1960 Turini Berlinette, 1600 S Trim
While the SARA 4 was a great hit, it also created tensions with associated tuner Amédée Turini, who didn’t want to work on sport front wheel drives.
Jeanneret chose to let Turini emancipate himself (somewhat), as a “independant” subsidiary of the SARA. Thus he could completely focus on building light sport cars, “berlinette” as we call them in France, using SARA engines, but with much more freedom on his design choices.
In the meantime, he also tuned the engines, in mellower states, to the SARA, and allowed his name to be used on the sporty/luxury trim the SARA produced, and was head of competition for both the SARA and his own company
Amédée Turini had radical ideas for his Berlinette, but then discovered almost immediately that building a car was about making compromises. He wanted to build a backbone chassis, with a fiberglass body glued to it, and a rear overhang engine, which helped with accessibility and agility (while being downright dangerous for inexperimented drivers), but soon discovered this was not possible within the budgets he had, and that he had to settle to mid engine on a spaceframe or rear engine on a monocoque, with a heavier weight.
He also had to deal with outdated designs, the framers lacking skills to do more modern styles while keeping a rear engine.
He settled for the sporty setup with a 40ish design, hoping the small engine would give enough room for easy maintenance, a critical element on a rally car.
At 1465$ to build, Turini still managed to be able to sell the car at close to 2000$, its lightness making the car a track demon that didn’t need much more preparation to perform efficiently in competition
Outdated design, partly due to constraints, partly due to Turini not givig a f…
It’s not better from behind, and that’s the view most cars would see most of the times
Engine Details
Modulor® 500 I4, 86x86 max, 1998 cc, OHC, 2 valves, iron block and aluminium head
Capacity : 83x73.1, 1581 cc
10.3 compression, twin DCOE carburetor tuned for french 97 RON super, long tubular header
116 hp@5900, 144 Nm@5500, 9.2% efficiency
137.2 kg, 860.7$ ('18) cost
Car Details
12307$ build cost (0 markup)
2 door - 2 seats, 2.12m wheelbase, 3.98m total
Mid transverse RWD
Steel spaceframe, fibreglass panels
4 gears manual
Weight : 736 kg
Fuel Economy : 16.1 l/100 (14.6 MPG US)
Max Speed : 198 km/h
0-100 km/h : 8.82
1/4 mile : 16.86
Kilometer : 30.31
G : 1-0.93
Braking 0-100 : 39.2m
Airfield time : 1:35,98