www.QV500.com - Abarth Record Monza Part 2: Record Monza Corna
 

850 S Bialbero Record Monza, Le Mans 1960

In June 1960, the Abarth team made its inaugural trip to the Le Mans 24 Hours. With the ACO's smallest engined GT class accepting vehicles of up to 1.3-litres, Abarth decided to contest the categories for more highly developed 750 and 850cc Sports racers. Freed then from the requirement to race in production trim, a trio of factory hot rods were built specially for the job. Despite closely resembling the standard Zagato Record Monza, these three cars were actually fitted with new bodywork designed by Mario Colucci who had joined Abarth at the beginning of 1960 as technical director from Alfa Romeo.

   

The bodies were fabricated by Corna in Turin, the three Le Mans prototypes being easily distinguishable from Zagato cars thanks to a gaping nostril that fed cool air to new front-mounted radiators. Additionally equipped with ventilated sail panels and engine covers, Colucci also reprofiled the rear wings, fitted new tail lights and a more tightly cropped valance. Two of the cars (#49 and 50) received special 847cc engines, the third (#60) getting a 705cc unit. Despite all three of these second series prototypes retiring from the race with clutch problems, Le Mans did serve as a useful test bed for some of the hardware that would find its way onto Colucci's revamped 982cc Record Monza set to appear later in the year. Like the 750 Bialbero, Abarth's 1-litre twin cam engine made its debut in a Pininfarina-bodied Record car, this time driven to four international Class H records by Umberto Maglioli at Monza in September 1960. Aftwerwards, the new 982cc Record Monza was shown to select individuals back at the Abarth factory before making its public debut at the Turin Salon in November. Essentially, the Colombo-designed twin cam head remained identical to its earlier application in the 750 Bialbero.

 

1000 Bialbero Record Monza Corna 		Equipped with all manner of Abarth hop-up parts including special camshafts, cylinder heads, valves, manifolds, exhausts and a pair of Weber 36 DCL4 carbs, output got a dramatic boost. For racing, compression was normally set at 10.0:1, enough to produce 91bhp at 7100rpm. Now capable of topping 205kmh, the Record Monza had been transformed to a genuine pocket rocket capable of humbling much more powerful cars on certain tracks. By comparison, for street use compression was reduced to 9.3:1 and 84bhp at 7000rpm. However, whilst all the headlines inevitably focused on Abarth's new 1-litre engine, just as important was the arrival of front disc brakes manufactured in conjunction with Girling.
   

Externally, Colucci redesigned the bodywork to incorporate a new open headlight nose and the same back-end treatment that had been seen on the trio of cars raced at Le Mans earlier in 1960. The cabin profile remained unchanged, these Corna-bodied examples retaining the distinctive three-piece rear windows. The wheels were new though, Abarth switching to 13-inch Elektron rims manufactured by Amadori. There were also a few relatively minor switchgear changes with the oil temperature guage being repositioned from far right to far left, the car (like all 600D's) now being started by a key rather than a pull-up toggle. One new option was a factory installed roll cage. Abarth continued to offer a twin cam 700cc version, the only difference to the 1000 Bialbero being drum brakes on the former because of homologation requirements. Additionally, three existing pushrod engines were carried over for installation in the new Record Monza. The entry level 850 produced 52bhp at 6000rpm, the 850S had 54bhp at 6300rpm and the 850SS had 57bhp at 6500rpm. Compression ratios spanned 8.8 to 9.9:1.
 

1000 Bialbero Record Monza Corna		 No doubt somewhat embarassed by the triple retirement from 1960's Le Mans 24 Hour race, Abarth were back in 1961 with a team of five works cars. Four were similar to the special variants built for the 1960 Le Mans and the fifth was a special 700cc Spyder of no relation to the Record Monza series (#49). Of the four closed bodied entries, three had 700cc engines (#8, 55 and 56) whilst there was also a solitary 850cc car (#60). Despite all four of the 700cc cars retiring (one just a lap from the end and whilst leading its class), the 850 of Hulme and Hyslop came home an astonishing 14th overall and first in class.
   
This marked a fitting high point for the Record Monza series but the writing was already on the wall for what had become Abarth's most successful GT racing car. Such was the pace of development during the early sixties that within three months of victory at Le Mans, Abarth had officially debuted an even more extreme 1-litre Bialbero racer with completely new Colucci-designed bodywork fabricated by Beccaris of Turin. Although built on essentially the same underpinnings as Corna-bodied variants, these Beccaris versions never carried the Record Monza tag and were becoming much more specialised. This was reflected in the sales figures for 1962 when a mere 26 examples of the new car were delivered, all of which were for racing. When Abarth officially discontinued Record Monza production in late 1961, it marked the end of an era for small capacity GT cars that could be raced at the highest level yet still driven regularly on the road. As with the Zagato-bodied versions, exact production figures for Corna cars are estimated to have been around the 200 mark.