Giocattolo Group B - just bought one. Possibly Australia's ultimate supercar.

[deesun]

Damn, I just creamed my pants. I also remember these wonderous things. I have only ever seen one in real life and I remember it very clearly, Pacific Hwy at St leonards. I nearly fell off the bus I was on at the time. There has been one running in the Targa Tasmania up till at least recently. For the enthusiast the most infamous one was the Todd Wilkes one. He was a guru when it came to ECU's etc. I am green with envy and I wish you many many hours of joy with your new toy. As was said before, you LUCKY LUCKY BASTARD.

[Yellow_Festiva]

Originally Posted by deesun

I wish you many many hours of joy with your new toy.

Good use of words. Giocattolo means 'toy' in Italian

[Fev]

damn i was hoping more pictures were gonna be posted :(

[sprjenkins]

Great car but If they are the original tyres, ie 20 years old, you might want to find a new pair quick smart, tyres definately have used by dates and these are well well over.

[sandmanls1]

very nice mondie insanely jealous beautiful car have been for a ride in a yellow one will never forget it on the todd wilkes tribute cruise. enjoy.

[Mondie]

Originally Posted by v8capri

Just found this thread.
Tyres are not that hard to get as they used them on the front of wide body Pantera's
Just gotta wait for them to make another batch and bring in a set.
If you need help let me know. As a Pantera owner I have become pretty good at tracking down hard to get parts !

l have only just noticed this thread has risen form the ashes once more. Thanks for the offer mate, l will send you a PM. The old girl is on her original Yokies and with 300kw, they don't offer much off a connection between machine and road :evil3: As you would expect ...

Originally Posted by Fev

damn i was hoping more pictures were gonna be posted :(

Fev,

l might have a few others l can post up from a couple of local car shows, but thats about all. l need to take some more especially with my GT, l think they would make a good pairing.

Cheers,
mondie

[lv619]

Originally Posted by Mondie

lol bottle of bundy with the tool kit, we all need one of those when working on a car. Epic.

[Nikked]

these are nice cars.

[XR06T]

that is an amazing car, i had no idea they were made in Australia!!

you have a very enviouable (sp?) car collection there mondie!

glad to hear you still give it a fang.

[drew`SEVNT5]

as a man with a love for Alfas(Alfa tattoo on my back), and a love for actual fast cars....


this is dreams material

[da_ilks]

Originally Posted by GenTech

Awesome car.. you are part of a vary rare breed that have owned a Giocattolo. Congrats.

Yeah regarding Todd, sad, sad day. I was participating in that Race event, it was called Autosalon - Final Battle (from memory) on the 25th of February 2001. And the first competition of the day was called "Terminal Velocity", and had cars blasting down the main straight of Eastern Creek trying to reach maximum speed through the traps on the start/finish line. This main straight was also a drag strip, but the drag strip ran in the opposite direction (which had a large field and sand traps for run off) as it would never pass regulations to have a drag strip ultimately finish in a perpendicular concrete wall. But the organisers decided to run this "drag style" event backwards, down hill, with the bare concrete wall at the end. There were 3 large water tank things to try and make it safer but the wall itself had no tyre protection (crazy). There were probably 20 or so cars that I saw and the speeds reached were around 180 k's for worked V8's, STi's etc and they stopped with plenty to spare. Then it came to Todd (Judge). He flew down and hit the traps at almost 300kph, backed off and started braking. At that speed, he was moving at around 83 metres per second, so the second or two that it took to move from the accelerator to hit the brakes meant a third of the braking area was gone before he had even started slowing down. So the car dipped, and started slowing down, but was now struggling to stop in time, so Todd mashed the brake peddle and the car dipped further forward, and locked the front wheels, he attempted to manually abs, but there was no way he would stop in time. To make matters worse, the last 50 or so metres, were nullified, as he hit the christmas tree armco with the right side of the car (this was the start line for the drag strip) and sent the car up on two wheels, then it ploughed through one of those water tanks and into the wall at around 150kph. A fireball broke out a few seconds later. The commentators were in shock, but after 20 minutes, they announced that the driver was OK (obviously he wasn't) and was being rushed to Hospital but that they were cancelling the event anyway. Horrific.

He had alot of details about the Giacottolo on his site which can be seen in archive form here
http://web.archive.org/web/200605231...com/index.html

What's more incredible, other then the complete stupidity of the running of said event, was the fact the organisers weren't convicted of anything :/ Someone must have been accountable for that day....

[Fev]

wow. the only Gio i could find in google images from a Lancia forum which is in Italian i think

[Dave]

Hi All

I was just searching the web and found this thread.

I have Prototype 001 and we have been through the dramas with tyres. If you want to keep the nice wide tyres and want to keep sticky tyres on the car the only way to go is to go to 18". 16's & 17's do not have good tyres that will fit. There is very little gap between the tyre and the guard on the rear and you have to keep the OD of the tyre down other wise it will silently eat away the Kevlar guard.

285/30/18 tyres are quite common and you can get a good range of tread patterns and compounds in the high end of the market. Simmons wheels have the details of off set etc for the wheels. You can’t get the same design wheel from them in 18’s though.

Every now and then there is a release of the old tyres and you have to be in the right place at the right time to get them.

Dave

[XRQTR]

Originally Posted by Fev

wow. the only Gio i could find in google images from a Lancia forum which is in Italian i think

Wide bodied Beta?? Love the Beta


Anyway, the Giocc, mmmmmmmmm comes to mind as an immediate reaction, I remember a couple of firends in the late 80's coming up against one of these along Geelong Rd in Fotscray, I think it was owned by a car yard owner in the area.

Anyway I recall the story something along the lines of "We were cruising at maybe XXXkm's and playing the throttle nudging each other on, when all of a sudden this thing just launched and left us as if we were standing still".

I still remember reading about the build of this thing, it was meant to get the then 3.0litre V6 from the new sedan, they were using the 2.5 as a dummy to set up the engine mounts and driveline positioning.

Then Alfa said they would not be supplying this engine for the project, Alfa had a hand in the intial planning maybe after they approached them for their engine, so they were stuck. At the same time Holden had just released there fuel injected new monster, so long story short, the V8 was used as a last minute replacement so to speak.

Either way these things are a hot little Austalian number.



p.s. what I said about the Superbird in the Hanging Rock thread, well lets just say I'd give up a little more for one of these :evil3:

[outback_ute]

Welcome to the forums Dave, always good to hear about Giocattolo's.

[stevepet]

Beautiful car

Mates brother had one years ago went like the clappers just hope you don't throw a fanbelt.

Have fun

Steve

[Mondie]

Originally Posted by Dave

Hi All

I was just searching the web and found this thread.

I have Prototype 001 and we have been through the dramas with tyres. If you want to keep the nice wide tyres and want to keep sticky tyres on the car the only way to go is to go to 18". 16's & 17's do not have good tyres that will fit. There is very little gap between the tyre and the guard on the rear and you have to keep the OD of the tyre down other wise it will silently eat away the Kevlar guard.

285/30/18 tyres are quite common and you can get a good range of tread patterns and compounds in the high end of the market. Simmons wheels have the details of off set etc for the wheels. You can’t get the same design wheel from them in 18’s though.

Every now and then there is a release of the old tyres and you have to be in the right place at the right time to get them.

Dave

Hi Dave,

Good to see you here, l have sent you a PM

Cheers,
mondie

[Dave]

Hi Mondie

PM replied, I forgot to say I'm from Qld.

Dave

[mrbaxr6t]

wowee!

[MadMaximus]

Great Thread and a great read.

Here is one on Youtube that crashed recently.

Poor Thing :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N43zXxHI-M

[sprint347dave]

You are not off to a very good start on this forum. 2 warnings and now this deleted for not being a worth while comment.

[MadMaximus]

Is that meant for me???

[Full Noise]

Originally Posted by MadMaximus

Is that meant for me???

No, just ignore it.

Cheers

[dom_105]

Bump-ski.

Another one has come on the market. Owned by a Geelong gentlemen, 100 G's+, not a penny less.

Good history from current owner. Too many cars, too many children and not enough time! Genuine enquiries only

.
As always, it would seem.

http://www.carsales.com.au/all-cars/private/details.aspx?R=9040797&__sid=12A075759DC0&__Qpb=tr ue&Cr=0&__Ns=pCar_RankSort_Int32|1||pCar_PriceSort _Decimal|1||pCar_Make_String|0||pCar_Model_String| 0&keywords=&__N=1216%201282%204294953930&seot=1&__ Nne=15&trecs=1&silo=1011


No photos, unfortunatly

[wrongwaynorris]

Lovely car but still not the Ultimate Australian Supercar that mantle belongs and always will belong to the Nagari .

[mcnews]

Awesome mate, at that weight it would be virtually unbeatable by anything on any surface that involved corners.

[pottery beige]

Originally Posted by wrongwaynorris

Lovely car but still not the Ultimate Australian Supercar that mantle belongs and always will belong to the Nagari .

what just because it had a clunky old wheezer in it......
two totally different cars and worlds apart... who cares what powers it give me the modern day madman any day.......

[321Go]

WOW. WOW. WOW!! Well done Mondie. Big fan of this car, have been from the first time I heard of them in the late 80's.

Can't help being reminded of Todd Wilkes when I think of or see these cars now. What a shame that incident was.

[wrongwaynorris]

Originally Posted by pottery beige

what just because it had a clunky old wheezer in it......
two totally different cars and worlds apart... who cares what powers it give me the modern day madman any day.......

Absolutely nothing to do with what powers it at all , but that said in 1970 the power to weight of the Nagari in relation to other supercars would have creamed the Giacalotto and its peers . Also the Nagari was designed from the ground up in Australia by Duncan and Cambell Bolwell , it was not a donor car reengineered and as for styling the Giacalotto is all said and done an everyday Alfa . The Nagari could proudly hold it's head up against Ferraris , Porsches et al et al .

[pottery beige]

Originally Posted by wrongwaynorris

Absolutely nothing to do with what powers it at all , but that said in 1970 the power to weight of the Nagari in relation to other supercars would have creamed the Giacalotto and its peers . Also the Nagari was designed from the ground up in Australia by Duncan and Cambell Bolwell , it was not a donor car reengineered and as for styling the Giacalotto is all said and done an everyday Alfa . The Nagari could proudly hold it's head up against Ferraris , Porsches et al et al .

sorry i forgot this other thing is just a hotted up italian shopping trolley....