All racing cars have a history, but few have stories behind them that raise to the level of classic opera. The Ferrari 250GT Drogo (AKA ‘The Breadvan’) is one that does.

Giotto Bizzarrini was working for Ferrari as head of sport and GT car development. He was the driving force behind the development of the wildly successful 250 TR prototypes and 250GT cars of the late fifties and early sixties. He was putting the finishing touches on what would be the Ferrari 250 GTO in November of 1961 when he and seven other top members of the Ferrari racing and design teams were fired. Their sin was formally complaining to Enzo Ferrari about the disruptive behavior of Enzo’s wife Laura, both in the factory and at various racing venues.

Bizzarrini, with some of the other ex-Ferrari staffers, formed their own company ATS. Their express intent was to build both Formula One and GT race cars in direct competition with their old boss. One of their investors was Count Giovanni Volpi, who among his other interests owned and ran the Scuderia Serenissima racing team that regularly bought cars from Ferrari.

When the Ferrari 250 GTO was ready for sale to customers in early 1962, Count Volpi found that Ferrari refused to sell him the new car. This was in retaliation for Volpi’s support of Bizzarrini. Not one to just roll over to such an insult, Volpi approached Bizzarrini to have him rework a 250GT SWB he had purchased the year before to compete with the GTOs. Bizzarrini was happy to oblige.

Bizzarrini took chassis 2819GT and made modifications, including lowering the engine and moving it farther back from the front suspension to achieve both better weight distribution and a lower center of gravity. He then had Piero Drogo design a radical new body for it. The resulting car, completed in just 14 days, sported a radical roofline and extreme ‘Kamm Effect’ tail that was dubbed ‘The Breadvan’ by the French press whe it made its appearance at Le Mans.

The rules at that time allowed GT cars to run with revised bodies but Enzo Ferrari protested vehemently against the car to the FIA, and all race organizers, that Bizzarrini’s changes were such that it was no longer a Ferrari 250GT. Indeed, Ferrari insisted that the Ferrari badges be removed from the car. As a result of Enzo’s lobbying efforts, ‘The Breadvan’ ran most of its races as a ‘prototype’ and not as a GT so it was not directly competing with the GTO, which went on to win the GT championship in 1962.

Also by the end of that year, Enzo decided that Count Volpi was better to have as a friend than an enemy. He therefore went back to selling The Count the cars he wanted and Count Volpi ‘retired’ the Breadvan from racing, using it instead as his personal transportation. It is not known if he used it to ‘get his groceries’ but the extra space behind the seats could have come in handy.

Fujimi has brought this rare car alive in 1:18 scale with a resin model of the car as it raced at Brands Hatch in England in 1962. It is truly a stellar effort.

As always one must start with the cars shape and its stance. They both look ‘spot on’ with the car sitting quite low just a Bizzarrini designed it.














Next is the finish, and again the model gets high marks for good paint and a fair job making the seams and openings look realistic, something that can be a challenge on sealed bodied resin cars.



Even though this is a sealed car there is a lot to see as you look in through the windows, openings and the clear Plexiglas ‘bubble’ over the carburetors. High marks for things like the interior, the wire wheels, the bonnet fasteners and the very nicely done tail pipes. The carbs are only passible but overall there is little wanting for the details you can see.















And what you see is what you get. This is always the drawback with ‘sealed’ resin cars but in this case the sting is not as bad as it could be because just about anyone interested in this car is very likely to own a Ferrari 250 GTO or 250GT SWB or 250GT California so you can get your full interior and engine ‘fix’ looking at those models.

A great looking model that comes complete with good guys, bad guys, royalty, revenge, vendettas and a crazy woman – who could ask for more?