Historic Race Car

Fiat 124 Abarth replica at Blackhawk Farms

This is the story of Don Tuscany's Race car. I all started with a spin the "kink" at Road America, where he found himself knocked out in an car destroying encounter with the wall.

After a while during which he didn’t loose his sense of humor, he decided to build a new car, but this time from scratch and in Abarth trim.

A new tub was found near Ottawa in Canada, and this was completely seam welded, and changes according to the Abarth set up were performed.

New body parts were fitted and fabricated.

And Bruce Brabec from Wolf Racing made a new custom fitted roll cage. They also built the roll cage in Don's destroyed old Fiat, and since that was part of the reason he survived these specialist were a logic choice to perform this job.

The engine was build from scratch too, with custom pistons high flowing head, "hot" cam shafts etc etc. When the motor was finally completely assembled, it was tested on our test stand before putting it on the dynomometer.

The engine was dynoed by Barry Sale at PHP Racengines in Wauconda. Historic Race Car now has the ability to dyno in house!

The car was wired by Rich Range, and is fully equipped for road use ( The Abarth after all was a Rally car) including blinkers, horn, lights. We rebuild a 5 speed Abarth transmission, installed an accusump system and a 4 nozzle fire system installed. The steering column was customized and a custom seat that would fit Don's frame installed.

At this time the car was ready to be tested.

With thanks to John Tulloch , who purchased a Mini Cooper Vintage Race car through us, we were able to test a day at the Autobahn. The day was cut short, due to a vibration at higher speeds.

After solving that issue Don is now racing his car with VSCDA, where it draws a lot of positive attention.

Many thanks to Don Tuscany, for allowing us to show what we are able of!

Happy face after a hot session!

This extremely nice1955 OSCA MT4 came

straight from Belgium to our shop. The engine

needed a complete rebuild and a re-design of

the oiling system.

We put in a trip master and

had to recreate a drive for it in the transmission.

Installed seat belts and went through the braking

system. We installed a hydraulic hand brake and

had a custom tonneau made for it.

This Lotus Elite was received with a lot of praise at the Peoria Wheel O"Time Museum.


Don Tuscany, the owner of this Fiat 124 lost a flywheel after installing a new cylinder head. Luckily no damage was done to the valve train and we rebuild the engine for Don. The builder of the head had used valve spring shims to adjust the valve clearance. One of the shims found its way out of the bucket on the dyno. We rebuild the head and installed venier sprockets, did the cam shaft timing and found almost 15 extra HP. At the moment the Fiat is prepared for the 2006 season starting at Hallett in March. The car is getting a new rear end, new seat belts installed (to work with a HANS device) and many more minor adjustments.


This 1963 Alpine Berlinette A110 raced at the 24 hours of Sebring in 1965. It's equiped with a rare 804 motor (1100cc Gordini) that HRC is rebuilding after a rod bearin spun. We will also do some work on the chassis, and rear end.

This 1972 ex Ecurie Filipinetti Martini MK9 (MK does not stand for Mark, but Martini-Knight) was driven to a second place in the 1972 European F3 Championship by Frenchman Jacques Coulon.

Now HRC owner Yves Boode races it during most of the VSCDA events in the Mid West. A broken brake rotor caused the only DNF at Mid Ohio. The extensive damage was repaired in house during the after hours.

HRC rebuilt the engine of this 1961 Mini Cooper S after it had dropped a valve. We also installed a front and a bigger rear anti roll bar. After these improvements the car raced for the first time at Blackhawk Farms and finished fifth overall.

Another nice Fiat 124 spider. This one is raced with Mid Western Council as an ITB racer. The owner asked us to go through the car and resolve some problems with overheating brakes and a rear end issue.
We also welded up a spare differential, and will align and weigh the car before the season starts.


This pretty potent Datsun 510 had the Engine rebuild with durability in mind by HRC. After the rebuild, the owners couldn’t set the carburetors up properly and asked us to see what we could do. For safety reasons we will also install a removable steering wheel. Hopefully this car will be flying around Blackhawk Farms again soon, as the driver hasn’t decided to continue racing.