Carving out an acclaimed reputation at some of Italy’s finest automotive brands in the 1950s and 1960s, Giotto Bizzarrini is perhaps best known as the Ferrari engineer responsible for designing the peerless 250 GTO.

Leaving Ferrari in a company uprising that would be known as the “night of the long knives”, Bizzarrini joined forces with Count Giovanni Volpi to develop the 250 GT SWB “Breadvan”, arguably the forerunner among other concepts that would shape the A3/C.

He later teamed up with the Milanese industrialist and designer of the Isetta microcar, Renzo Rivolta, a keen auto enthusiast who aspired to build a reliable grand tourer.

Bizzarrini worked with Iso’s chief technician, Pierluigi Raggi, in developing a sophisticated platform-type chassis for the 2+2 Iso Rivolta, which enjoyed a production run from 1963 to 1970, and deployed a V-8 engine made by Chevrolet sourced to counter potential fears surrounding reliability issues.

Around 1963, Bizzarrini made public his intentions t...