When it comes to incredible engineering, Italy has produced some of the most talented automotive engineers. One of Italy’s greatest engineers was Giotto Bizzarrini. After working for companies like Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Lamborghini, Giotto went on to build his own brand. This 1971 Bizzarrini 1900 Europa Spyder was one of the last cars to be built before the company went bankrupt. This rare Italian was recently discovered in an old garage in France. It is now for sale and can be found here on eBay.
The Europa was Bizzarrini’s attempt to build a small sports car that would appeal to a broader market. The design was initially created for Opel, but Opel opted to use an in house design for what went on to be the Opel GT. Bizzarrini went on to produce a small handful of Europas after the deal fell through. This one was manufactured in 1969, but not put together until 1971. No one knows exactly how many of these were built, but most estimates are around 20 or less.
This one has obviously been parked in this garage for who knows how long. It looks complete, but needs a serious cleaning to fully evaluate its current condition. The seller’s attempt to blur out the background makes it difficult to evaluate the condition of the whole car, but it makes us wonder what else is hiding in there. If you are looking for a super rare and unique sports car, this could be an amazing opportunity, but getting it from France could be a challenge.
Very cool looking , never seen one, but an odd set of pictures makes the car pictured, look like a die cast.
It’s very difficult to get information on these, other than the fact that they are very rare because they never went into serious series production. Too bad they weren’t produced in decent numbers because the GT version is a terrific design. It resembles a scaled down Bizzarrini 5300 GT, which itself is one of the best of the small-production exotics to come out of Italy during the 1960s.
These are said to have been designed for the Opel 1900 platform for Opel to produce, but that didn’t happen. Apparently about 17 cars were produced by Bizzarrini, most or all GTs with an aerodynamic metal top. Whether a Spyder was officially produced by Bizzarrini is unclear. The eBay listing says this car was made after Bizzarrini went under as a carmaker, which means this car was probably made from a GT by cutting the roof off and creating a rear deck.
Unfortunately the murky photos don’t provide much detail. The car looks good, but there are questions. The interior doesn’t look like the GT interior, especially that cheap looking red quilted vinyl (presumably). Even the dash looks different from typical GT dashes. All of this raises the question whether this car will attract much bidding. So far so good, though, since there are 25 bids (to $22K) after a little more than a day.
To the seller’s credit, the car is offered at no reserve, so the market will decide. I’ll be surprised if this apparently unofficial ‘Spyder’ makes the price of a decent coupe, which reached a bid of $142K on an eBay offering in Europe of what looked like a very nice GT late last year.
Well, since it was meant to be a low price GT (think the GT that Opel/GM eventually did produce) I’m not surprised that it looks a good bit cheaper than the 5300GT.
@Skip,
I didn’t make it very clear….it was a 1900 Europa GT that was bid to $142K on eBay late last year. But that’s still a lot cheaper than a 5300 GT in good condition would sell for.
My point was that I will be surprised if this ‘Spyder’, which seems not to have been created by Bizzarrini and therefore not original, sells for as much as a good 1900 Europa GT. Normally you would expect a Spyder to sell for more than the coupe version of the same car, especially if there is only 1 Spyder and many coupes. But I don’t expect that here….unless someone thinks that this is a real Bizzarrini-built Spyder and bids the price up, I suppose.
~ aside from the rather anemic Opel 1900 drivetrain i like this a lot. needs more power and less photoshop. how much to rent it til noon?.
Typical listing from this seller (and other eBay aliases he uses). Buyer be(very)ware. I suspect there are 4 legitimate bids in that entire list of bids. The rest are only there to jack the price so the market will not decide unfortunately. That was the same seller’s coupe a while back. I highly doubt it went to a new owner…
Yep you never know the whole story & the murky back round in the photo’s add to the doubt.
This Bizzarrini shares a few similarities with a 71 Bizzarrini that was for sale at Hemmings some time back. In the case of the Hemmings Bizzarrini, it was completed in 1971 by Giancarlo Reali, a protege of Giotto’s. Notice the framed headlight covers, exposed fuel filler, and the large rear deck instead of the fastback.
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/tag/bizzarrini/
Whether Bizzarrini or Bits’a, it’s attractive and would be a fun toy. Let’s hope it turns out to be for real, and bigger than 1/18 scale.