OBSCURATI
CURIOSITIES FROM THE AMAZING WORLD OF ITALIAN CARS
BANDINI 1000 GT
Story by Chris ReesRACING CAR CONSTRUCTOR ILARIO BANDINI MIGHT HAVE BECOME
A GT CAR MAKER WITH THIS ELEGANT 1.0-LITRE COUPEI
n many ways, Bandini
encapsulates the spirit of
Italy’s ‘etceterini’ marques
that flourished in the 1950s
and 1960s. It was founded by
Ilario Bandini, who built his first
racing car, based on an old Fiat
1100, in 1946, clothed in an
aluminium body made by
Rocco Motto.
The first proper Bandini arrived
in 1950, using a tubular chassis
and a Fiat 1100 engine with an
Alfa Romeo 6C 1900 cylinder
head. Bandini then made a series
of racing cars that competed in
the Mille Miglia and SCCA racing
series in the USA, the latter
helped by the Italian-American
businessman, Tony Pompeo, who
represented Abarth in America.
Bandini also made one of the
most successful Formula Junior
racers of the late 1950s.
Bandini may have been a tiny
outfit but he had grand plans for
his company, Bandini Automobili,
which used as its badge the
symbol of his home town of Forli:
a crowing cockerel. He evencontemplated entering Formula 1.
As for road-going cars, these
were few indeed. A GT road car
was built in 1955 in the form of
the gorgeous Zagato-bodied
Bandini 750 GT coupe. Almost as
elegant was his second GT car,
the Bandini 1000 GT of 1963 – as
seen on this page. For the
bodywork, he turned to an
obscure outfit called Carrozzeria
Corna of Turin – one of the
companies that Zagato used as a
subcontractor – which hand-formed a sober but well
proportioned two-seater coupe
shape in aluminium.
The layout was classical: a
front-mounted engine with rear-
wheel drive. But the chassis – an
oval-tube spaceframe of
patented design, weighing a
mere 25kg – drew on Bandini’s
experiences with his mid-
engined racers. The suspension
design was very similar, for
instance. At the front end was a
double wishbone set-up with
angled hydraulic dampers; the
rear was a multi-link
independent set-up, while anti-
roll bars were fitted front and
rear. The wheels (Amadori 15-
inchers) had disc brakes up front
and drums to the rear.
The engine was a development
of that in his saponetta(‘soap
bar’) and 1000P racers. A four-
cylinder, all-square (bore and
stroke both 68mm) unit, it had a
capacity of just 987cc. It was
pretty much racing spec: twincamshafts, aluminium cylinder
head, hemispherical combustion
chambers, removable cylinder
liners and an aluminium radiator.
With a compression ratio of 9:1
and two Weber 38DCO3
carburettors, it produced a
remarkable power output of 94hp
at 8000rpm. The gearbox was
also sophisticated, having five
synchronised gears.
The whole car tipped the
scales at a featherweight 475kg,
enabling it to reach a top speed
of 125mph. There was talk of
offering the 1000 GT to the
public, in either left-hand drive or
right-hand drive guise. In the end,
only one example was ever made,
painted black and used by Ilario
Bandini as his personal car.
Bandini continued to build
racers and one-offs well into the
1980s, before passing away in- It’s thought that a total of
75 Bandini cars were produced in
all. Sadly the one and only 1000
GT is believed no longer to exist.