Alex Bacon grew up a student of automobile design. He cut his teeth as a teenager with a ground up restoration on his father’s ’63 Ferrari 250 GTE and fell willing victim to the allure of its sexy design, exotic engineering and the quixotic addiction that comes from driving something you meticulously rebuilt piece by piece. He liked the car but he wanted less—less concession to creature comfort, less performance robbing accessories, less overhead to wrangle through curves. An idea began to form, an idea about something light, fast and nimble, something simple but exotic—a purpose built vehicle like the cars competing in the 1953 to 1961 Worlds Sports Car Championship. But first he had a skill set to acquire, experience to gain, time to refine a vision of just what that idea entailed. He spent many years restoring sports cars (the Bosley MK I that came out of his shop debuted at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 1996, garnering a First in Class and the Briggs Cunningham Trophy – the first of 5 awards to date that cars from his shop have received), fabricating everything from bumpers to aluminum trim to sliding, Plexiglas side windows, and maintaining client’s cars that included Siatas, Fiat 8Vs, Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Maseratis.
Alfa Romeo’s famed ’50s sports racer, the 6C 3000CM “Disco Volante” or “Flying Saucer”. Photo: Alfa Romeo
Alex had long admired Ferrari and Maserati, but a V-12 Ferrari engine was rare and the price point was formidable, not to mention that separating one from its parent car seemed a historical violation. He considered the Maserati 6-cylinder engine, but it was too heavy (the crankshaft alone is almost 100-lbs), equally rare, and almost as expensive, so the relatively plentiful yet exotic Alfa Romeo 2600 engine was a suitable choice. In keeping with the engine selection, the Sports Racer should be Alfa Romeo in concept. Alex liked the Carrozzeria Colli designed 6C 3000M, but had reservations about building a replica; his SZ replica in progress at the rear of his shop was an ongoing project that demonstrated the difficulty in accurately reproducing any model. A car that incorporated his ideas was the goal. And after spending 30-plus years restoring Siatas, Fiat 8Vs, Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Maseratis, it seemed that designing and building your own car was just an extension of what he’d been doing all along. The heartbreak of his chosen career—the heartbreak of anyone in the vintage automobile restoration business—is that after pouring thousands of hours into a project, a restorer’s final experience culminates watching the car disappear into a delivery trailer. Alex wanted a car that, after all those hours, he could own himself. He wanted the challenge of manifesting a personal interpretation of the ’50s sports racers, and the only way forward was to build one. After restoring and driving a Maserati A6 GCS, he knew how the car should drive. He had an idea what it should look like, as well. In many ways, that Maserati served as inspiration. But he didn’t want a racecar; his dream was to drive his car in rallies, to and from shows, or any time or place he chose. He knew that he wanted an open car, and he trusted that his design instinct would deliver an aesthetically pleasing integration of line and proportion. What he needed was some way to begin.
