The former Hollywood limo manufacturer aiming to star in the WEC

A new name will join the Hypercar grid in the World Endurance Championship next year, and you probably hadn’t even heard of it until quite recently. Unless, that is, you are a cinema aficionado.

There hasn’t been an Isotta Fraschini road car built since the early 1950s, but its luxury limousines were once commonplace in Hollywood, on screen and off. One featured in the 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard and they were also the transport of choice of the likes of silent movie star Rudolph Valentino in the 1920s.

The return of a marque whose racing heritage is buried in the mists of time – it won the Targa Florio in 1908 – with the new Tipo 6 LMH Competizione is a complicated one. But at its heart is a decision by a much more famous name in Italian motorsport. The catalyst for a car that has been testing since April and will be raced in the WEC in 2024 with the British Vector Sport team came from Ferrari.

The Le Mans Hypercar project that has resulted in the Tipo 6 hybrid was initiated when the Italian marque opted not to continue its long-standing relationship with Michelotto Engineering in the design, development and build of the line of GT racers that stretches back to the 360 Modena GT2 car of 2000.

Ferrari took the design of this year’s 296 GT3 in-house at the new Attivita Sportive GT facility opened in early 2021, while the tender for the assembly for the cars was won by French constructor ORECA. That left Michelotto, which is headquartered in Padua near Venice, with a hole to fill. The LMH project was the result.

“We couldn’t just stop and lose our technical ability while we waited for the next project,” says company founder Giuliano Michelotto, who stresses that the relationship with Ferrari that stretches back 45 years isn’t over, just that it is more focused on road cars these days. “Endurance racing is the best form of racing, so the best way to show how good you are is to build an endurance racing car. Developing an LMH shows our abilities by working on the most complicated car possible.”

Michelotto, WAE and HWA are among the well-respected technical partners involved in the Isotta Fraschini Hypercar

Photo by: Isotta Fraschini

Luigi Dindo, who is heading up the LMH programme in his role as Michelotto technical director, describes it as “the company’s antennae” and a “project to keep our people together – the people are the most important part of any company”.

The conception and initial design work of the LMH pre-dates the link-up with Isotta, explains Dindo. Michelotto got in touch with the owners of the brand, who were planning a relaunch, because it was one of the partners it needed: it is demanded of participants in Hypercar that they are either a manufacturer or have a firmly established link with one. Glickenhaus’s aspirations to become a fully fledged manufacturer are well known, while ByKolles-run Vanwall Racing has shown a road-going version of its LMH and can sell you an electric cross-over five-door hatchback known as the Vandervell S.

Dindo describes the link-up between a marque in the early throes of a relaunch and Michelotto as a “natural marriage”. The owners of the Isotta Fraschini Milano trademarks for road and race cars, which had been separated in the 1990s from the state-owned parent company that now builds (among other things) engines for ships, had plans for a luxury limousine in the spirit of its pre-war machinery, though fully electric.

New investors were assembled to work with Frank Kanayet, who became Isotta’s majority shareholder in the late 2010s. He was one of the first backers of both Croatian electric sportscar marque Rimac, now partnered with Bugatti within the Volkswagen group, and Formula E. A new holding company has been established, though the details and those involved remain secret for now.

"In the past we have always built cars based on production machinery. We needed experienced partners because we didn’t have time to lose" Luigi Dindo

The link-up with Isotta was formalised in late 2021, which allowed Michelotto to press on with the project. Aero development started in October of that year at Williams Advanced Engineering, one of a number of heavyweight technical partners assembled by Michelotto for the project. The offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team also supplies the battery for the car’s front-axle hybrid system, while another British organisation, Hexis, produces the motor generator unit (MGU). The bespoke three-litre single-turbo V6 has been developed by HWA, formerly Mercedes’ partner in the DTM.

“We went looking for the best partners,” says Dindo. “This is the first car like this for us; in the past we have always built cars based on production machinery. We needed experienced partners because we didn’t have time to lose.”

Isotta announced its programme in October 2022, declaring an intent to race in this year’s WEC, starting at the Spa 6 Hours round at the end of April. Given that the car wasn’t due to run for the first time until the end of February, it appeared an overly ambitious target.

Former Ferrari Formula 1 team manager Claudio Berro, who joined the Isotta board as its motorsport boss last September, admits as much. The marque’s entry was turned down by series organisers the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, but it was part of a process he felt Isotta had to go through, he says.

Motorsport veteran Berro joined the project as sporting director last year

Photo by: Isotta Fraschini

“It was important for Isotta to send a message to the FIA and the ACO that we were serious,” explains Berro, whose long and historied motorsport career has also included stints heading up Peugeot Italia’s motorsport programmes and masterminding Maserati’s return to racing with the MC12 GT1 car. “We had to show them our programme and go through all the procedures.”

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By the time it became clear that Isotta wouldn’t be getting a full-season entry for a solo LMH in 2023, it had announced Vector as the team that would run the car on the ground. The British operation, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, had been established in 2021, initially to run an ORECA-Gibson 07 LMP2 under the Risi Competizione banner at the Le Mans 24 Hours. That led into a full P2 season under the Vector banner last year.

From the outset it had made its aspirations to graduate to Hypercar clear – both verbally and with its choice of drivers; Sebastien Bourdais and Nico Muller were the full-season pros in the ORECA for its maiden campaign in 2022.

“We always said we wanted to grow into a Hypercar programme,” says Vector team principal and founder Gary Holland, previously team manager at the Dragon FE and Jota P2 and Krohn Racing IMSA teams. “We were positioning ourselves for that from the outset with our driver line-up when we entered the WEC.

“There were really only two options to go to Hypercar: buy a Porsche [963] LMDh, because they are the only manufacturer pushing out customer cars, or join forces with someone who wanted to go the LMH route. We preferred working with someone in LMH and actively sought that, because as a team you can have a really big involvement in the development phase.”

Holland knew Michelotto well. Krohn ran Ferraris in IMSA out of Risi’s Houston workshops (which explains the link that led to the team’s entree in P2), and before that he had worked at RAM Racing as chief mechanic when it won the European Le Mans Series in 2013 with the Ferrari 458 GTE.

“There was an obvious connection there with Michelotto,” he says. “I always got on well with everyone there and obviously they did a fantastic job with Ferrari.”

Vector describes itself as Isotta’s “partner team”. It is more than a pure customer, but is not a funded factory operation – it is bringing something to the table financially. Berro will only say that the arrangement is a “good deal for them and a good deal for us”.

Vernay and Bonanomi have headed the development of Isotta's Tipo 6 LMH-C

Photo by: Isotta Fraschini

Vector, which for the moment plans to run a single Tipo 6 next year, has been fully integrated in the Isotta development programme since a test at Vallelunga late last month and two thirds of its P2 driving squad — Gabriel Aubry and Ryan Cullen — were meant to get in the car for the first time at Monza early this month. An oil leak resulting in a fire curtailed the test before they could join a programme that has been led by sometime Audi LMP1 driver Marco Bonanomi and Jean-Karl Vernay, who was Peugeot’s test and reserve back in 2011.

Who will be in Vector’s Isotta car when the car races for the first time isn’t clear. Both Bonanomi and Vernay have declared their desire to drive the car in competition. Holland will only say that the choice will “be a joint decision with Isotta”.

The first race appearance of the Tipo 6 will now be next season’s opening WEC round in Qatar in March 2024. Plans to blood the car in competition this season on a non-points, invitational basis – last month’s Monza race and then the Bahrain finale in November were both touted as possible debuts – have had to be abandoned in order to focus on the development and homologation of the car.

"Isotta and ourselves wouldn’t be going into this if we didn’t think we can be somewhere in the mix. The rules are pretty tight with the performance windows laid down and then you have the Balance of Performance on top of that, so you can’t be a million miles away" Gary Holland

Isotta did have a presence on home ground when the WEC visited Italy. It demonstrated the LMH as well as a trackday version, known as the Pista, and also revealed a model of a road-going Tipo 6 known as the Stradale. Showing the Pista and the Stradale was important to demonstrate that the marque is on the path to becoming a bona fide manufacturer as demanded by the rules. Plans for an EV limousine remain, while there is also the intent to build some kind of high-end sportscar, though Isotta is keeping its cards close to its chest for now.

Racing will be the main focus for 2024, however. Both Michelotto and Isotta believe they have everything in place to hit the ground running and be a credible player against Toyota, Ferrari et al in Hypercar.

“Isotta and ourselves wouldn’t be going into this if we didn’t think we can be somewhere in the mix,” says Holland. “The rules are pretty tight with the performance windows laid down and then you have the Balance of Performance on top of that, so you can’t be a million miles away. I’m confident because Isotta and Michelotto are confident.”

Isotta Fraschini completed a demo at the Monza WEC round with its LMH joined by a trackday version, known as the Pista

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images