Lavazza

Lavazza is not the name of a workshop. Enrico Lavazza built his own single-seater and called it Lavazza 001; no second one is known.

For this class that is not an oddity but the whole point. Alberto Massimino’s design was never signed, never lodged and never patented – anyone who kept to the overall dimensions, the wheelbase and the prescribed production parts was free to build. Alongside the workshops that made a trade of it came the cars that never carried a maker’s name.

Lavazza appears in none of the period lists of builders. Those lists record whoever ran a workshop or turned up often enough in the results, and they call themselves incomplete. A car put together at home had no reason to end up in one. It stands in our own table of makes all the same – the car exists.

Just one is known: Lavazza 001, number 36, run in the orbit of the Trofeo Cadetti. 1979 is given as the year it was built, and certified race outings are claimed for the eighties; neither has been shown.