1964 Abarth 2400 Coupe

Carl Abarth (Carlo) was born in Vienna in 1908 and his formative years were punctuated by the two world wars. In the aftermath of the first he started racing cycles and motorcycles, which resulted in his apprenticeship at Castagna, more notable for their coachworks, designing frames for them, and even constructing his own racing machine built around a Sunbeam 600cc unit. His motorcycle-racing career took off introducing him to the leading figures in motorsport including Porsche and Nuvolari, with whom he became long-term friends and he moved to live in Italy in the early 1930s adopting the Italian version of his name. He achieved numerous successes on two wheels, culminating with him becoming European champion before his career was ended by a near-fatal accident in 1939.

Carlo Abarth’s fame lay principally in performance tuning and specialist work on small-engined cars; however he made a foray into the larger luxury sector of the marker in the late...