Sbarro Challenge
Words Karl Ludvigsen
Illustration Ricardo Santos
In the mid-1980s, Swiss entrepreneur Franco Sbarro turned to Porsche power to underpin his most SINCE THE END OF THE 1960S, NO Geneva Salon has been complete without a dramatic launch of a spectacular new car – or several – from the Neuchâtel aerie of Franco Sbarro. Be it styling, mechanics or concept, Sbarro’s creations are sure to astonish with their imagination and impetuosity. The man himself is as subdued as his automobiles are audacious. Sbarro speaks quietly, conspiratorially about his ideas and inventions. But his cars betray a vivid imagination, a desire to exploit Switzerland’s famed neutrality among squabbling nations. More than one auto-brand executive has been startled to open his trade publication, to find that Sbarro has ripped off the design of one of his treasured classic icons. Ford, for example, learned in 1982 that Franco’s shop was turning out replicas of its iconic GT40, which Sbarro presented as the original item. At that year’s Geneva Salon, a Blue Oval executive (me) confronted the resourceful creator, telling him that it wasn’t kosher to pretend these were originals. “Oh, it’s all right,” Franco replied. “I have 152
Magneto
ABOVE Franco Sbarro – an expert in the creation of the adventurous, the outlandish and the enjoyable.
original chassis plates for the GT40s, and I just assign their numbers to the cars.” Swiss GT40 production subsided thereafter. Sbarro likes a challenge, which is why you see the car on these pages. He built it, he said, because he read a foreign review of the 1984 Geneva Salon that said there was “nothing new in Geneva”. For a month and a half thereafter, he worked day and night on the design of a model that no one could say resembled anything existing. This included his previous designs, which, as established, were usually modified production cars or imitations thereof. The result was an automobile that was neither ‘three-volume’ nor ‘two-volume’. It had to be considered ‘one-volume’, with its radical sloping nose blending into a low-slung cockpit and access via scissor-action doors. Sbarro made a one-fifth-sized model of his vision, and cadged time in Citroën’s wind tunnel to evaluate its drag. The result, said the French experts, was a Cd coefficient of 0.16 – as low as had been measured for any road car at the time. Sbarro reckons the complete car’s drag would be nearer
