Forgotten Cars of Australia: The Giocattolo Group B
A recipe for excitement? Take a tiny Italian liftback sports coupe and stuff a Holden V8 in itAustralia has a long history of taking an existing car and making it faster; the Giocattolo Group B is no exception.
Only the "chook lotto" (as it was nicknamed) could exist in the 1980s, during an era of excess when one motor enthusiast thought it wasn't enough to be surrounded by exotic machines from Ferrari and Lamborghini.
Paul Halstead and his 'Toy Shop', based at Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast, exported 351 CID (5.8-litre) Cleveland V8s to De Tomasos in Italy to use in their Pantera after stock in the US had dried up. He even assembled Panateras locally for the road and for GT racing.
By 1986 Halstead was contemplating the creation of his own Supercar from an Alfa Romeo Sprint, but that naturally called for replacement of the 1.5-litre, four-cylinder engine. He and former McLaren engineer, Barry Lock, experimented with Alfa's 2.5-litre V6 that powered the Alfasud Sprint 6V prototype back in 1983.
This engine was soon ditched for a V8 unit supplied by Holden, Walkinshaw's Group A 5.0-litre. While being cheaper, there was 220kW on offer, providing more power than the V6. That output, coupled with a low kerb weight of 1085kg, produced a claimed 0-100km/h time of 5.4secs and the top speed was 260km/h – true supercar stats of the day.
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Prices for the Giocattolo (Italian for toy) were high – $90,000 – but you got a lot of bang for your buck. There were leather Recaro seats, bespoke instruments, a premium sound system, a decently sized boot and even a bottle of Bundaberg rum included in the tool kit.
What really added to the cost was the use of Kevlar and carbon fibre, and Alfa's reluctance to sell Halstead bare shells. Instead he had to buy the full car and then strip everything that wasn't needed. The German ZF transaxle was also made expensive by our country's import taxes of the time.
In the end this pushed the company into liquidation and Halstead lost millions when production wrapped up in 1989. Only 15 cars were made in the three-year stint.
In more recent times Paul Halstead has built a wide-body Monaro with a supercharged 7.0-litre V8 up front. He has now moved on to designing a W16 mid-engined supercar with 1200hp, thanks to joining two 7.0-litre Chevy LS1 V8s.
Two of the Halstead's Giocattolos have been destroyed; build number seven was a part of a fiery crash at Eastern Creek raceway back in 2001, sadly killing its driver, Todd Wilkes. The second Group B smashed into trees during the 2007 Aeromil Pacific Classic Adelaide racing event. That leaves 13 in existence, and those command big money indeed... and big respect.
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