Only a single original Iso Grifo convertible was built: this car, actually a companion to the original A3/L prototype coupe, with which it shared such distinctive features as the side exhaust rakishly snaking through the passenger’s side of the cowl and under the rocker panel trim with its nearly matte finish, a nose with a crisp “dual-nostril” fascia, and angled vents in the rear fenders. Indeed, as a one-off body, almost every line was at least subtly different from the subsequent Grifo production coupes.
Following its show career, the one-off Spider was exported to the U.S., likely in 1967, as it has long been titled by that year. Its original owner is believed to have been David Ellis of New York City. Mr. Ellis would offer the car several times through advertisements in Road & Track, whose classifieds section was then the source for interesting automobiles.
The car was sold to a dealer in Southern California, and in 1973 acquired by Greg Garrison. Everyone who was anyone on the West Coast sports-car circuit knew Greg Garrison — Rudi Klein very much included. Correspondence between the two men, discovered in the Klein files, indicates that one was often pursuing a car from the other!
In this instance, Rudi won the tug-of-war and purchased the Spider from Mr. Garrison in 1980. By this time, the car had been refinished to its present shade of red and fitted with a small luggage rack on the rear deck, both of which remain. At some point prior to this work, it had also been involved in an accident, necessitating the fitment of a stock front Grifo front clip, with a slightly different nose arrangement than the original. In this form the car was used by Rudi for a time as an occasional road automobile, as indicated by charming photographs in the file… and then into the yard it went, and there it remained until now, with the balance of its original distinctive features wonderfully intact.
(Introductory description courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.)
