Tiziano Tani
 
 
Tiziano Tani is the official spares guy for the A112 International Club (Italy). He is a remarkable guy and can find any spares you want. I had been speeking to him for about 6 months about getting hold of a limited slip diff and some rear disk brakes. Finally in the October of 2002 I put the order in and waited for the call to say the parts had arrived at his place. Rear disk brakes are almost impossible to find now and he could only come up with some of the parts so I'll have to wait for the rest... The diff was a different matter though. It was made by a specialist in Tuscany and is a real piece of work.
When all had arrived I made the 3 hour autostrada drive down to his place and after meeting, he took me to his store room above his wifes dry cleaning business. It was full with loads of spares (as you can see from the pictures) and there was another room full of boxes of lights, dials, rubber, badges, etc, etc! It was here that I spotted the original Abarth sump which I quickly purchased. From here he took me to his workshop which doubles up as the headquarters of his racing team. He used to rally A112's back in their heyday - for 15 years in fact. After that he set up a racing team and runs this as well as organising get togethers of the old drivers. That evening there was a dinner that he was organising for 100 people!
The team he runs and the spares service is done on a no profit basis. He is passionate about the car and wants to help young people get into racing. A breath of fresh air after usually dealing with greedy suppliers / so-called experts. In the huge lock-up there are a number of the teams race cars as well as bags of spares. At the back is his pride of possesion though - a collection of eight A112 Abarths! He has one of every series (7 series) - all in very good condition. Probably the best one (from my point of view) was the very original and clean 1st series 58hp. This car has only done something like 5000miles as it was kept in a dealers for years and then preserved under wraps. The other cars are virtually immaculate too, even one which looked pretty damn good to me, but he said that he was going to restore it.
I was very impressed by the whole day, but most of all to find someone open and passionate and down to earth. I shall be popping down to visit again soon!
 
 
         

       
 
 
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