Dino 206SP
Enzo Ferrari had only one child within his marriage...Alfredino “Dino” Ferrari. Named after his grandfather, the founder of the first metal working shop which was also Enzo's boyhood home and which recently opened as a Ferrari museum in Modena.
| t |
 |
| 121LM Looks almost good in this shot Despite odd hood lump and tiny grill opening Tail fin from headrest not obvious |
I think though, that while the old man was willing to try the configuration for formula racing, he was afraid that a road car with less than 12 cylinders badged as a Ferrari would not sell. Thus the fendered racers as well as the first street variants bearing V6 motors, up through the 246 series and ending with the 308GT4 and early 308GTB, also badged this way...these cars all bore badges with the son's signature of his nickname in script on a Modena yellow background.
In an era which ended in the early 70s, the three great auto races run on open roads were the Tour de France, the Mille Miglia, and the Targo Florio. By 1958 the only one left was the Targa, the oldest of the three. The course was brutal...mile mile of broken pavement on the poorly maintained roads of Sicily. It was no place for the faster and bigger cars, as the roughness of the pavement, the tightness of the turns, and the closeness of many of the buildings, all made it likely that the bigger, faster cars would wind up in the weeds...or worse.
It was a natural for Porsche, but Ferrari could not ignore the challenge of such an event on what was, though world apart from the rest of Italy, still part of his “home turf.” Thus was born the series of Dino racers such as the 196 and 206 specials...the “S” and “SP” prototypes built with the Targa in mind. So Bill Schworer bought and restored one.
 |
| Maybe Bill was looking for another two liters? Number as used in the 66 Targa Florio |
Like most of the rest of us in the Bay Area region of the Ferrari Owners Club, Bill was moving into the then new sport of vintage racing. Unlike most of the rest of us he was in one of the “up” iterations of his “boom or bust” financial life. He was an ambitious home builder, which even in California can be a roller coaster ride, not for the faint of heart. Oddly, I don't remember a single one of his street Ferraris, but I didn't need to dig out old photos to remember a lot of details about my romance with the 206.
I also, however, remember in detail his wife's car.
Deanna Schworer was a very special lady. More than a few years Bill's junior, I thought of her as a mysterious and mystical spirit. She always seemed to me to be sitting quietly in the background somewhere, and I always picture her at the spinning wheel which sat in her living room...I had never before nor since seen anyone spin their own yard...or knitting something with the thread she had created.
Among other projects, Bill had been the developer for Meriners Island, a community of townhouses off the San Mateo bridge stuffed into a bit of land between San Mateo and Foster City. Somehow he had found room to also build his own home there...one of the most intriguing places I can ever remember.
First of all, it had a single bedroom, but included a two car garage, which Bill had made a showpiece, complete with terra cotta tiled floor...a touch I never saw anywhere else, and I have seen some pretty fancy garages.
I remember that the living room included high, clerestory type windows, complete with stained glass. In fact, the feel of the room was very much that of a small chapel, a place of quiet refuge.
Oh yeah, Deanna's car...it was a silver 330GTS convertible. From 1960 or so Ferrari had moved from the 3 liter 250 through the 275 and on to the 4 liter generation of Colombo-designed V12s. I have always felt the 330 comes across best in the more popular coupe version, and the market I guess agreed, as I believe the S was rare even by other convertible versions. I still prefer the 275 pictured in another post, and never thought John Lewis's yellow bird lacked “giddyup.” But the 330 was definitely fast, and Deanna was no lightweight in using everything it had.
 |
| Pretty in Yellow From ultimatecarpage.com But I still prefer John's 275 |
I remember in particular at least one occasion where she displayed that verve convincingly...twice on the same club outing.
We had a group of perhaps five or six couples and cars who went for a weekend to Hearst Castle at San Simeon on the California coast. As anyone who had driven the Coast Highway can attest, opportunities for enthusiastic driving on most of this road are few and far between, and it is entirely possible to get stuck behind Grandpa in a 40 foot motorhome and lump along for miles at about 25 MPH. But shortly before you come to the castle there is actually a short four lane stretch where there is no risk of going off a cliff if you happen to lose it, and the curves are more gentle than on the rest of the road.
I seem to recall at least the following cars there...Bill and Deanna in the 330, with her piloting, The Jones's in their yellow 246GTS Dino, The Thinnesen's in their red variant, Sherri and me in the 2+2, and the Morton's in their 330GTB. Deanna hit that four lane and just...disappeared. We all put our feet in the carbs, and I remember hitting well above 200kph on the speedo, and none of us got anywhere near her!
On the return trip we were better prepared for her...enthusiasm. The Schworer's had invited us to their place at the end of the weekend for wine and snacks. The lsat part of the route was up I280 on the hills above the main SF peninsula population areas. Once more Deanna “put her foot in it,” and once more, in those beautiful and, in those days, empty hills on one of America's most attractive freeways, we were all dancing along at triple digit speeds all the way to CA92 and down to her Mariners Island home...where Deanna quietly sort of somehow seemed to just...sit back in a zen-state and assume that mysterious subdued yet so attuned state of being.
Oh yes...the 206. When the restoration was finished Bill had what I can only describe as an unveiling. Pretty much the usual suspects were invited to see the car, displayed attractively on that startling tile floor. It was just gorgeous, and a very historically significant little beast. Also on display was a copy of the Road and Track cover photo of the car in flight at the 1966 Targa Florio, where it finished second. To top it off, while Bill Morton was pissed off that he could not fit his frame into the seat, nor his legs under the wheel, and had to sit with his head titled sideways even without a helmet, I slipped into the seat with plenty of room to spare.
 |
| Helping Bill get belted in Gee Sher, I fit it better than him Can't I have one? |
Sherri immediately recognized a certain glint in my eye and shook her finger at me. She needn't have bothered. Neither then nor now could I have afforded as much as a down payment on the sales tax for the car, no less the full price.
As it developed, Bill was frustrated with the car and later sold it. While the car was perfect for the Sicilian event, the nature of vintage race grids was that it was always in with bigger and faster FIA championship variety cars, where it usually ran dead last. Even Laguna Seca is not “twisty” enough for the car's handling advantage to enable it to show well against a 250LM or Cobra Daytona.
 |
| I believe this is a 612 Can Am Car At any rate, too big and fast for the 206 |
I could have cared less and would gladly have parted with dearly loved parts of my anatomy to own it.
Deanna was not only a shockingly fast driver, she was an accomplished pilot. She and Bill had both been married previously, each having a child from that union...Deanna's son was a few years younger than Bill's daughter.
The girl was a talented photographer as a teenager when we knew her. In fact, to this day a photo of hers of Adin, taken when he was perhaps five or six, sits on top of one of our floor speakers in the den-it is my favorite shot of him as a child.
At the age of 38 we lost Deanna...a staggering shock. We were all just a couple of years older than her. None of us had likely experienced death among our friends before. The sheer unexpectedness of it was disorienting.
Bill was at the races with his daughter. Deanna had rented a plane and flown up to Oregon with her son..I believe she was originally from that area of the country. She had offered to take some friends up in the plane to show them around from the air...it was a family of four and there was no room for her boy, for whom this type of sightseeing was, no doubt, “old hat” anyway. So he stayed behind on the field to wait for their return.
They never did. I can't imagine what it was like for him when he finally learned they were gone forever. Though at this point in my life I tend to think of almost all children as ten years old, I really do think that was about his age (his half-sister was about 16 at the time). What a horror for him, with no one around at the moment but strangers.
Deanna; wonderful, mystical, talented Deanna...had made a horrible amateur mistake. She had flown into a three sided canyon, a place where the only choice was to either climb out or turn around. And if neither was possible, there was only one outcome. What must it have been like for all of them to know what was coming. Or did the family know? Did she keep that from them and face the inevitable with the grace and quiet acceptance with which I think she was blessed? No way to know.
But what I do know was what happened when we gathered at the funeral home for the first “celebration of life” I had ever attended, a concept which was uncommon and “new” back then. We were all standing around on the corner in front of the building, still in shock and trying to work up our nerve to go in, when here came Bill.
I don't remember his exact words, but the impact of what in general he said changed me forever.
“Why the long faces?” he began.
“Am I hurt? Of course. Am I angry at her for leaving me alone? Sure. Am I also angry that she made a stupid mistake? You bet. But we are not here to mourn Deanna. We are here to celebrate her life. She died doing...exactly...what...she...wanted to be doing. How many of us are going to get to say that?”
And in we went.
Somehow my memories of her and that 206 are wrapped up around each other. I smiled the other day when I ran across old photos of the car at Laguna, and that made me see her smile as clearly as if she were standing in front of me.
Sheer magic. She makes the one on that painting in the Louvre pale by comparison. Julia Roberts made a movie called “Mona Lisa Smile.” Julia is a beautiful woman and that big wonderful mouth and smile are charming, but there is little about it which is mysterious or mystical.
Sheer magic. She makes the one on that painting in the Louvre pale by comparison. Julia Roberts made a movie called “Mona Lisa Smile.” Julia is a beautiful woman and that big wonderful mouth and smile are charming, but there is little about it which is mysterious or mystical.
Deanna, on the other hand, truly had
The Mona Lisa Smile
No comments:
Post a Comment