A Unique 1950 racecar built with the help of world champion Juan Manuel Fangio to Campaign on behalf of his native Argentina for sale with H&H Classics at Imperial War Museum in Duxford, England.
When highly gifted engineer and car designer Don Juan Ovidio Alesso teamed up with Five-time Formula One World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio, they created an all-Argentinian single seater that could challenge for international honours.
The Car is known as the Alesso. Its production goes back to the late 40s, and now the racecar is back in the limelight. It features bespoke 7-litre, quad-cam, flat-12 engine, aeronautically inspired multi-turbular chassis and a handcrafted aluminium body.
The Alesso embodied a chassis, engine and body of Argentinian manufacturing. Displacing 7054cc, the flat-twelve engine in question boasted a seven-bearing cranksaft, monobloc construction, four chain-driven overhead camshafts, two valves per cylinder and six downdraught Rochester carburettors.
Alesso reportedly was promised financial support from the Peron government, though that support did not materialize and “this brave effort to build a purely Argentinian challenger was outmoded before its full potential could be realized,” the auction house said in its news release.
“Having won the Rafaela 500-mile race on 24th December 1950 aboard a Talbot-Lago T26C, Fangio stayed in the area to attend a fund-raising banquet for the Alesso single-seater,” the auction house said. “Hampered by a lack of funds and teething troubles with the monstrous 7-litre powerplant, progress on the Formula Libre project was slow. After a series of successful test bench runs, the engine was finally installed on November 11th 1952 with the car making its public debut at Buenos Aires’ ‘October 17th’ Autodrome shortly thereafter.
