repainted in Barcelona before he bought it but the rest is original. "It's only done 30,069 since new," he says, peering at the speedometer. "The noise it makes is fantastic. It's such a responsive little motor." We walk around the car, McDowell singing its praises. "It's got Borrani centrelock wheels. They were just the absolute best money could buy. And the Nardi steering wheel and the Jaeger racingtype instrumentation. The interesting thing about this car is that it came standard with four wheel disc brakes in 1959. Only really highper formance stuff, like Ferraris and Maseratis, had four wheel disc brakes." The Rosetta Stone ASA is still lefthanddrive and the dashboard looks very sporty with its big matching tacho and speedo flanked by lots of smaller gauges and toggle switches. The gear lever sits high on the centre console. But that's not the interesting bit. What looks like a lever for blinkers on the steering column is overdrive. "It's a fourspeed gearbox with electronic overdrive in third and fourth gears," McDowell says. "Which is really fun to use. You can flick it in and out as you go along. It (the ASA) is just so much fun to drive." He claims the ASA could probably do 200 km/h at a time similar British cars were "flat out at 130 or 140". He's done his best to prove it. The speedo tops out at 220. "I've tried to do 220. I've had it as fast as it will go (on a closedroad speed event in WA)," he laughs. "We couldn't get the needle past the 220 but we sure tried. It was absolutely screaming." Autobiography The "Mille", as it was known, was a show car but Enzo Ferrari didn't want to build it himself and sold the concept to the Italian company Autocostruzione Societa per Azione (ASA). The first ASA 1000 GT its body was designed by Bertone and the mechanicals by Giotto Bizzarrini, who worked at Ferrari was powered by a 1032 cc fourcylinder engine with twin carbies; it produced 91 hp (nearly 70 kW). The car was unveiled at Turin in 1962 and became known as the "Ferrarina" or "baby Ferrari". Only about 120 were built, the last in 1967. Stanguellini was a Modena car dealer. He launched his first road car in 1947 and first formula junior car in 1958. In 1963 Stanguellini broke six speed records at Monza. A roadgoing GT was planned but only four prototypes were made.

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