A lot has happened in between the car’s construction and its acquisition by the current owner, of course.
Jano was fired from Alfa in 1937 but fortunately the car was pretty much finished, although any prospect of slotting in the new V12 vanished along with Jano.
The Jankovits brothers retained the Aerospider and registered it for street use – the original Fiume licence plates are still with the car. They added a large and hideously inappropriate windscreen, bumpers and turn signals, which ruined the looks but did at least make it acceptable as a road car.
In 1941, however, it was stored away for the duration of the war.
After the war, the Jankovits found themselves under a new Communist regime, their town rechristened Rijeka in the newly formed state of Yugoslavia. Realizing that they were about to lose everything, the brothers dug the car out of storage on Christmas Day 1946 and the same night made a dash through the border and into Italy.
Caught by surprise, the border guards fired after the speeding Alfa – and the bullets left dents in the bodywork that would be rediscovered 60 years later during its restoration.
Original story: http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/central-leader/372041 and http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/central-leader/569337
Photographed at Hershey's by Kit Foster: http://www.kitfoster.com/2009/10/all-roads-lead-to-hershey.html Kit's website has been one of my recommended for quite a while
The second owner of this early ‘54 Vette drove this car to a friend’s house to have the seats reupholstered and took them out, set an old wooden Pepsi pop bottle case in place of the driver’s seat and drove it home and parked it under a Ponderosa Pine tree. That was 1963 in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado at an elevation of 9,000 feet.
The yard was started as a auto recycler/junkyard by Walter Messerli in 1933. Fast forward to 1975, Franz Messerli (his son) took over. The son tried to carry on the business selling parts. Then tried to make money as a museum. Basically the business went under and now the grounds are to be emptied and cleaned up.
The above is a turn signal semaphore
http://foto.blick.ch/album/CID-u0003196-147/ Best website I've found... use the slideshow function.
