photographs: Simon Clay
This thing is so beautiful it’s rude not to drop a whole gallery on you.
The 5300GT Strada is probably the most beautiful product of the 1961 uproar in the house of Ferrari that saw a bunch of sales and engineering staff leave the company.
One of the engineers that was ousted in the carnage was a Mr Giotto Bizzarini: who then went on to create Iso and his own-label brand of automotive loveliness. The Bertone-designed Strada was ostensibly a street car, but it was more like a racer, with lightweight aluminium bodywork & a semi-monocoque body riveted to the frame.
Combine this with a beautifully balanced, low distribution of weight and you had a very effective racer for the road.
Apparently the 180MPH top speed was realistic, too, powered as it was by that V8 Chevrolet straight out of the Corvette.