Mike Hailwood was a genius at going fast. Of that there can be no question. He was a nine-time world champion on a motorcycle. Of the 152 Grand Prix he started, he won 50 per cent of them. He appeared on the Isle of Man TT podium 19 times; 14 times on the top step. He was a Formula Two champion, and competed extensively in F1. As well as being a once-in-a-generation talent, he lived the life of a racing driver about as well as anyone has ever done.
He was wonderfully courageous, too - and not just in a crash-at-the-IOM-but-still-finish sense (though he did that), but also in the way that you must be to help pull a man from a burning car, even as you yourself have caught fire. His conspicuous gallantry at the 1973 South African Grand Prix earned him the George Medal. He was brave enough to return to racing after his own career-ending accident the following year, reemerging from retirement in New Zealand to win the top-flight TT race in 1978.
His car choices were similarly bold. Back in the day, Italisn firm Iso was famous mostly for the Isetta, a bubble car it built (in its most successful configuration) for BMW. But in 1962, in a neck-snapping about-face, it revealed a Bertone-designed, Corvette-engined grand tourer called the Rivolta IR 300. Three years later, with one eye on stealing business from Ferrari, it went one better and launched this, the raffishly good-looking Iso Grifo on a shared but shortened platform.
The sportier model was the brainchild of Giotto Bizzarrini (his 5300 GT Strada was closely related to the Grifo) and had a body designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, which accounts for the much-lauded appearance. By 1967, there was a right-hand drive version; this one, the demonstrator, getting a 350hp small block Chevrolet 327 V8 mated to a ZF five-speed gearbox. According to the vendor, it was thrashed back to the UK in the hands of John Bolster for an Autosport feature (those were the days).
Once there it was handed over to Hailwood, who, in quintessential Hailwood-style, shipped it to South Africa to use as his personal transport while in the country for work. The subsequent ‘altercation with a cow’ mentioned in the advert is said to have occurred when Hailwood crested a hill (flat-out, as you’d expect) only to find a bovine roadblock on the other side. The great man was mostly unhurt, the car less so. It remained in the country for three years before being nursed back to health and returned to the UK in 1972.
From there it’s been around the block several more times, accruing 47k and undergoing a ‘complete and exacting restoration’ in 2007. It is a measure of the car’s provenance and unending coolness (did we mention it also featured in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour movie?) that it is said to have also been owned by Lewis Hamilton’s dad, Anthony, at some point, too. Quite how much you’d have to pay to call it yours now is one for the dealer, but the opportunity to emulate ‘Mike the Bike’ 43 years after his untimely death is very much a golden one.
1 / 4
