by Mike –
I visited the Adam Carolla CarCast web site on Saturday and I watched an interview with Leslie Kendall, the Curator of The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. He brought along a very beautiful Scaglietti Corvette shown in the photos below and in the first video below. There were only three of these Scaglietti Corvettes made.
1959 Chevrolet Corvette Scaglietti Coupe
The Scaglietti Corvette is just like a Bizzarrini GT 5300 Strada except the chassis was designed by Chevrolet instead of Bizzarrini and the body was styled by Scaglietti instead of Giugiaro of Bertone.
Otherwise they are the same – beautiful Italian styling with that great American power from the Chevrolet Corvette.
At the Palos Verdes Concours in 2009 Adam Carolla approached me, and my Bizzarrini GT 5300, for a video interview. There were between 150 and 200 Italian cars there that day, plus many other non-Italian cars, and Adam Carolla chose two cars to profile: a Maserati Birdcage race car and my Bizzarrini GT 5300.
Bizzarrini GT 5300 Strada
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Fixed it The Scaglietti Corvette is just like a Bizzarrini GT 5300 Strada except that the 5300 is better balanced, can go arounds corners faster and has a higher top end………..and looks better đŸ™‚
I WOULD SAY THAT THE BIGGEST ADVANTAGE,”STATE SIDE”, WAS THE CONVENIENCE
OF ENGINE TUNING AND OVERALL CHASSIS LUBE SERRVICE AT ANY CHEVY DEALER!
MY FIRST CAR AT AGE 20 WAS A ’62 FUELIE(BRAND NEW), WHICH WAS A GREAT JOY!
………HOWEVER, THE ‘BUGS’ WERE N O T OUT OF IT !!!IT WOULD DECIDE TO IDLE AT
A STOP WHEN IT FELT LIKE IT……OTHERWISE,…LEFT FOOT ON THE BRAKE, RT. FOOT
ON THE GAS…VERY DICEY, AND EMBARASSING WHEN THE ENGINE WOULD QUIT AT A STOP
EXAAAACTLY AS PEOPLE WERE LOOKING…!!THE DEALER IN MILWAUKEE FROM WHERE IT WAS
PURCHASED HAD NO TRAINED TECH TO TUNE THE F.I. UNIT; THE LARGEST CHEV DEALER
WAS HUMPHREY CHEVROLET, AND THEY HAD ONE TRAINED TECH TO DO IT….AMAZEINGLY,
IT TURNED OUT THAT HE LIVED IN THE SAME SUBDIVISION WEST OF MILWAUKEE, AS DID I!!
HE BECAME A FRIEND WHO WOULD NOT HESITATE TO FINE-TUNE THE CAR WHEN IT BECAME
FEISTY, BUT, AT BEST, IT WAS NO WONDER THAT SOME JUST DUMPED THE F.I. UNIT AND WENT
WITH THE DUAL CARB GM SETUP…JIM K.
The 4 Webers on my Bizzarrini take a little tuning as well.
Intriguing car. However, the ’59 injected Corvettr I drove around in back in the day handled more like a truck than a sports car. Loved the acceleration though.