Alfa Romeo 8C 1935 #50014 / one question to Simon Moore!

Dear Sir,
I have red some time ago about your report onto the Alfa 8C chassis50014. DID YOU EVER INSPECT PERSONALLY THIS CAR? when did you inspect this Alfa ?

Thanks in advance for your kindly reply.
Best regards
CM

Here is the Simon Moore report : "According to El Grafico at the time and various biographies of Fangio and Onofre Marimon, as researched by Cris and Lao, the engine, the rest of the wreck and all the spares was sold by the Pessatti family to Juan Manuel Fangio, probably in cooperation with Onofre Marimon. The frame was seemingly too damaged to consider repair so Fangio turned to Conrado Volpi, a local manufacturer of racing frames. Volpi made about 13 or 14 chassis for different single seaters, most with circular holes in the frame for lightening. Fangio’s Chevrolet-engined car was one of the first frames from Volpi. Inspection of that car at the Fangio museum in Balcarce in 2001 shows that Volpi used round holes in the chassis frame, although on this early example the holes are only on the inside of the side rails, not punched right through. He also bolted the cross members into the side rails using a distinctive shape bracketry around the bolts.

Volpi used what he could from the wreck like cross members, including the front that had been ripped off in Pessatti’s accident, and some of the rear of the chassis but the main part of the side rails were newly made. The cross members and trailing arm mounting points were bolted to this frame rather than welded (as per Alfa Romeo practice). The way that these items were bolted in is quite distinctive and is very much in line with Volpi’s then current practice as evidenced by the Volpi-Chevy.

It seems that Fangio was looking for a more competitive (independently suspended) car to race in place of the Volpi Chevy, which was cart sprung at the rear and transverse leaf at the front in the stock block formula but also a car that, with the Alfa 8C35 motor, could allow him to compete against the Europeans for the first time. However, the Automobile Club of Argentina recognised Fangio’s talents and started to supply him with European-made modern race cars and his career took off, as we all know, becoming an Alfa Romeo team driver in 1950 and 1951. That made the Volpi-chassised Alfa redundant and it was never finished, sitting in a shed for many years with a Maserati radiator, a Tipo 308 oil tank and no body. The engine was the original 50014 but the gearbox/differential unit seems to have been from an 8C2900 because the trailing arms at the rear were not drilled as they should be for a Tipo C. That was probably the one from the ex Arzani botticella which Fangio acquired in a swap with Niemiz as discussed below..."

 

????
Thanks for your suggestion