Model Factory Hiro has made a lot of crowd-pleasing kits lately -- lots of famous F1 cars, the Cobra Daytona Coupe and the Pink Pig to name a few. Most have sold out pretty quickly. But occasionally they come up with something just so totally out there and so totally right up my alley that I utterly am powerless to resist ordering it. To wit: the Abarth 1000 SP entered at Le Mans in 1969 by Ecurie Fiat-Abarth France. The kit turned up today.
You might understand MFH modelling this car if, say, it had managed to finish the race. You might understand it if it was a failed but iconic piece of automotive history. But no; this entrant in the Prototype 1.15 litre class, with its 1001 cc engine, DNFed after 2 hours with ignition problems. (Now I know from experience that, although more reliable than those dastardly Prince of Darkness devices, Italian electrical systems can be fiddly, but it seems to me that 22 hours is more than enough time to rebuild a complete ignition system in what is basically a hot-rodded Fiat motor. But I digress).
And as for iconic, well, even I didn't know it existed until MFH announced it a while back. (Two years later, Abarth was sold to Fiat, with the race division going to Osella.)
It did have an oddball cylinder head, with the requisite pair of Webers growing out of manifolding in the middle of the head between the cams, one on each side. Why the carbs weren't side by side on one side of the motor opposite the exhaust is beyond me. Maybe this explains the ignition problems -- the plugs are well hidden underneath the right side carb.
To put things in perspective: the only other entrant in the 1969 Le Mans Prototype 1.15 class, an Alpine A210, finished 12th overall, 80 laps behind the winning GT40. Just think: the A210 was passed, on average, every 18 minutes, for a full 24 hours, by Ickx or Oliver in the Ford, as well as by Hermann or Larrousse in the 2nd place 908 LH. Imagine bearing down on this little tiddler at 200+ mph on the Mulsanne in the dark, every four or five laps... Le Mans sure was a different game back then.
More info to come once I finish up the Alfa TZ2, an obscure but successful Italian sports racer.
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