Two concours events, kart racing, drag racing, drifting, off-road racing, a hillclimb and the grandly named Mdina Grand Prix… When does the small Mediterranean island of Malta, with its sub-600,000 population but 30,000 classic cars, have time to catch its breath, asks renowned automotive designer, Magneto columnist and regular visitor to the island’s events Peter Stevens.
October’s concours, Style and Elegance, is part of the annual four-day Malta Classic. For 2024 it was held in a lovely harbourside location in the Pietà area of Valetta. There are almost always previously unseen cars at the event, which is a light-hearted affair with as many points available for judging the entrants’ clothes as for judging their cars. In many ways it is similar to how the concours was on the Brighton seafront 70 years ago.
There are almost always previously unseen cars at the event, which is a light-hearted affair with as many points available for judging the entrants’ clothes as for judging their cars
As a journalist rather than as a judge on this occasion, I could really enjoy the cars. Seldom can you see a 1962 Porsche 356 Super 90 with only 21,000km on the speedo. Gordon Vella has owned this car for a number of years, and he says that luckily Malta is such a small island, it is easy not to put too many kilometres on this immaculate, unrestored machine.
Malta’s quality of the light and warm local sandstone produce a particularly pleasing affect on the colour of virtually any car. This could be seen on a lovely Jaguar E-type Series 1, a 1964 Lancia Flavia Pininfarina Coupé and a beautiful 1962 Aston Martin DB4.
Local collector and passionate enthusiast Anthony Camilleri had two entries for the concours. One was an unrestored, but beautifully conserved, 1950 NSU motorcycle with period Steib LS 200 sidecar. The beautiful aluminium castings of both were particularly attractive; I thought that if a Morgan three-wheeler has a place in interesting classic motoring, then so does an outfit such as this.
Camilleri’s other entry was a lovely little 1965 Fiat 1500-based Ghia 1500 GT with a very interesting back story. By the early 1960s the European automobile industry had abandoned the separate chassis and body structure for monocoque designs. This created a problem for the Italian carrozzeria. The basis for the GT was the 1500 Berlina saloon, so the first job Ghia faced was to separate the upper body from the floorpan.
The coachbuilder then shortened that by three inches, and moved the engine and gearbox rearward to improve the weight distribution to 50:50. A tubular frame was then designed and built by Gilberto Colombo, who had a fabrication company in Milan called Gilco. The body was designed by Ghia’s Sergio Sartorelli, who also developed the car in an Italian wind tunnel. Aerodynamic drag was lower, raising the top speed by 7mph to 100mph, but the specialist body increased the weight by 50lb to 2160. Nevertheless, it is a very fine-looking machine.
At the top of the ‘glorious car’ scale was frequent Malta visitor Egon Hofer. Egon had brought his unique 1950 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Competizione Alluminio Passo Corto. Two examples were originally built, but after one was destroyed in a crash Enzo Ferrari lost interest. He passed the car to Scuderia Serenissima for a year, with instructions to log every kilometre it ran when driven by such drivers as Stirling Moss, Dan Gurney and Nino Vaccarella, among others. Hofer bought the car 12 years ago, and still races it very enthusiastically.
For more details on the Malta Classic, see here.
