Racing Cars of the Seas Cantiere navale San Marco 1953-1975
Author: Gerald Guetat
Publisher: Giorgio Nada Editore
ISBN: 9788879115896
Languages: Italian & English
Binding: Hardbound, perfect binding, slipcover
Pages: 208
Illustrations: roughly 200
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Price: $56.49 USD on Amazon
Review by Wallace Wyss
All images Courtesy of Giorgio Nada
This book is focused on the history of the Cantiere Navale San Marco boatyard and their evolution from 1954 to 1975. It’s a wonderful book if you want to learn how high performance car engines were used in Italian boats.
The San Marco boatyard, based near Milano, was the only boat builder that extensively used Italian car engines for both its racing and production boats, including those of Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Fiat and Abarth.
But they also used good old heavy cast iron pushrod American V8 engines from Ford and a few from Chevrolet. I have to give them credit for discovering what Iso, Bizzarrini, Monteverdi and AC already knew – that American engines put out a helluva lot of power for what they cost, regardless of their mundane materials and looks.The book also show the use of many American outboard engines.
The yard produced such models as the 600 Del Mare, Giulietta del Mare, and Appia; all fast and prestigious wooden runabouts with elegant lines and refined details.
The book likens the firm’s founder, Oscar Scarpa, to a fashion designer who, instead of doing the latest dress designs, built several hundred exclusive boats with his son Sandro, each boat with its own unique specifications, either technically or aesthetically, and all beautifully finished.
The book also discusses the racing careers, and in one case even shows a customer indulging in his other hobby as a mountain climber – as if to show he was the complete sportsman! (It even has a painting of his magnificent villa, giving us a fleeting glimpse of a sportsman boater’s life style).
The author points out that Scarpa picked up the idea of the three pointed hull, showing he was he was progressive and eager to go in new directions. The book goes into detail on their quest for thirty speed records. Apparently the elder Scarpa had quite a few crashes in racing, but was thrown out of the boat each time. He was a strong swimmer and always survived. He died of natural causes in his early 50s.
There are a lot of great car pictures in the book including; Maserati Mistral, Ferrari 500 Superfast, Cadillac, Maserati 150, Lancia Appia Zagato, And Cisitalias, but all of complete cars. I’d rather have the engine shot of the engine as it sat in the car and close to the the same angle showing how it sat in the boat, in order to see how much of the engine was used or had to be adapted. But it is exciting for an Italian car enthusiast to know that some of his favorite engines were also used out on the water.
A few of the color photographs are world class but much of the book is black and white. The one picture to die for is one of a polished wood boat on Lake Como, the wood hull showing wearing a Ferrari shield.
Included in the book is a compendium of every boat they produced, and the list of engines is amazing, from Cadillac, to Evinrude, to Maserati to Johnson. It’s obvious they were eager to try American engines. The Italian engines they used included Alfa Romeo Giulietta 1300, Fiat 305 diesel, Maserati 200s, Ferrari, Maserati V8 (from 5600cc).
Although the San Marco boatyard was very innovative and creative, when the economy took a dip, their market evaporated and they couldn’t sell any boats. they didn’t have any financial reserves to bounce back when the economy did.
I predict more Italian boat makers will have books about them, and it makes sense; Italians were every creative with cars, why should we ignore the boats?
If you would like to read about San Marco’s close competitor, Riva boats, click here.
THE REVIEWER: Wallace Wyss is the author of the Incredible Barn Finds series of books about rare cars bought for a song, available from Enthusiast Book, Hudson, WI.