A 100-year old Fiat, which was once upon a time a competitor for the Land Speed Record, will run for the first time in a century at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in June.
The S76 was designed by Fiat to wrest back the Land Speed Record from Mercedes in 1911 and, in the hands of Pietro Bordini, came agonisingly close. The car broke the record at a speed of 135mph (just over 217km/h), but it was never an official result, as the car couldn't make a return run within one hour on the sands at Ostende in Belgium.
Of the two cars built, one was dismantled at the outbreak of WW1 while a second was bought by a Russian aristocrat and eventually made its way to Australia. It was there that Bristol-based enthusiast Duncan Pittaway found the car and in 2003 bought it and reunited it with its original 28.5-litre (not a typo...) engine.
The car has been carefully restored by Roach Manufacturing in Southampton and will be driven by Pittaway at Goodwood. He said that "After restoring a Bugatti T35, I was looking for a new challenge and the S76, which is one of the more maligned cars of its generation, fitted the bill nicely. All of the original S76 components that have survived have been restored, from the chassis and engine down to the suspension, axles, pedals, steering box, etc, with the gearbox, radiator and bodywork being created using the original Fiat drawings. As the last and largest of the huge-engined Edwardian monsters, it should be sensational to see."
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The Goodwood Festival of Speed takes place from June 26th to 29th this year.