April 1974 “What’s an LMX Sirex doing here?”

With this kind of enthusiasm and amazement, that’s how it begins Renato Montalbano’s story on this completely unknown sports car which immediately aroused his curiosity and passion.

“I fell in love with it immediately, fascinated by it design.” To fully understand the meaning of this statement, however, we need to take a few steps back, at least half a century, when a very young Renato already had a boundless passion for cars, especially sports cars. At that time he loved to read the audacious stories featuring French driver and sports car manufacturer Michel Vaillant, invincible with any car he drove. His designers created cars with incredible and fascinating lines, such as to leave an indelible mark on Renato’s mind, something that will remain unchanged over time.

In December 1968, Renato – a 15-year-old student – was in boarding school in Novara where he attended the Institute for Aeronautical Experts. At that time, having abandoned the world of Michel Vaillant’s comics, he cultivated his passion for cars by reading Italian car magazines which he considered technical and exhaustive, as he himself likes to say “the right compendium of all the most beautiful cars that were produced in those 60s, with incredible planning, fervor and skill by the many Italian coachbuilders.” Thus, leafing through the December issue of Quattroruote, among the many new models introduced at the Turin Motor Show, he came across an article entitled “La Bella su strada” (Beauty on road”) with a couple of photographs. The beauty was indeed, the LMX Sirex and on road, because for some reasons still unclear today it had been presented to the public “outside the show” and therefore right on the road.

Renato was very impressed by that car which was decidedly different from the sports cars of that period. Low, wide, muscular, with a front tapering downwards, the grille developed for the entire width and delimited by two large rectangular headlights at the ends, such as to further enhance its horizontality. About the Sirex, however, he was unable to find out anything else, nothing was known. A few months later he found another article, a page with two photographs, this time revealing the Spider version. It was love at first sight and in that moment he would never have imagined that one day he would have owned one, indeed more than one.

Thus he start to pursue it in a spasmodic and continuous search for material, news, specimens, owners, all the people involved in the design and construction to date, becoming the most important expert on this model, as well as owner of the richest collection of Sirex and founder of the LMX Registry. Finally he has created a substantial volume entitled “LMX Sirex – Sportiva d’Autore”, finally printed in these days and published for the ASI bookshops. In it he reconstructs the entire history of this car, where he has brought together all his knowledge, all the material, all the news, recomposing piece by piece all the historical memory lost and forgotten for decades, with the intention of reviving and donating the LMX Sirex the honor and glory it didn’t have the time to deserve.

He manages to get the first info in 1974, when he learns that the car was being built in Turin by Eurostyle, a small body shop specializing in one-off models, which in the meantime had gone bankrupt. All the bodies and chassis with relative engines had been sold to Samas of Alba (Piedmont). He wastes no time and immediately rushes to that company in hope of being able to buy a Sirex. In fact, there were two coupes in the shed, unfortunately already committed and Samas no longer had any intention of continuing with the assembly of other cars. Out in the open, Renato Montalbano recounts, there were at least twenty stacked bare bodies and as many chassis and engines. Taken by despondency, but without losing courage, with the money he had available he bought everything he could: two incomplete cars and much other material. He loads a whole truck and hauls it all away. In 1975, a sudden, important and decisive meeting takes place: he is in Alba when he sees a red Sirex approaching. He cannot miss this, so he literally throws himself in the middle of the road like a madman and manages to stop it. Apologizing, he politely introduces himself and tells his story and passion for the Sirex. The owner opens the right door and invites him to sit down for a cruise. The result is a friendship, but Montalbano start doing all he could in order to get that very car, to the point of being able to buy it shortly afterwards. It was a very powerful model with a 210 horsepower supercharged engine. With that car he invariably aroused a lot of curiosity out on the streets and above all the interest of the various motorists who, stopped at the traffic light, curiously asked: “What car is it?”. “They made only a few, they made them in Turin”, used to reply Renato proudly. He did not fail to involuntarily arouse the envy of his friends and university classmates. The red coupe was followed by the yellow coupe, which Renato then used for his honeymoon, still in his possession today and which he never fails to caress and show with particular affection. The story of the LMX Sirex is the story of the evanescent dream of two friends, which lasted too little, few units produced to be known by the general public, a meteor remained suspended in the minds of its creators for a very short time.

But when does the LMX Sirex adventure begin and who are the men behind it? Yes, because as Renato Montalbano rightly says, that of the Sirex is above all a story of men, characters of the highest technical level, even if little known at the time. The idea was born in the mid-60s of the last century courtesy of two gentlemen, Giovanni Mandelli and Michel Liprandi.

Mandelli, from Milan, was an entrepreneur in the toy sector and Liprandi an engineer who with Limaplas had specialized in the construction of fiberglass bodies, collaborating with important car manufacturers such as Abarth, De Tomaso, Osca and Panhard. Sports car enthusiasts that decide to make their dream come true and build a grand tourer with innovative solutions.

In order to produce it, they founded LMX Automobile Srl (Linea Moderna Executive).

One of the first designers will be Eng. Gioachino Colombo, internationally famous and with a past at Alfa Romeo, Ferrari and also in F1, the one that designed the chassis, one of the most technological and innovative elements of the future GT. Colombo designed it with a central beam, a very light sheet metal box, weighing only 74 kg, just like an English sports car like the Lotus. Eng. Liprandi slightly modified the front end by simplifying it and on this very light frame all the mechanical parts and the light fiberglass bodywork could be accommodated. It was so innovative for the time, formed by a single body with differentiated thicknesses, greater towards the passenger compartment, less in the non-structural and little-stressed parts.

The fiberglass bodywork offered many advantages, in particular it guaranteed impact plasticity seven times higher than a conventional sheet metal body and from which excellent soundproofing and insulation could be obtained. It was also not subject to rust or corrosion. For the line of the body there were various ideas also proposed by Ing. Liprandi himself. For the construction of the car, the decision was made to entrust it to the Eurostyle in Turin directed by Ivo Barison, another important man in this story. Ivo Barison was an excellent technician, an expert in working with fiberglass, in the creation of prototypes and unique car models for wealthy customers, but he was at the same time a skilled car designer and collaborated in the same period with Franco Scaglione at Intermeccanica on some important projects.

In previous years he had also created some models on a FIAT 600 chassis and mechanics for the Scioneri body shop in Savigliano, as well as some design products, such as the famous Saffa gas lighter formed by two perfectly symmetrical valves. Barison initially tried to trace some lines for the future LMX, but his proposals did not meet with the customers’ favor. However, he himself will seek the involvement of Franco Scaglione, an internationally renowned figure with a brilliant career at Bertone, for which he had created the most beautiful Alfa Romeos of those years, as well as some of the most wonderful pieces of automotive art in history like the Alfa 33 Stradale. At that time he was busy with Intermeccanica for which he will build the Indra as well as the Murena, but still available for particular collaborations.

Thus was born an interesting and innovative project that will give rise to both the Coupe and Spider versions, since thanks to the choice of the light and robust central beam chassis it was possible to mount the two different bodyworks on it, without having to make any structural modifications.

At this point it only remained the choice of the engine, which had to be powerful, performing, but at the same time easy to find from large production as well as easy to maintain. Some 6-cylinder engines are examined and finally the choice falls on the 2,300-cc Ford V6.

Actually, not very powerful and with just over 100 horsepower, but it was immediately thought of adopting a supercharger using a Costantin single-stage volumetric compressor, which however proved to be unreliable. At this point, another well-known figure in international motoring enters the scene, Eng. Michael May, a former Formula 1 driver who had designed the May Bosch turbocharger for some Ford engines, with which he manages to make the V6 develop a power of no less than 210 hp, for a total weight of about 800 kg, thus obtaining an excellent power to weight ratio.

The LMX Sirex was at this point a concentrate of decidedly advanced solutions for those years. The light central beam chassis, the very light fiberglass bodywork with its fascinating design, a powerful engine and a maximum speed of 200 kph, made the Sirex very competitive compared to the most famous and important sports cars of the era. The interior was that of a true sports car, with two seats, simple in its composition but characterized by two contrasting and very elegantly resolved elements. The high and square tunnel obviously determined by the central beam frame, with the gear lever and some of the secondary controls, in contrast to the thin, light, linear, smooth dashboard, devoid of decorations and covered in leather or eco-leather, enhanced the horizontal width of the cockpit. The instrumentation was quite complete and circular in shape embedded in the dash. Centrally located we had: fuel gauge, ammeter, oil pressure, water temperature, as well as the various warning lights. In front of the steering wheel: rev counter and speedometer, certainly not generously sized when compared to those of Italian sports cars of the time. The color combinations between the bodywork and the interior were also very pleasant.

The passenger compartment is very spacious, even if the height is sacrificed for the sportiness of the car. Being the bodywork of fastback type, it resulted in continuity with the rear part corresponding to the trunk. The rear window could be opened and hinged at the top, with no edges or metal frames. The hinges as well as the lifting handle of the same, were applied using the innovative epoxy structural glues, recently entered the market. The spider derived from the coupe and obviously the passenger compartment did not have continuity with the trunk, but the rear lid, starting from the upper side of the truncated tail, harmoniously followed the line of the mudguards until it reached the passenger compartment. Pleasant curvilinear inlets were made in correspondence with the seat backs which allowed a wider sliding of the seats. The hood also had the particularity of disappearing completely behind the seats. Insufficient economic resources, the small number of cars produced, about fifty including five spiders and ineffective marketing, did not allow the LMX Sirex to be known and appreciated by the public and the dream vanished in the short term by a handful of years, from 1969 to 1972, unfortunately ending up in the most complete oblivion.

It is thanks to Renato Montalbano, to his curiosity, passion, tenacity and continuous research, that today the history of this grand tourer can be revived and another important aspect is having physically brought it in front of the public in order to let his knowledge and passion be spread. In 2019 at the Automotoretrò edition in Turin, Renato Montalbano presented a Coupe version and a Spider; in the same year two coupes, one red and one yellow, appeared in Padua at Auto & Moto d’Epoca celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the LMX Sirex, in 2020 again at Automotoretrò, with a red coupe. In the autumn of 2022, Mariella Mengozzi director of the Mauto in Turin, wanted to host an exhibition curated by Raffaello Porro at the museum, where Renato Montalbano presented, in addition to a lot of historical research material, five models including coupe and spider. These include a particular lightened sports version, as well as an entire fiberglass body and a chassis complete with mechanics and wheels. A complete presentation of the model in its variants, worthy of that Auto Show that the LMX SIREX never had.