brian cassidy bookselle

58.
[Automobiliana]: [DOMINIANNI, Frank]
[Photo Album of a Custom Sports Car Build]
(New York), [ca. early 1960s]
4to. commercial album. 108 snapshot photographs (104 B&W, four color)
recto and verso mounted in dry corners to twenty black paper
leaves. Eighteen additional leaves blank. Front board perished (modern
replacement provided). Prints exhibit light surface wear. Many
faded or discolored, likely from original processing. Else very good.
An unusual album of the building of a custom sports car by famed performance
mechanic Frank Dominianni at his Long Island speed shop in
or around 1960. Dominianni opened Hi-Speed Power Equipment in 1947,
operating it from the same Valley Stream, NY location up until his
death in 2011. During that time, he developed a reputation as one of
the finest engine and chassis experts on the East Coast, with a specialty
in modifying 1960s Corvettes and Italian sports cars for both
high performance street use as well as competition racing. A majority
of the images here detail his audacious 1960 attempt to fit a turbo-modified
Corvette engine into the frame of a Mercedes Benz 300SL
Roadster, a commission from a wealthy customer and collector named
Perry (likely source of this album). Images of Perry's additional
vehicles, including four of an early 1960s Ferrari 250 GT, eight of
another 300SL, and nine of a wrecked 1963 Corvette Z06, are also
present. The album's contents have been reviewed by Dominianni's
son, Joseph, who recalled the project and positively identified the
photographs of Perry and his father. According to Joseph, the car was
never completed and its frame was later sold to an East Coast sports
car dealer. The images of the build are striking, sequentially capturing
from close vantage the sculptural and geometric qualities of
the 300SL's complex, almost delicate European tube frame contrasted
against the chrome and brawn of the American V-8. Many of the prints
are discolored or otherwise washed out, likely defects from original
processing, lending them an immediate, almost artistic quality. An
important record of sports cars modification from one of its highest
practitioners.
-1500-
80