Olden Holden

This car has an incredible history, recently discovered in a shed in South Fremantle it was a prototype for a new Ferrari that was going to be any entry level model sent into the lucrative Californian market in 1959.

It was shipped under cover to Fremantle on an Ethiopian fishing trawler that later was to be the same boat that shipped Elvis Presley during his secret deployment in Taiwan back to the US to collect his second pink Cadillac.

Arturo Nuvilaro, a Venetian dentist who was de-listed following a series of in-seat deaths, fled Italy after Mussolini. He used to drive this car on the sands south of Fremantle when the tide was out night after night ,to avoid publicity. And to avoid the police as it was never licensed.

Arturio was known as "Rusty" in the port city. It is said he had the most rusty toolkit in Southern hemisphere. He was also an accomplished Harpsichordist and performed - mainly from the Baroque - to crowds of up to 10 at South Beach during the Festival.

Every evening allegedly, Arturio would send his report back to Enzo Ferrari using only Morse code and a crystal set rather than go to the Post Office -where they hated Italians using the public phones "as they can't even talk proper English and they eat garlic that soaks into the bakelite"

Originally the car arrived with a 125cc Lambretta engine but over 11 years it was fitted with a two cylinder Perkins and Sons marine diesel (a failure as too slow) , a prototype 4.5 litre Ferrari quad cam V12 (a failure as it was too fast) and finally a straight six Chevrolet engine taken from a local hot rodder's chrome bulldozer.

Enzo Ferrari finally ended the project when it was found that Nuvilaro had an affair with one of Ferrari's girlfriends, Carlotta Lombardi. Ferrari wrote in his biography "It was not the fact that he took my Carlotta, it was that she choose a common meccanico who was blind and had one leg not the two legs"

The car sat in a garage in South Fremantle covered in a mixture of mutton fat and whale oil until it was uncovered when an American engineer building the Robb Jetty Abatoir saw it. Over a glass or two of Arturio's home made Chianti, the American sensationally traded his Italian wife ("too firey for me") for the car and shipped it back to the US where his brother, an executive of General Motors, saw it and basically, copied the design and launched it as the Holden FE in Australia.

If you look close you can see the lion logo and therein lies another incredible tale. Arturio's great great great Grandfather Maria was a lion tamer and posed most of the lions seen to this day as models to sculpt lions at the front of Italian houses from Della Vigna to Fremantle.

From there the provenance is a little vague but the owner tells me he still has the Cuban newspapers that were under the still original floor mats and a quantity of Czech Crowns were found down behind the seats. (but I think he is a lying ****, because he had a Kamahl record in his hand too )

The owner would not let me photograph any more as - "you only-a do-a this and put-a on da Face-a booka or da blipa foto my friend - even though I had not even met him before.

The things you find when you look hey!..but a good picture tells a story...but a great picture .... YELLS a story!

... so keep trying - like me.