This sketch has accompanied all stories on the new project.

Bizzarrini to be resurrected: Is that a good thing?

February 25, 2021

My recent article on a Bizzarrini for sale had me looking more into the marque – which I much to my surprise find is about to be resurrected.

That article was “When only the newer car is a real classic: Scarab vs. Bizzarrini” and got me somewhat philosophical about what is actually a classic car, as both were in fact replicas – although the Bizzarrini replica from 1965 was in fact so old that it had even acquired age enough to be considered a classic car on its own merits.

And anyway it was the Bizzarrini research that led me to the news (well, new to me anyway but as such a month old – so almost retro news to others, perhaps, which would in some strange and convoluted way make it absolutely OK on a site dedicated to retro…) that Bizzarrini would re-emerge. Yes, God help me, another long passed brand that even in the period never really got to build any proper cars, but still has a name (which ironically is indecently close to the nickname for all the many small Italian car producers that one with a twinkle in the eye calls “Etceterini”) so fabulous that some of us actually remember it yet still. Bizzarrini. Taste it. Drink it in. Double-z AND double-r, nothing less.

This sketch has accompanied all stories on the new project.

It should all be so good, but it reality it wasn’t. Although the car promised it all: From the best engine in the World (Chevrolet’s smallblock) front-mid-located, brutal elegance, the best talents behind the project. But in the classic Italian way it was also a chaotic execution of a good idea (a concept I could very well see transferred to TV in a British / Italian co-production), and therefore some of the best left is actually the name – Bizzarrini.

Here it is an original car under restoration by British Thornley-Kelham.

Which as far as I can see is exactly where the resurrection is founded. The name is simply too delicious to waste, and the world lacks more retro concepts, right? Ehrm, actually not, and had I not known better, I would have thought that the press coverage from the end of January 2020 was the last we would ever hear of yet another almost stillborn idea. Until I understood that the team behind the reborn brand (now owned by a London-based group called Pegasus Brands) is led by German Dr. Ulrich Bez. Now that sounds familiar, right? No wonder, at Dr. Bez has been with both Porsche, BMW and Ford – before he over a long decade reinvented Aston Martin into building great modern cars and in reality created the strongest Aston Martin ever. He resigned in 2013 at the age of sixty, and eight years later obviously has not become younger. But he is certainly not a Mr. NoName, and when it dawned on me that he was involved, I actually sort of believed that something will come out of it. And it might even be good.

Same project as before: The finished car won the award as best British restoration in 2019.

Although that is quite difficult to ascertain as exactly what they will build remains rather unclear. As I can understand it they start with a “continuation” car of the good old Bizzzarrini Strada 5300, built in a limited number. Which is – just like the others do. Since the original was such a delicious monster, the new (old) will of course be too. But you can already have a replica Bizzarrini built today (by independents, of course), so what’s the point? Well from there the plans become even more woolly, but they stage themselves that they will then build a completely new car which is going to be “a unique contemporary machine”, and it simply can not be any less specific. Except that they stress that it will not be an electric car.

Low, wide, spectacular, fast – but not really a good car as such. But now it is re-emerging anyway.

I look forward to seeing them both, actually: I love Bizzarrini for all they were – their roots, their ambitions, their somewhat short of ambitions cars. But glorious Italians beasts none the less. And a modern interpretation sure gets my attention – enough even to write about it at a stage where uncertainties are abundant. Of course one can question whats roots are left in a British owned company led by a German. And I think you should.

But more importantly I see the initiative as very positive for our classic hobby as such. When Dr. Bez gets involved in something like this I can only interpret it as if he has seen that the past is the way forward: A good story is better than yet another car with a thousand horsepower (not to say that the new call will not have a thousand horsepower, although in that case I would say they have missed the point). The thing is that “The good story” is exactly what real classic cars are about. So I still think we classic car enthusiasts are on to something here. I’d say do not sell your classic to buy an electric car just yet, OK?