Imagine arriving at an historic race with your vintage Ferrari on this instead of in an enclosed trailer. It can happen, as Automotive Traveler’s Rich Truesdell discovered recently, and it can be yours if you have the scratch. Read more after the jump.


This is a piece of history and it is now on the block. I’ll let Rich tell you how he discovered the sale:

The August issue of Classic and Sports Car arrived in my mailbox this week from the U.K. While thumbing through the cars for sale that I know I’ll never be able to afford, this listing from Talacrest Limited caught me eye. It’s a Fiat 682/RN2 truck/bus chassis that was rebodied by Carrozzeria Bartoletti between 1957 and 1959. From 1959 to 1965, it served as the Ferrari factory team transporter, and for the SEFAC Ferrari team in 1965 to 1970. Digging a little deeper into the history of this unique piece of motor sports history, I’ve been able to learn that Maranello also used at least two Fiat 642s that are similar to this vehicle (except they lack the two bars shown across the front grille of the 682). Maserati also used a similar vehicle. And a near twin of this vehicle was originally constructed for Lance Reventlow to transport his Scarab Grand Prix cars during their ill-fated 1960 season.

If, like me, you had the green two-car Matchbox race car transporter as a kid, this brought back fantastic memories.

This post has a lot of links embedded within it, like the Talacrest Limited ad, a link to the Ferrari Chat Forum about these beasts, and a feature in the june 2009 issue of Automobile Magazine that dives into the history of these transporters a little deeper. Rich has also provided a time-line of the ownership history, so why not just go over the Automotive Traveler and read more about this unique and historic vehicle.