Inc. in Southern California's "Thunder Alley" district (near the present-day Los Angeles International Airport), he set out to build world-class sports racers and, eventually, Formula One machines called Scarabs. Much like Briggs Cunningham and Peter Revson among others, he belonged to that rare set of American "gentlemen racers": daring, enviable heroes with grit, talent, determination, and the sizable inheritances necessary to fund their bon vivant lifestyles.

The small-block Chevy-powered Scarab sports racers were beautiful and wildly successful; the Offenhauser-powered open wheelers were less dominating, but they all served notice that American-designed, built, powered, and driven machinery could compete with the very best from anywhere--and win. Handsome, young, blonde, and known for dating Hollywood starlets, Reventlow proved a capable driver. Even more so was his hired gun, a then little-known sports car pilot by the name of Chuck Daigh.

Like GMC, Italy's Fiat built all manner of truck and bus chassis (as it continues to do today). In the 1950s, a handful of the latter were delivered to Bartoletti of Forti, Italy, a constructor of unique and special-purpose industrial truck bodies. This particular 1956 model chassis was commissioned as a car hauler by the Maserati Grand Prix team for use during the 1957 and '58 F1 seasons. It was designed to carry up to three cars, with large storage compartments on the side to hold extra parts, team uniforms, and loads of the supplies needed while traveling around Europe during the F1 season.

306/2 proved to be the lucky bus, as Maserati won the Grand Prix world driver's title in 1957, with Argentine ace and five-time world champion Juan Manuel Fangio at the wheel of the legendary Maserati 250F. After the 1958 Formula One season, Maserati began winding down its involvement in Grand Prix racing. The big Fiat was sold to Reventlow Automobiles, becoming its GP team transporter for 1960 and '61.

In this iteration, one can see it in the archival photos of many books and magazines covering that time period. After serving the RAI team in Europe during those seasons, it was purchased in 1962 by Reventlow's Thunder Alley neighbor Carroll Shelby, who intended to use it to transport his Shelby American team of Cobra Daytona coupes to Le Mans and other stops along the Sports Car World Championship roster in Europe. Since the Cobra sports cars weighed more than the open-wheel Scarabs, Shelby added an additional rear axle out back to improve stability and load capacity.

Post-Shelby American, the transporter did car hauling stints in Europe for Lotus, privateer David Piper, and British Ford GT40 and Renault team Alan Mann Ltd. As if this esteemed career wasn't enough, the big Fiat rig earned a supporting role in Steve McQueen's seminal racing movie Le Mans, filmed during the summer of 1970. It played three roles in Le Mans: team transporter for Ferrari, Renault/Mirage, and Porsche, wearing those iconic Gulf liveried blue and orange Porsche 917s on its mechanized steel back; the truck was repainted depending on the team hauler it was portraying.

After this brief Hollywood career, the Fiat was acquired by Michael Shoen. Shoen, who owned one of the famous Cobra Daytona coupes, believed the historic truck to be logical transport for it and his other Cobras. The big transporter, still wearing its Ferrari-style livery from the filming of Le Mans, was well worn out by this time. The Shoen family happened to own the U-Haul Corporation, so dealing with large trucks was not far from their realm of familiarity.