£12,000 MOTOR-CAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22618, 5 January 1937, Page 6

£12,000 MOTOR-CAR

POWERFUL RACE MACHINE "JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT" [from a special correspondent] LONDON, Dec. 12 With £12,000 you can buy 720.000 mugs of beer, 15 comfortable little houses, close to 5,000.000 cigarettes, 2000 radios, or half a million helpings of Italian spaghetti. To young Count Felix Trossi, star of Italian motor racing, £12,000 means none of these things, but a new-fangled racing car. Count Trossi, in his little workshop at Biella, Italy, has been building the freak racer for two years, running up an expense bill that now totals £12,000. All this he reported this week in breathless staccato as he dashed from the Savoy Hotel to Croydon, ending his flying 24-hour visit to London. " I am building the racer just for the fun of it," said the Count. "JReall.y I am in the wool business. But motor racing is my big pleasure. It is worth £12,000 to build a good car that will break records." Count Trossi\s creation is a streamlined racer with an 8-cylinder radial airplane engine mounted in front. Wh.v the airplane engine? Because, says he, it is light, takes little space, has air cooling, and hooks nicely to a frontwheel drive/ Innovations are not new to the count. In last spring's Mille Miglia (1000-mile racing clcssic of Italy), he drove a car that used charcoal for fuel. His record includes the 1500 o.c. championship of Italy, and the international championship in the same class, won in Germany last summer.