Ferrari 166 Project

We are diving into the 166 Berlinetta soon and needed to set it up on a fixture for better access to the panels. The car came to us as a operable but it had many needs. The body had excessive amounts of plastic filler and many of the unique details were “muted” out. When we gently stripped the car we found lots of areas where the aluminum had been work-hardened and cracked and other areas where it had been burned through by careless grinding tools.

This car was built by Touring of Milan Italy and they were famous for the Superlegarra or “Superlight” coachwork. I am not sure why this is such a noteworthy style of construction as it is just very poorly bent (often kinked) small steel tubes to support the aluminum body work. The steel tubes were unpainted of course, and bent around and riveted to this tubing was unpainted aluminum sheet metal to make up the body work. This led to a galvanic reaction that cause major corrosion on both the steel and aluminum even on this car that spent the majority of its life in the South West US.

We have to re-make many areas of this car but with such simple construction it should not be too difficult. What I worry about is the small detail trim pieces that all need to be assembled to the car to make sure there is material to screw into while keeping everything in alignment.