Giocattolo

Giocattolo Motori Pty Ltd was a short-lived Australian car company, founded in 1986 by sports car enthusiast Paul Halstead and Formula One designer Barry Lock. The company's name comes from the Italian word for "toy".

The Giocattolo was originally based on a heavily-modified Alfa Romeo Sprint with a mid-mounted Alfa V6 engine. By the fourth prototype, the V6 engine had proved to be too difficult and expensive to import and install in the car, so the company instead used a Sprint 4-cylinder body shell. The V6 was replaced by a rear-mounted Holden V8 engine built by Tom Walkinshaw. As well as being cheaper, these engines had more power than the Alfa engines they had originally intended to use; the reported top speed of the V8-powered Giocattolo was convert|160|mi/h|km/h|abbr=on. It is unknown what happened to the factory Sprint engines and gearboxes that were taken from the cars.

Including the Alfa-powered third prototype (which was rebuilt and re-fitted with the Holden V8 after an accident with a police car almost destroyed the vehicle), just fifteen Giocattolos were built before the company folded in 1989. Thirteen of the fifteen cars are believed to still be in existence and one is unaccounted for. The other - Build No. 007 - was infamously destroyed in a fiery high-speed crash at Eastern Creek Raceway in February 2001, claiming the life of its driver, 29 year-old Todd Wilkes.

The third prototype appeared on the TV show "Beyond 2000".

External links

* [http://www.giocattolo.com.au Giocattolo History Site]