This little beauty has a story to tell, my friends. Any Siata is a magical beast. Rare. They’re all rare. But this one. This is the one.
Siata may have started out just hopping up Fiats, but they really started to hit their stride in ’52: the year this magnificent little barchetta coupe was built for the Turin Auto show and a little race they call the Mille Miglia. In fact, the car was pulled early from the Auto Show, leaving behind a bare stage as her Fiat Otto Vù V8 engine was tuned for the Mille.
Arnaldo Tullini and Luigi Rossi hopped into this marvelous Siata, and pulled off the starting stand at 5:42. Sadly, this example didn’t last the race and dropped out early. But who cares? Just look at this thing. These photos show the car standing still in a warehouse. Look again, it’s standing still. I know it looks like it’s pulling 2 miles a minute.
You don’t often see Siatas come available for sale, and when you do, it’s almost always an open-top. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a Siata coupe. When you see the slippery lines and stunning roof-line of this amazing machine, it makes me wonder why.
Bonham’s Quail auction this year is absolutely on fire with the quality of machines coming available and I’m sure We’ll be featuring more in the days leading up to the event. I would have thought that with the economy being what it is, we’d see people holding on to their cars and waiting for ‘better days’, but the lot list at this year’s auctions sure seems to indicate otherwise.
The Siata 208CS is being offered with an estimate of $1.6 – 1.9 million. That’s a lot of scratch in anyone’s book, but it would almost certainly be worth it every time you blipped the throttle on an empty country lane.
More photos and history at Bonham’s lot detail page.