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Admittedly, we don't feature many products from the big three French manufacturers: Renault, Citroën and Peugeot. However, this is one car too good to miss. Regardless of whether the base Citroën C2 is sold in America, a true auto enthusiast can appreciate the blistered lines and inherent muscularity of this mighty mini. After all, how many times do you remember sitting in class daydreaming about cars? You may still be doing so... Well go ahead, devour this Ducati red eye-candy while the teacher goes on about Chaucer, but understand that if you attended the ESPERA school in Dijon, France, this C2 you're drooling over would be the subject of the lesson, rather than a distraction. You see, those students attend a nine-month program that imparts the knowledge to design and build a car from the ground up.
The C2 V6, as this car is called, came to fruition as this semester's ESPERA project. The car would have only been a vision in a student's head if it weren't for this unique program. And the program wouldn't exist if it weren't for the man behind it.
You may have heard of Franco Sbarro but for those who haven't, he's the granddaddy of tuning, if there ever was one. He was born Francesco Zefferino Sbarro in the rolling hills of southern Italy. Being a farmer's son, he was immediately immersed in the world of mechanics. As you may now be doing, he went off to study literature but quickly tired of it. At the tender age of 17 he discarded his books in favor of a set of wrenches at Filipinetti Racing in Switzerland. It was here he'd eventually build his first car, the Filipinetti Coupe. He also had his fingers in the Ferrari P3, the AC Cobra and the GT40.
Eventually he left Filipinetti to create Ateliers de Construction Automobile (ACA), where he built some of his more extreme vehicles such as a 1930 BMW 328 replica using modern BMW mechanicals and a Mercedes 540K roadster from the same era using a modern Merc V8. He also built a VW Rabbit with Porsche's 928 V8.
Today, Sbarro builds prototypes at ACA. These include everything from streamlined tractor-pull vehicles to BMW-powered Corvette lookalikes. This mechanic cum fabricator cum designer has limitless imagination and his booth at the Geneva Automobile Exposition is always one of the most popular at the show.
This prolific car builder figured out a way to pass on his passion to those who also eat, sleep and dream cars. In 1992, he opened Espace Sbarro outside his workshops in Grandson, Switzerland. In 1996, ESPERA (a complicated French acronym) opened its doors in Pontarlier, France, along with a museum of the same name. Since then, students have pumped out projects like the C2 you see here.
They are involved in every facet: design, modeling, maquetting, molding, polyester bodywork, mechanical engineering and chassis design. Just take a look in the hatch on this C2 and you'll find a well-placed Peugeot V6 - the students designed every aspect of the car, from the air filter and induction system to the exhaust tips.
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