Back in the days when “the five-and-dime” meant Woolworth’s, Lance Reventlow could do just about anything he wanted with his mother’s, Barbara Hutton’s, Woolworth family legacy. What he wanted was to have a beautiful woman on his arm – or maybe each arm – and a fast race car under him.

A new generation of lightweight, large displacement pushrod overhead valve V8 engines were sweeping out of America’s Big Three. They had proven their concept in Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, and Chryslers. Now refined engineering and improved casting techniques delivered gems like the 265/283 cubic inch Chevrolet into the hands of hot rodders, tuners, and road racers. Amazingly economical and strong, the Chevy responded readily to tuning and quickly found its way into tired Ferraris and Maseratis. From there it was a short step to bespoke chassis designed specifically for Chevy power from builders like Brian Lister in the UK and Bill Sadler in Canada.

Young Lance Reventlow raced a Maserati 200SI in Europe in 1957, and at the end of the season visited Brian Lister’s shop in the UK where he got a good look at the “knobbly” Lister with Chevrolet power. Lance had been reading up on chassis design and decided after leaving Lister’s that he could assemble a crew to build an even better car. Although it probably didn’t cross his mind, the Los Angeles-based Reventlow had access to the most skilled, creative, imaginative talent in the world in the community which had been since the Twenties building Indy cars and street rods in L.A. It was the most successful of all schools, taught by talents like Harry Miller, Clay Smith, Fred Offenhauser, and Leo Goosen, and it turned out fabricators, designers, welders, machinists, and assemblers who could build the highest quality, fastest, most reliable racing machinery in the world. Only six months later two Scarab sports racers rolled out of Reventlow’s shop. Warren Olsen was charged with managing a collection of creative spirits. Emil Diedt and Phil Remington were at the very peak of fabricators, trained in Indy cars’ fastidious fit, finish, and function. Jim Travers and Frank Coon, eventually to achieve long term fame as Traco Engineering, managed the engines. Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes conceived and executed the chassis. Chuck Pelly drew the body lines and Ken Miles, who seemingly could make any chassis competitive with any engine in it, contributed his insights, concepts, and practical experience. A young charger named Chuck Daigh filled in wherever he was needed and took the cars out for test drives. Reventlow wrote the checks.

The Chevy V8 powered Scarab sports-racers which this all-star team built not only dominated the U.S. Road Racing Championship but so completely overwhelmed their competition in style, construction, and presentation that they became a legend in only a single season of competition under the Reventlow banner. The ice blue Scarab livery, set off by intricately painted white roundels and dramatically scalloped streaks with blue borders, marked a uniquely American approach to road racing that has known no equal to the present day. In 1958, the Scarabs drove their North American competition into the sea but the FIA ruled their big Chevy V8s out of international competition, restricting sports cars to three liters. Flush with success, Lance Reventlow sold the Scarab sports cars and announced RAI’s intention to enter Formula One. His timing could have been worse, but not much.

The Scarab Formula One cars were ambitious undertakings employing untested technologies but rooted in a conventional front-engine rear-drive layout. Reventlow insisted upon the proven – both in Grand Prix and in American oval racing – four-cylinder layout, designed from inception to lay over on its side as currently fashionable in Indy Roadsters. If the design had stopped there it might have been implemented successfully but Reventlow chose desmodromic valve operation. Desmodromic valve gear had been a dream of engine designers for years. The term had been coined from two Greek roots, desmos meaning controlled and dromos meaning course or track. In concept it positively mechanically controlled valve opening and closing through two cams. The promise was that it would permit absolutely precise control of valve operation, at theoretically unlimited engine speeds and free from concern for valve spring rates and reliability. It was fashionable, Mercedes-Benz engineers having perfected it in the W196 GP car and 300SLR sports-racer in the mid-Fifties, and was displaying its capabilities in GP motorcycles and in a 2 litre OSCA.

It was, however, an ambitious project for the Scarab organization, even relying on prodigious talents like Leo Goosens, Jim Travers, and Frank Coon, and the 2 1/2 litre Grand Prix formula had only two years left when Reventlow Automobiles, Inc. (RAI) embarked upon the F1 project. It took a year just to get the engine running and wasn’t until 1960, the last year of the 2 1/2 litre formula, that it even got to the track, a brand new and untested front-engined GP car in a field of mid-engined Lotuses, Coopers, BRMs, and Ferraris. In the meantime, however, the Scarab F1 had captured the imaginations of racing fans across America and around the world. The success of the Scarab sports-racers and the romance of a small team of Americans from southern California taking on the best of European constructors with an immaculately constructed – and the construction and finishing standards of the Scarabs were an order of magnitude beyond those seen on European GP cars – and imaginatively designed single-seater was the stuff of legends, and dreams, in an era when it was still possible for a gifted fabricator to team up with a talented driver to compete even-up with the best in the world. Cooper and Lotus were worthy role models.

The Scarab F1 missed the 1960 season opening race in Argentina, first appearing to immense interest and fascination at Monaco. Reventlow offered Stirling Moss (driving a mid-engined Lotus 18 in the race) a chance to drive the Scarab. If anything Moss’s talents behind the wheel masked the front-engine Scarab’s numerous shortcomings but even freshly completed and barely shaken down both Reventlow and Daigh would have been competitive with 1959 qualifying times, the season for which the Scarab F1 was designed. The Scarab F1’s performance improved at the Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps two weeks later. Reventlow blew an engine on the opening lap but Daigh, despite vibration problems, qualified (two places behind his team owner who was no slouch as a driver) and completed sixteen laps before the engine threw a rod. Richie Ginther took Lance Reventlow’s seat at the French GP at Rheims but once again the engines in both his and Chuck Daigh’s Scarabs gave trouble before the race. The team packed up and went home to devote more time to developing the engine. The Scarab team was ready to take another shot at Formula One in November when the circus arrived in their backyard at Riverside in November. Only one Scarab was entered so it could have the attention of the whole team. Driven by Chuck Daigh, it qualified 18th and acquitted itself admirably, finishing tenth. Its performance hinted at the potential of the front-engined Scarab F1 but it was too late, the GP formula changing to 1 1/2 litres for 1961. The three Scarab F1 chassis were modified to comply with the 1961 Intercontinental Formula rules, including one with an Offenhauser engine which Chuck Daigh brought home sixth at the Intercontinental race at Goodwood (after running as high as third) and seventh at Silverstone before crashing in another Silverstone meeting and damaging the rear of the chassis. RAI again returned to the States without realizing the Scarab F1’s potential.

The chassis of GP2 which Chuck Daigh had raced in England’s Intercontinental Series races in 1961 was not salvaged but the rest of the car was so fascinating that its pieces were saved by members of the RAI team. In the mid-80s, a restoration was begun. Original parts used in the restoration include the complete front suspension with uprights, control arms, shocks and springs, the original steering rack and anti-sway bars, the right rear suspension upright, springs and shocks, the gas tanks, radiator, and two road wheels. The entire original body, except for the tail which had been crushed in Daigh’s Silverstone accident, survived in its original condition. There were two noses (long and short), both sides, front cowl and hood, and the cockpit cowling with original mirrors. The original Scarab Blue paint was still intact, as well as the Scarab emblem hand painted by Von Dutch. The all-important desmodromic four-cylinder engine had been preserved by Ron Kellogg who also had some blueprints and documents. In 1988, Dick Troutman built a new Scarab frame using the original blueprints and even the chassis table from the RAI shop. Chuck Daigh supervised the assembly and undertook a long term project to [finally] perfect the operation of the desmodromic valve gear. In the process, Daigh discovered that the engine builders had added clearance into the valve gear design to compensate for expansion when hot. The arrangement left the valves loose against their seats and leaked compression. He refined the settings to tighten up the valves with the result that the engine put out 265 horsepower on the dyno, much more than it had made in 1960 and more than enough to have made the Scarabs competitive even with their front-engined chassis. Following restoration, the front-engined Scarab GP has been displayed, raced, and demonstrated at important events including Amelia Island, the New York and Bagatelle Louis Vuitton Concours, and at the Goodwood Festival of Speed where it was driven by Brian Redman, Damon Hill, and Chuck Daigh.

It is a tribute to the imagination and determination of one of history’s great characters, Lance Reventlow, and the talented team he brought together in Venice, California. Its appearance is electric, a handsome blending of form and function that is as innately pleasing as Lance Reventlow’s many beautiful women companions. Its intricate desmodromic valve dual overhead camshaft four-cylinder engine may be the highest development of an American racing tradition, an ill-fated design which subsequent experience has revealed was innately sound but rushed into competition without sound development.

This Scarab, GP-2, is the only one to race at both the United States Grand Prix and the Gran Prix of Monaco. Scarabs have become more sought after than ever as the remaining important cars are locked away in serious racing collections and not likely to escape! The front-engined Scarab GP will never lack for invitations to prestigious racing events, Concours, and shows where its thunderous exhaust and unique appearance will be the centerpiece of any paddock display and will draw spectators from far and wide to its on-track performance.


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