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<\/a>The essential Joe Marchetti.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
By Burt Levy<\/strong><\/p>\n The huge annual \u201cInternational Challenge\u201d vintage race at Road America is one of the must-do events on the vintage calendar\u2014and I was privileged to be there, sometimes on the sidelines, sometimes covering it for magazines and judging in the concours and sometimes right in the thick of the on-track action as the event became what it is today. It all started for me back in the early 1980s, when my longed-for \u201cracing career\u201d was going exactly nowhere. I\u2019d begun racing in 1971 in a series\u2014maybe more like a plague?\u2014of self-wrenched, under-funded, nickel-rocket and borderline lethal Triumph TR3s that rarely finished a race. Then I met Joe Marchetti.<\/p>\n The TR3 was rough and habitually unready. Click on pic to read about racing it and Alfas.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n I\u2019d made some interesting friends in and around the local racing scene, and among them were some genuine, professional-mechanic types\u2014late friend Ed Tillotson among them\u2014who raced a long-in-the-tooth\/short-on-money Lotus Cortina sedan and worked at an incredibly nondescript garage building on Halsted Street, literally walking distance from our apartment. Ah, but what magic was hidden inside those windowless concrete walls! The business was officially called TOTOH (for \u201cThe Old Town Oil House\u201d) because it used to be located many blocks and several tax brackets south on Wells Street. Only then Wells Street\u2014in fact, all of Old Town\u2014became the hot, trendy and happening \u201cplace to be\u201d neighborhood in Chicago. Bistros, bars, boutiques and head shops (remember those?) cropped up like colorful weeds, and The Second City\u2019s theater blossomed with laughter and satire at the end of Pipers\u2019 Alley, which was lined with narrow storefronts where you could buy everything from beaded or fringed clothing to incense and Patchouli Oil to fancy roach clips. But the neighborhood\u2019s ascension as \u201cthe hip place to be\u201d drove all the regular, pay-your-rent-and-lock-up-at-the-end-of-the-workday businesses elsewhere.<\/p>\n Which is how TOTOH wound up in that dark, anonymous building on Halsted Street, not far south of Belmont. And I\u2019d wander over there while walking the dog, head around to the overhead door on the alley with the big \u201cNO PARKING\u201d sign on it and peek in. Or knock if the door was down, and eventually Ed or Cliff or whomever would let me in so I could marvel at whatever might be inside. And there was always stuff worth looking at. Ferraris. Maseratis. An occasional old Bentley, even a speedboat or a racecar or two. TOTOH had some very interesting and unusual customers, many of whom wanted to remain anonymous as far as the general public and the I.R.S. were concerned. I eventually discovered that a lot of the work\u2014particularly on the Ferraris\u2014was for a highly successful local restaurateur named Joe Marchetti, who bought, sold and traded in used Ferraris and other, mostly Italian exotica as a passion-fueled sideline to running, along with his brothers, arguably the most famous and successful Italian restaurant in Chicago, The Como Inn.<\/p>\n Joe traded up, down and sideways in used Ferraris and such, and TOTOH came into the mix when one of the cars he\u2019d bought (or one he was trying to sell) needed a little mechanical attention. Eventually Joe had a showroom and his own mechanical shop around the corner from the restaurant at 825 W. Erie, but when I first became aware of him, TOTOH was doing a lot of Marchetti\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Early summer of 1985: The just-finished AUSCA Duetto Joe sponsored and Burt built and campaigned parked in front of Joe\u2019s Ferrari\/exoticar shop and showroom at 825 W. Erie St., just around the corner from The Como Inn.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Joe occasionally ran afoul of the \u201clegitimate\u201d (read: \u201cfranchised\u201d) Ferrari dealers in the Chicagoland area thanks to his own connections in Italy that may have extended all the way up to the administrative offices at the factory in Maranello. He seemed to be able to come up with low-mileage, \u201cused\u201d examples of desirable Ferrari models when the \u201creal\u201d dealers in and around Chicagoland had trouble getting inventory. It was a sore point with them, and I remember, years later, their lawyers made him paint over the huge, 2-story high Ferrari prancing-horse logo on the side of his showroom-and-shop building on Erie Street.<\/p>\n Joe\u2019s father Giuseppe emigrated from Tuscany in the 1920s and, along with his wife, opened up a simple, neighborhood-style Italian restaurant on the triangular northwest corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Ohio Street, not far at all from Chicago\u2019s downtown \u201cloop\u201d in 1924. It grew and prospered over the years, adding one additional dining room or upstairs meeting room at a time until it became a maze of fairly intimate smaller rooms\u2014each with its own style, ambience and d\u00e9cor. Joe, the eldest son, possessed a promoter\u2019s hustle and an impresario\u2019s spirit and drive and took control of the operation after his father\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Postcard of the Como Inn circa 1950.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n It was not always smooth sailing between Joe and his brothers\u2014I\u2019ll leave it at that\u2014but one was a brilliant interior designer who put a very special and individual look, feel and ambience to the dining rooms. Another brother was a gifted landscape architect, who turned the family\u2019s estate in the southwestern suburb of Lamont (on the same plot of land, I believe, where his parents first camped in the early days before they could afford a house) into something out of The Great Gatsby<\/em> or Citizen Kane<\/em>. It was the perfect setting for the \u201cFerrari Parties\u201d Joe put on every summer for his car friends and customers. The estate was called \u201cMontefiori\u201d\u2014flower mountain\u2014and the landscaping was incredible. Bright, flowered gardens swept this way and that, peppered here and there with tall, airy cages featuring color-matched pairs of parrots, macaws and cockatiels\u2014there was even a little petting zoo for the kiddies\u2014plus reflecting ponds where black swans glided gracefully across the water. What a place! And Joe would bring his catering cooks and wait staff to prepare and serve the lunches\u2014Italian-style buffet, of course\u2014plus wandering musicians for appropriate accompaniment.<\/p>\n Joe\u2019s 250 SWB which was the first Ferrari I raced.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n And the cars! In the early days, it was mostly front-engined, V12 Ferraris\u2014always my favorites\u2014with lots of Daytonas and GTBs and Short-Wheelbase Berlinettas, plus a few scattered eye-poppers and jaw-droppers like the ex-King Leopold of Belgium 375MM with gleaming black paintwork and parrot-green leather interior. Or the time Joe had somehow gotten his hands on the first 288 GTO anyone had ever seen\u2014the franchised dealers couldn\u2019t get them yet\u2014which was the first-ever turbocharged Ferrari GT and, based on the lightweight 308, possessed of absolutely scalding performance. Ever the showman, Joe had it hidden, of all things, inside a small, odd-looking mound of hay, right in the middle of the show field. He scowled darkly when he told people the landscapers had left it behind and that heads would surely roll because of it. At exactly the right dramatic moment, the 288 fired up and came exploding out of that haystack like it\u2019d been shot from a cannon. Well, that was Joe.<\/p>\n I vividly remember the day I dropped by his Ohio Street showroom-and-shop and he handed me the keys to the 288 and told me to take it for a spin. By then we knew each other pretty well and I\u2019d done some race-driving for him, but we\u2019ll get to that in a moment. I went outside and fired up the 288\u2014the engine note was nothing special compared to the classic V12s I loved, and muffled on top of that by the turbos\u2014but I drove it gently west to Milwaukee Avenue, which was a patched, pock-marked and typically uneven city street that never had much traffic except at rush hour or when cabs swarmed around The Como Inn like bees around a hive during lunchtime or after 5pm. The rest of the day it was generally empty, and truckers and delivery men regularly used it as a quick way into or out of the Loop from the northwest side. I looked both ways and the coast was clear, so I turned right and floored it. Hey, he wanted me to see what it could do, didn\u2019t he? And\u2014at first\u2014I was underwhelmed. Disappointed, even. The car didn\u2019t exactly stagger, but it didn\u2019t exactly leap forward, either. And just when I was about to mutter \u201cWTF?\u201d the boost kicked in and I almost spun around just trying to go straight! The power on boost\u2014especially on this patched-and-uneven city street, was utterly explosive. I grabbed second and, a heartbeat of lag later, more of the same\u2026 WOW!<\/p>\n I had no idea why anyone would want that kind of nuclear-option performance in an everyday road car. It seemed crazy. But then, you can buy hotted-up econoboxes that can offer you nearly that kind of burst today. Only without the style. The passion. The panache\u2026<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>