Abarth Simca 2000

I really enjoyed this car, a 1964 Abarth Simca 2000 (Dua Mila). This was originally robin's egg blue, a full factory competition model. It was raced at 1964 Mid Ohio USRRC race by Ray Cuomo. At the time, Porsche and Cobra were tied for USRRC points (though they raced in separate classes) so the Cobra team blocked the 904s for Cuomo to deny Porsche first place points. The Abarth won, and Cuomo went on to substitute for Cobra works driver Tom Payne in the Northeast U.S. races, racing a works Cobra 289 roadster.

I always thought the car had a lovely shape, and you can see a lot of this car in many of the performance Japanese cars today.

The exhaust pipe tips were suspended by thick rubber cords which allowed for the movement of the exhaust system as the engine twisted with torque. The rear flares are the works's competition flares and the wheels are the Campagnalo Elektron mags. This car was extraordinarily original.

I added a Daytona-coupe like radiator air exit, just because I could. It was surely not stock. Colonel Loren Pearson, a sometime SCCA racer of the late '60s, who had owned both an AS 2000 and a 427 Cobra, said that his Abarth could accelerate with the 427, but that was not true. The car had maybe 200 hp. and weighed over 1,600 lbs and could only beat the Cobras on a hillclimb with a superb driver, like the great Franco Patria -- see the 1964 hillclimbs in the book.

Outside our Arizona home circa 1982? Back then we had enough rain so that our desert would sprout grass. We haven't had rains like this for over 10 years. I had raced a rear-engine Fiat 600D and a Fiat Abarth 1600 Periscopio, and had spent a day on a test-track with the AS2000. I never got comfortable with the throttle-off oversteer and the necessity to ADD power to get the nose pointed around a corner. If you added too much power you would drive off the road and, if you backed off, you would spin off.

Gas was dumped in the quick-fill cap and proceed downward through a 5-inch tube inside the cockpit. The Webers were 58 mm.!