Bizzarrini 5300 GT Price Guide

The Bizzarrini 5300 GT is the product of one of the most turbulent episodes in Italian automotive history. Giotto Bizzarrini was the Ferrari engineer who developed the 250 GTO, then found himself among the group fired by Enzo Ferrari in the “Palace Revolt” of 1961.

He subsequently designed the Lamborghini V12 engine as a consultant before joining Renzo Rivolta to create the Iso Grifo A3/C. When that relationship also collapsed in acrimony in 1965, Bizzarrini took the competition chassis he had designed, settled the dispute by trading the Grifo trademark back to Rivolta in exchange for fifty cars’ worth of components and sole production rights, and launched the 5300 GT under his own name.

The result of all of this chaos is one of the most extraordinary Italian sports cars of the 1960s.

The Car

The 5300 GT was essentially the Iso Grifo A3/C (a front-mid-engined GT coupé whose body Giugiaro had styled while working for Bertone) rebuilt and marketed by Bizzarrini from his Livorno factory from late 1965. The tubular steel chassis used light alloy centre sections with the aluminium body riveted to form a semi-monocoque. The engine was a 5,354cc Chevrolet 327 cast-iron V8, the same unit Bizzarrini had used at Iso, in blueprinted form with a ribbed alloy sump, Carter four-barrel carburettor, and tuning that extracted around 365bhp in Strada road specification. A Borg-Warner T-10 four-speed manual gearbox sent power to the rear wheels through a De Dion rear axle with limited-slip differential. Kerb weight was approximately 1,200kg. Top speed was claimed at over 250km/h.

The fuel system reflected Bizzarrini’s obsession with weight distribution: two saddle tanks mounted in the sills were connected by a third tank directly behind the seats, a 145-litre arrangement engineered so that the weight transfer as fuel was consumed amounted to less than 1% of the car’s total. The car sat just 1,120mm tall – lower, even, than a Ferrari 250 GTO. The Corsa competition variant used lighter materials and a more aggressively tuned engine. By 1968 the firm had gone into receivership, closing for good in 1969 after producing 67 5300 GT Stradas and probably no more than two Corsas. Total production across all variants reached approximately 133 cars.

The Ferrari Connection

Bizzarrini’s pedigree was not incidental to the car’s character. He had been the primary development engineer on the much-worshipped 250 GTO and the 5300 GT carries his fingerprints throughout. The De Dion rear axle, the weight distribution obsession, the structural thinking behind the semi-monocoque: these are the ideas of an engineer who had built one of the greatest sports cars ever made and then been given the freedom to apply those principles without interference. That a man of this calibre was forced to use a Chevrolet pushrod engine for cost reasons rather than something purpose-designed is the 5300 GT’s one regret.

Buying

With around 67 Stradas confirmed, the 5300 GT sits in truly rarefied territory; rarer than most Ferrari 250 variants, with a provenance that any serious collector should find compelling. Provenance verification is paramount: the European Bizzarrini Register maintained by Jack Koobs de Hartog is the definitive source. Any car without register documentation requires exhaustive chassis number verification. The Chevrolet V8 is robust and well-supported globally, which is the 5300 GT’s practical advantage over contemporaries using orphaned Italian engines. Body and structural work requires specialists familiar with the semi-monocoque construction. Values have risen consistently as the car’s significance becomes more widely understood among collectors who previously focused on Ferrari and Lamborghini.