Technical characteristics

Platform: Original Bergantin

Distance between axes: 2.62 meters

Total length: 4.20 meters

Total height: 1.30 meters

Total width: 1.31 meters

Ground clearance: 0.15 meters

Front trail: 1.41 meters

Rear trail: 1.44 meters

Weight without gasoline and without pilot: 1,100 kilos

Distribution of weights: 55/45

Naphtha tank for the route: Aluminum 200 liters

Naphtha tank for road courses: 110-liter aluminum

Front suspension: Independent to a deformable parallelogram, a spiral, a shock absorber

Rear suspension: rigid axle with four arms that support it, spiral and concentric shock absorber.

Chevrolet engine

Diameter and stroke: 90.487 cm by 100.01 cm

Displacement: 3.860 cm3

Compression ratio: 10: 1

HP (measured in bank): 298 HP at 6,200 rpm

Torque: 49 kgm at 4,800 rpm

Speed ​​every 1,000 laps in 4th: 42 km / h per thousand with differential 3.08

Manufacturer: Bellavigna brothers period: 1967/68

The carafe was one of the first prototypes to be presented at the tc, its creation was in charge of Reynaldo and Aldo Bellavigna. The construction of the car was from a Kaiser Bergantin chassis since it had an excellent wheelbase in addition to a good trail, being lighter and more maneuverable, also wanted to provide more rational suspensions, keeping the originals of the car with the logical hardening of springs and gas dampers. The rear suspension was similar to that of the Torinos with two turnbuckles and the shock absorber that passes inside the spiral. The roll cage was constructed of chrome molybdenum pipes and weighs 12 kilos forming part of the structure of the car.

Three tanks dominated much of the passenger compartment, one of 100 liters for fuel and two of 15 for water and oil.

The brakes were of a disk in the four wheels Bendix brand.

The gearbox is a four-speed Saenz. The differential is self-locking aluminum.

At the end of 1966, the Bellavigna brothers returned the Chevytú to its owner, José Froilán González. With the departure of the new Tourism Road regulation, they tell Froilán that something better could be done from the base of a brigantine, which he had bought through a newspaper advertisement. It was a used car that the concessionaire Grandío and López had in a garage on Quintana Avenue. There was only one, four cylinders, and the engine, in turn, was sold to me by one who had a Jeep, who knew I had stayed.

The new regulation allowed the use of large series cars with a displacement of more than three liters. The idea was to use a medium car, and the only one was the Bergantin because it was a very light car in which could distribute the weight well, an Alfa Romeo 1900 that had manufactured Kaiser Industries Argentina with Continental engine of 4 cylinders, the Jeep. But just entered into regulations because there was also a version with the Continental 6 cylinder engine of Estanciera, 3700 cm3.

In December of 1966, Aldo walked from Grandío and López to Sáenz Peña's workshop to begin work that took six months.

The design of the body had to have the original windshield with its original position, from there backward it could be free. The engine was also run 30 cm towards the center of the car and began to make the "van" type design with a wire grid. Then the tube was molded in plaster and was made of fiberglass, material that was just beginning to be used in TC.

The platform was reinforced with two triangles of sheet metal that ended at the height of the gearbox. The bodywork, made of 20-gauge sheet, was lined with an anti-roll cage, welded with plates to the base of the platform. The roll cage was made of chrome molybdenum steel tubes. As a result, the car was very light, so much that it was necessary to ballast with 200 kilos of lead to reach the minimum weight, placed in the back.

The suspensions were those of the Bergantin, reformed to lower the roll center and longer spirals. The steering mechanism was one of Peugeot to zipper, lighter.

Mechanically it is equipped with a Chevrolet 230 six-cylinder engine in a line similar to that of Chevytú.

The 230 was chosen because it was 3800 cm3 taken to 4 liters. It had the lightest crankshaft and the largest cylinders, so the intake valves were larger and the engine fed better. At the beginning with about 270 HP but it was exceeded 300. In 1968 the 250 was used, which was a little more robust, a 4200 cm3 jacketed to 4 liters. In 1969, Chrysler hires the Bellavigna Brothers so it goes on to use the Dodge engine.

The box was made by Sáenz based on a Dodge pickup casing, making the gears, with the ratios. It was Sáenz's first box for competition.

Andrea Vianini was appointed at the last minute. Aldo had made friends with the Vianini, both with Andrea and with Giuseppe "Pepino" Vianini, his father who was an importer of Alfa Romeo and Aldo had been accompanying Oscar Cabalén in a Giulietta in the 1961 Grand Prix.

Andrea had run on motorcycles, and in cars with Alfa Romeo and with a Maserati-Chevrolet of National Mechanics that had lent him Froilán González, with which he had come forth.

In the debut of the car in the Autodromo, on Saturday Andrea made the second time, and on Sunday he won his series -the second-, and in the race, he fought the point with Gradassi. That was the race in which "Ampacama" (Julio Devoto) stayed at the start. It ran on the nonexistent Circuit No. 1, which included the Long Fork. The cars came from the arch, almost from General Paz, and when they reached the starting line there was multiple crashes in which seven cars were out of the race. Andrea was hit from behind, and the differential misaligned. The race was stopped, we could repair, and Andrea beat Gradassi won by six seconds, defeating the Torino that seemed unbeatable.

Andrea brought the advertising of Agip gas, an Italian company that sold bottled gas whose logo was yellow. The coincidence was that the yellow car had been painted, to distinguish it in the peloton because there were no cars of that color. That day, on July 16, 1967, when he ran using No. 97, the Autodromo was packed and immediately the public called it "La Garrafa".

He also won for the second time the following year, on March 17, 1968, at the inauguration of the Autodromo "Oscar Cabalén" in Alta Gracia. Coincidentally, Hector Gradassi escorted him again, with a Hare II-Tornado.

"La Garrafa" was mutating according to the regulations, so from V1, it went to V2 that had the most inclined windshield. There were five versions of the body, the first two were made in the workshop with own chassis. The remaining three were made by Dante Baudena in his Baufer workshop. Each version was made by changes in the regulations or by the accidents that the car had, such as the one that Andrea had in Rafaela in 1968, when trying to recover ground he jumped from the canton on the Bernandín curve, where he fell on four wheels, four meters high, and it was deformed that looked like a banana.

The last competition of "La Garrafa" was the tragic Los Cóndores race, where Juan Manuel Bordeu led her. It was presented as Bellavigna V5, its fifth and last version, which had a long tail that covered a larger fuel tank to avoid having to stop refueling. There Bordeu suffered a serious accident because he got rid of a front tire. Juan Manuel Fangio, who was Bordeu's sports godfather, had commented that he had an obsession with that model of covers. The car had Dunlop racing tires, but Bordeu wanted to put two front Pirelli Cinturato because they were wider, and he also liked them because they were the tires that equipped the Lamborghini Miura. He insisted on putting those tires and he was wrong; in the race, a cover was dismantled and he had the accident, in which the cage resisted perfectly. What happened was that the Lamborghini was lighter than a TC car, and also the Dunlop was a special tire with many fabrics.

The most identified driver was Andrea Vianini, with his two victories in Buenos Aires and Alta Gracia, and the second place in Buenos Aires, Marincovich ran it once at the inauguration of "El Zonda" in 1967, when he fought the point with Eduardo Copello until he was delayed because a stone raised by a straggler broke his windshield. In 1969, already with Dodge engine and equipped with ailerons, Andrea ran it in the first three races of Sport Prototipo. Ricardo Peduzzi drove her in the next one, in Alta Gracia, where he overturned and damaged the car a lot. We rebuilt it to run on CT in Los Cóndores, where Bordeu had the accident on July 20, 1969. In almost exactly two years of existence of "La Garrafa" four drivers drove: Andrea Vianini, Carlos Marincovich, Ricardo Peduzzi and Juan Manuel Bordeu.

"La Garrafa" was shot for almost 20 years in the workshop until it was taken to a very good plasterer from Virreyes to start rebuilding it. This work was completed by Jorge Requejo, Ramón's nephew. "La Garrafa" is today, completely restored in perfect condition, being donated to the Fangio Foundation in 2018.