Scarab

Origins

Scarab was the dream of Lance Reventlow, the Woolworth heir whose mother had married Cary Grant and whose checkbook had no apparent floor. Reventlow had already built the most beautiful American sports-racer of the 1950s — the Scarab Mk I, with which Chuck Daigh and the young Reventlow had embarrassed Ferrari and Maserati on home soil. By 1958 he announced an even more audacious project: an all-American Formula 1 car designed and built in California, to take on Europe in Europe. It was a magnificent gesture and, as it turned out, a tragically mistimed one.

Golden Era

There was no golden era for the F1 Scarab. The car arrived in 1960, the same year Cooper's rear-engined revolution swept Ferrari and the front-engined establishment aside. Scarab had built a beautiful front-engined car — a desmodromic-valve four-cylinder of unusual design, mounted in a tube-frame chassis as elegantly traditional as anything from Maranello — and it was instantly obsolete on the day of its competition debut. The team failed to qualify at most events it attempted, and never scored a point.

Legendary Cars

The Scarab F1 of 1960 is remembered as one of the prettiest losers in Grand Prix history. Hand-formed bodywork, lavish chrome, and an air of California craftsmanship made the car a museum piece from the moment it rolled out. Reventlow had paid Goossen, Travers and Coon — the engineers behind Indianapolis-winning Offenhausers — to design the engine, but the car arrived too late and at the wrong angle. The chassis appeared at Monaco, Zandvoort, Spa, Reims and Monza in 1960 and Monaco again in 1961, mostly with Reventlow himself or Chuck Daigh driving. Best result: 10th at the 1960 USAC Buenos Aires sportscar event in a heavily modified version; in F1 proper, only DNQs and DNFs.

Lows and Reinventions

Reventlow shut the F1 programme down at the end of 1961, switched to a rear-engined chassis briefly, and then abandoned single-seaters altogether. Scarab built one more sports racer — the Mk IV — before Reventlow turned his attention to other pursuits and his fortune to other ventures. He died in 1972 in a light-aircraft accident in Colorado, aged 36.

Modern Era

The Scarab cars survive as concours-d'élégance darlings, fetching seven-figure sums when offered. Their place in Formula 1 history is as a beautiful what-might-have-been: an attempt to build an all-American Grand Prix winner in the precise season the front-engined car ceased to be viable. As a sports racer Scarab had been world-class. As an F1 constructor it remains the costliest miscalculation in American motorsport history — and one of the most romantic.