1963 ATS Tipo 100

I took this photograph on a visit to the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1963 ATS Tipo 100 F1 car, and the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection' says this about it:

The ATS ‘Tipo 100’

An Italian failure

 

During Ferrari’s Championship year of 1961, pressures were severe within the company, and six top executives walked out late in the season. They included engineer Carlo Chiti and team manager Romolo Tavoni, who formed the nucleus of a rival team sponsored by Count Giovanni Volpi (patron of the Scuderia Venezia), businessman Jaime Ortiz Patiño, and industrialist Giorgio Billi.

The team was set up at Sasso Marconi, near Bologna, and Chiti began work on a Ferrari-like Formula 1 car with a new V8 engine for 1963. The car was to have been called the Serenissima, but when Volpi backed out of the organization he took the name with him, and the team became known as Automobile Turismo e Sport, or ATS for short.

Phil Hill and Giancarlo Baghetti were recruited from Ferrari as drivers, and when the new car was released to the Press in December 1962 it impressed everyone with its incredibly low build and tiny four overhead camshaft 1494cc V8 engine. This was claimed to produce 190bhp at 10,500rpm and the design seemed promising.

Unfortunately, development was slow, and when the cars made their debut in the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa they were dreadfully prepared. Chassis tubes, welded in place over the engine, had to be sawn through before the engine could be changed!

Both cars retired with transmission trouble, and failed again in the Dutch GP. The team’s transporter crashed en route to the German GP, their next event following a mid-season development programme, and then in much improved trim, ATS ran at Monza and both cars finished – eleventh and fifteenth. A luckless American tour followed, after which the cars were withdrawn. In 1964 one car was resurrected, unsuccessfully, for the Italian GP, but ATS had failed dismally in their attempt to take on Ferrari at his own game and win.