Tu r i n M o t o r S h o w
An Italian Hit in ‘62
Italian Marco Batazzi has been a fan of the Avanti automobile since age 9, when he first set eyes
on the car in the Italian magazine, Quattroruote. He later bought the AMT 1/25 scale model to
build. He is now a car writer and a model car collector with about 9,200 models in his collection. A
recent article on Avanti models will be published in the Italian magazine, American Drive, and he is
preparing another article for another collector car magazine in his country.
The Avanti on this page is from a photograph given him years ago by a friend who saw the car at the
1962 Turin Motor Show.
Mr. Bartazzi also has an extensive automobile sales brochure collection of some 12,000 items,
including brochures from Studebaker and on the Avanti II received in the 1970s from Nate Altman.
Mr. Bartazzi says that there were at least three Avantis sold in Italy in from 1962 to 1964, one black
model, probably the white car above, and probably a turquoise Avanti which was acquired by Alfredo
Vignale, the famous italian coachbuilder. Someone offered him this car in late ‘70s for a mere
2.500.000 lire, but it was too expensive at the time.
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AVANTI Magazine
Spring/Summer 2014 Issue 166