In the late 1980’s I spent most weekends with a girlfriend who lived in Watford . On a Monday morning I would walk to the station to go to work. My walk would take me past a derelict house that had a car covered in a tarpaulin up on bricks in the front garden. The shape of the car intrigued me. One morning I climbed over the low front garden wall to investigate. Lifting up a corner of the tarp I saw some dark blue paintwork, a red leather interior, a nice alloy wheel and a badge which said “ OSI “, but was shouted at by a near neighbour so could look no further and investigated no more, a situation made easier by getting blown out by that girlfriend.
Some months later I was sitting at the bar of a hotel in Marlow. Wearing my Aston Martin Owners Club pin in my lapel, this was noticed by the bartender who owned a Jowett Javelin. We chatted for a while and then he went off to serve another customer. A few minutes later he returned to say that he’d discovered that the other customer owned a rare Italian/Swiss car called a Monteverdi so I joined him for a drink. During our conversation I learned that he was from Italy and here on business. Eventually I told him about the car seemingly dumped in Watford. Describing the blue metallic paintwork, the red leather interior and the alloy wheel, I also mentioned, of course, that the car was an OSI, at which point he almost fell off his bar stool. He then recovered and told me that it was an ISO, probably a Rivolta and once owned by James Stewart and later by Princess Grace of Monaco. The ISO badge had been put on the car backwards by mistake perhaps ? He immediately asked if I would take him to see the car, but I had drunk several Scotches by then, so declined. I drew him a map of its location , gave him my business card and he called a taxi to go to Watford. Later that night the phone in my hotel room rang and it was him. The car was as he described it and he was ecstatic. He planned to recover the car and have it trailered back to his home in Switzerland. I told him that would mean he would be stealing it but he said that doesn’t worry him.
Some weeks later a letter arrived from him enclosing a cheque for £1000. It was his thanks to me for finding the car . The cheque bounced a few times but eventually paid out. About a year later I went to a Ferrari club meeting and was told that this ISO had received a no expense spared restoration and now sported beautiful chrome wire wheels. It had, though, been seized in part payment against a large tax bill !