The car had enough air intakes to let anyone know it meant business on the autostrada or Mulsanne

Noted engineer and automotive constructor Giotto Bizzarrini long dreamed of building a mid-engined road car. Several false starts in the early to mid-1960s finally became reality in 1968. The one-off Duca d’Aosta appeared late that year, but would prove to be the swansong for the company that bore the engineer’s name.

So who is Giotto Bizzarrini? And what gave him the credentials to make a legitimate contender for the title of the world’s fastest street machine of the 1960s?

While Bizzarrini defines himself in the simplest manner – ’I am a test driver, a formidable test driver’ – there is much more to his resumé than simply ‘driver’, no matter how formidable he says he is. Joining Alfa Romeo in the summer of ’54 he worked closely with Alfa’s mythical test drivers Consalvo Sanesi and Giovanbattista Guidotti. Also looking over his shoulder was Orazio Satta, Alfa’s talented chief engineer. Multiple decades of experience were revealed to him, Bizzarrini soaking up the lessons like a dry sponge under a slow-running tap. ‘I became a test driver who happened to be an engineer who used mathematical principles,’ he summarises.

This gave him a skill that few other test drivers possessed: the ability to prove ideas on the road and on the drawing board. Not only could he test a car but, unlike almost every other of his breed, he didn’t need to tell an engineer what had happened or what he felt. He simply devised a solution himself and, later, anticipated problems before they occurred.

That skill-set saw Ferrari come calling in 1957, and the young engineer blossomed at Maranello. He first sorted the 250 Ellena’s handling issues, then became head of Experimental, Sport and GT Car Development. His CV grew – first with the 250 Testa Rossa, then the Spider California. Then came his masterpiece, the 250GTO.

But no sooner was Giotto in the final phases of GTO testing than he found himself outside Ferrari in the infamous ‘Palace Revolt’ in 1961. Unemployment for him and fellow revolutionaries, engineer Carlo Chiti and sales manager Girolamo Gardini, was only momentary; within a matter of weeks all were employed by a new start-up, ATS.

But Bizzarrini didn’t last long with ATS. His proposal for a 1.5-litre V12 was turned down in favour of Carlo Chiti’s 2.5-litre V8, so he left the company to become Italy’s ultimate engineering gun for hire. After some modifications his V12 found a long-lived home with another upstart, Lamborghini. Bizzarrini also worked closely with Milan’s wealthy de Nora family on the diminutive ASA 1000GT.

Though ASA made fewer than 80 cars from 1961 to 1966, the firm gave Bizzarrini his first opportunity to make a mid-engined car. The 1000GT used a 1032cc in-line ‘four’ developed by Ferrari, so with a gene pool such as that it’s no surprise ASA went racing to promote and improve its cars.

In mid-1963 Bizzarrini made the ASA 1000GTC, a front-engined competition berlinetta that looked, to all intents and purposes, like a shrunken 250GTO. Giotto then went one step further, developing a mid-engined version with the engine behind the driver. It remained a stillborn project, with only the frame and body being made.

Bizzarrini’s most active client at the time was Iso. Another upstart GT manufacturer from the Milan area, Iso was funded and guided by Renzo Rivolta. Bizzarrini worked closely with the industrialist and his chief engineer Pierluigi Raggi on the first car, the 140mph 2+2 Iso Rivolta. The handsome coupé had understated Bertone coachwork and, in a break from almost every other Italian manufacturer, a pressed steel chassis and a Chevrolet Corvette 327 engine.

This last item surprised the engineer. ‘I was shocked the first time I drove one,’ Bizzarrini told me. ‘It was superior to Ferrari’s V12s, offering the same power with more immediate throttle response.’
When sales floundered in 1963, Nuccio Bertone recommended creating a two-seater for publicity. The Grifo was born, and no sooner had Bizzarrini learned of this than he was pushing for a mid-engined model. The idea gained enough traction that Bertone’s Giorgetto Giugiaro made some sketches, which looked strikingly similar to Alfa’s Scaglione-penned 33 Stradale that appeared four years later.

But a mid-engined model was too far from Iso’s desire for performance with comfort and refinement, so Iso had two front-engined berlinettas break cover at 1963’s Turin Show – the Grifo A3/L done by Bertone, and the A3 made by Bizzarrini. The A3 was Bizzarrini’s first mid-engined road car, but not as he originally wanted. Instead, the 327 sat so far behind the front axle that one accessed the distributor through a small door on top of the dash!

The front-mid-engined Iso Grifo A3/C raced with some success in 1964 and ’65, and a number of customers purchased the A3 Stradale street version. By late summer 1965 Iso and Bizzarrini had gone their separate ways, so the engineer kept producing the A3 and sold them under his own name as the GT Strada or GT America, depending upon mechanical specifications.

And so came a third opportunity to create a ‘true’ mid-engined car, one that would ultimately lead to the Duca d’Aosta. Bizzarrini remained a firm believer in competition – what better way to prove your mettle than by beating the other guys, all the while increasing your own visibility? Ford’s GT40 made it clear that the front-engined configuration’s days were numbered in endurance racing, so the engineer created his world-beater, the P538.

He made a new tubular frame and mounted a 327 behind the driver, then covered the package with curvaceous coachwork. The open two-seater’s name derived from the engine and its position – posteriore, 5.3-litres, eight cylinders.