Long before the Volpis became associated with Le Mans, the name evoked the film industry. Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata (1877-1947) founded the Venice film festival in 1932 and the awards for best actor bear his name. The prized golden lion that honours the best film is a reference to the winged lion of Saint Mark, the symbol of the Republic of Venice, known as La Serenissima, and also the logo of the Scuderia Serenissima founded in 1960 by Volpi’s son Giovanni.

 The American circuit of Sebring was the scene of the team’s breakthrough. Giovanni’s own Ferrari 250 GT earned a class win for the Serenissima in 1960 and the team won the race outright two years later with the Ferrari 250 TR driven by Jo Bonnier and Lucien Bianchi.

In 1961 the Scuderia Serenissima entered three cars for the 29th annual 24 Hours of Le Mans, a Ferrari 250 GT, a Maserati Tipo 63 and an Abarth 700 S. Star Le Mans drivers Ludovico Scarfiotti, Nino Vaccarella and Maurice Trintignant, who also drove in Formula One for the team, formed the driver line-up. None of the three cars made the finish line that year but Volpi returned in 1962 with one of the most orginal Ferraris ever seen at Le Mans.

Enzo Ferrari having refused to sell him two 250 GTOs, Giovanni Volpi acquired the 250 GT driven by four-time Le Mans winner Olivier Gendebien in the Tour Auto. Engineer Giotto Bizzarrini orchestrated major alterations, which earned the resulting machine the evocative nickname of “breadvan”, coined by English reporters.

In 1962, the Scuderia Serenissima entered three Ferraris for Le Mans, one with future 24 Hours winner Dan Gurney at the wheel. However, once again, all three retired. Driven by Carlo Maria Abate and Colin Davis, the Ferrari Breadvan made a splendid start, streaking ahead of the factory Ferrari GTOs into the top ten. However, three hours into the race a broken driveshaft dashed all hopes. Today though, the breadvan is an integral part of the Ferrari story, acknowledged as one of the most unusual, striking cars ever seen.

Giovanni Volpi still looks back on the breadvan era as one of his proudest moments even though Serenissima later became a full-blown manufacturer, as we will see in the second and final part of this series.

Photo (D.R. / Archives ACO) - Giovanni Volpi said of the Ferrari 250 GT that raced the 1962 Le Mans 24 Hours, fondly known as the breadvan, that it was “a fantastic car [...] that held the road superbly [...]. It lay seventh in the early stages of the race, just behind the prototypes, making a laughing stock of the factory GTOs.”