Concluding the mini series of motoring themed articles, this week we head to Los Angeles, and a project to restore a piece of race car history.

In the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge, Santo’s Italian Car Service has been restoring classic Alfa Romeos and Fiats since the business was founded by Santo Rimicci in the 1980s. Today it is run by his son, Anthony, and their output includes work on vintage race cars.

A couple of years ago, Anthony bought what he describes as "a very significant 1967 Alfa Romeo GTV with period SCCA Trans Am / 2.5 Challenge race history". Conscious of this heritage, he had his heart set on restoring the car 'as raced' in 1972.

Black and white photo of two cars neck and neck in a race with a crowd looking on.
Dave Burns at the wheel of the 1967 Alfa Romeo GTV in 1972.

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"Getting the livery right meant endless hours of research and collecting photos, including speaking with Dave Burns, the original driver... The cheap and easy way was to have it done in vinyl lettering, but not for this car. It had to be hand-painted, just as it originally was." — Anthony Rimicci

The 1967 Alfa Romeo GTV in race action, and some of the original livery work in 1972.

After searching for months, Anthony found Valentina Trentini (@brushettasigns) via a project she did for Emory Motor Sports, Rod Emory's renowned Porsche restoration and customisation shop. He knew right away that he wanted her for this special brief, and recalls that "she sounded more excited than I was".

  

Valentina Trentini at work on the 1967 Alfa Romeo GTV. Film by Josh Nardo (@tastyheavy) with music from Alberto Bof (@alberto_bof).

Val used the archival photos from Dave Burns to create the patterns, and get as close as she could to the original work. She observed that:

"[The sign painter] did not use any particular fonts, just their own personal writing styles. You can see it in the word 'engineering' on the side, which is very wobbly, not block letters, but uppercase letters painted quickly. Overall the work isn't perfect—the letters aren't the same heights and the numbers have a very weird shadow. I used lots of tracing paper, a pencil, some imagination, and took my time until I was happy with it."

To prepare the bodywork for painting, Val used an adhesive cleaner, and then worked with 1 Shot enamels, adding a bit of red to the white to get better coverage. She thinned the paint with a urethane reducer, which meant she could come back in with the grey shadows after only about an hour. The brushes were both Mack brand, specifically their 1992 and 189L series.

Work in progress on the vehicle livery.

"Watching the car transform from a blank canvas to a finished product was amazing. The end result surpassed my expectations, and is spot on to how it was when the car hit the track in 1972. All the hand-painting on the car has given me motivation to finish it and get it back out on the race track soon." — Anthony Rimicci
Thank you to Anthony Rimicci (@anthonyrimicci) and Valentina Trentini (@brushettasigns) for their collaboration on this article.

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