THE ITALIAN JOB

Henry Ford II himself commissioned Cisitalia to build the 808. Ford's first sports car? Time to lay bare a real rarity 

- Mark Smyth

It began as an attempt to fulfil a dream, not only of Henry Ford II but also of his father Edsel. To this day, some see the Cisitalia 808 as the first sports car that Ford created - except that the Ford Motor Company didn't build it, because the 808 was not designed and built in Dearborn. Here was a mix of Italian design and craftsmanship overlaying American engineering, the highly individual results of which ultimately lost out to what became the first production sports car from the Blue Oval: the Thunderbird.

Compagnia Industriale Sportiva Italia, known more commonly as Cisitalia, was formed in 1939 by industrialist Piero Dusio. The onset of World War Two scuppered his early plans and in 1945 Dusio focused on making racing cars with his design engineer Giovanni Savonuzzi. He even pulled in Ferdinand Porsche to work on the mid-engined, four-wheel-drive Cisitalia 360 Grand Prix car, which proved so expensive to make that it almost bankrupted the company.

To recoup his losses, Dusio chose to make a sports car and teamed up with what was then Carrozzeria Pinin Farina in 1947 to create the Cisitalia 202. It found a fan in Henry Ford II, who bought both coupé and convertible versions, which were imported into the US by a New York dealership and sold well despite a high price tag of $6800. Ford was so enamoured with the design of the 202 that, so it's alleged, he once turned to his design team and asked why they couldn't pen a car as beautiful.