Famous vintage race cars worthy of restoration are getting scarce, so wealthy hobbyists are having to move on to a new frontier — race car haulers. Don Orosco's Scarab Transporter is one of the best.
The Scarab was a workhorse car for a great many teams back in the halcyon days of racing, light and fast with great driving dynamics, but it needed to be trotted to the many racing events. Enter transporters, this one in particular has been associated with some particularly noteworthy figures. When it was originally built, it was destined for Lance Reventlow's European F1 season, built in Italy by Bartoletti on a Fiat chassis. Reventlow eventually loaned it to Lotus racing or a season and then sold it to Carroll Shelby for the 1964 European racing season, it was Carroll who painted it blue. Shelby ran with Allan Mann in '65 and then sold the Scarab to him, and in turn it was sold to David Piper, and then Anthony Bamford. At that point it became stuck in the middle of a legal dispute and sat in an Arizona holding lot for two decades, baking away.
It's at this point Orosco heard of and acquired the rig, dropping somewhere near $600,000 into its restoration and returned the transporter to its former glory. Head over to Automobile for the complete story on this remarkable rig and what it took to restore it. [Automobile Mag]
Photo credit Brian Konoske, Cobra Ferrari Wars