Oldtimer's Corner - The Saga of 0195EL 
By: Ed Niles
Once sports car racing got under way in a serious fashion, there was a class for almost every car and driver. I can even remember seeing a 1955 Thunderbird race at Willow Springs when the model was first introduced! It made it into the first turn, at which point a tire rolled under and lost its air, ending the racing career of this car in no more than 400 yards.

One of the more interesting racing classes was that of Formula 3. This Formula, which had its start in Europe, was made for little cigar-shaped cars, with open wheels, powered by a motorcycle engine of about 500 cc’s. One of the drivers in this class was a guy who was known to everybody as "Old Harry." For all I know, Harry Morrow may have been born old. I certainly don’t remember him as anything other than the oldest guy doing whatever it was he was doing at the moment. Old Harry had other claims to fame, besides his abilities as a Formula 3 racer. He was the proprietor of a wonderful old automotive bookstore in Burbank called "Autobook." (The store still exists, although it has gone through several major changes of merchandising philosophy, ownership and even location). And for a while, Harry even managed the racing events at Willow Springs Raceway.

But Old Harry’s biggest claim to fame, for our purposes, was that he owned a Ferrari. Most of us took it on faith that he actually owned the thing, as it was rarely seen. It was rarely seen because it rarely ran. Harry’s car was a type 195 which, by a strange confluence of circumstances, bore serial number 0195EL.

The type 195 represented a small stepping stone in Uncle Enzo’s climb up the engine displacement path. After having built a series of type 166 cars (two liters), a few were enlarged to 2.3 liters by the simple expedient of boring out the cylinders a little bit. This gave rise to a series of approximately two dozen cars bearing the designation of Type 195. Almost all of these cars were Coupes or Berlinettas, mostly bodied by Ghia or Vignale. With two or three exceptions, these cars had only one carburetor, and were clearly designed for Boulevard use. There is no clear line of demarcation, either at the beginning or at the end of the series. Some of the earliest Type 195’s were being built while type 166’s were on the so called assembly line, while quite a number of type 212’s were built before our No. 0195, which appears to be the very last in the series.

The body on 0195 was built by Ghia-Aigle, which apparently was a small body shop in Switzerland, licensed by Ghia to use its name. While not unattractive, it is certainly not the most exciting body ever put on a Ferrari chassis, and in fact, looks a little bit staid compared to some of the more exciting Vignale and Touring examples.

While Harry Morrow owned the car, it was bit of a mystery, because not too many people were privileged to even set eyes on the car. I think Harry, with the best of intentions, hoped to get it all spiffied up and running well some day, but Harry had a problem — a drinking problem. In his later years, in order to make sense out of Harry, you had to approach him fairly early in the day. Now, with this kind of a problem, it was fairly predictable that Harry would never really do all the things to old 0195 that he intended, or that the car needed.

Mark Dees, (another colorful character amidst a cast of characters) was able to cozy up to old Harry, to actually see and lay hands on the car, and was eventually successful in prying it loose from Harry. High excitement in Ferrari circles! Mark was actually going to restore the car to all its former glory!

There was a small problem, however. It seems that Harry had sold car to someone else a year earlier! Yes, Harry had been paid in full, but the other buyer never picked it up. So Mark bought the Ferrari with the fear that, some day, "Mister X" would come a-knocking on his door, demanding "his" Ferrari! That fear has dissipated, with the passage of time, but don’t you wonder who the mysterious buyer was, and why he never took delivery of his purchase?

Mark and Allen Bishop actually succeeded in overhauling the engine, and for several years it was proudly displayed on an engine stand at the Dees family ranch. But the car itself was something else entirely. Perhaps you have heard the stories that some of the early Ferraris were very crudely built, and that in some cases the left side of the body and the right side bore no relationship to each other. Well, that wasn’t very often true. In fact, when you consider that these early bodies were entirely hand built, they were miraculously straight and well shaped, and in many cases were major works of art in themselves. But the body on 0195 must have been the progenitor for these stories!

When Mark got to taking a good look at the body, he decided that a few discreet measurements might be in order. Sure enough, one door was a few inches longer than the other. Worse than that, the car had always looked a little lop-sided, and when Mark started inspecting the mounting points between the body and frame, he understood why. The body was actually pointing about 6 degrees East of where the frame was pointing!

Well, Mark decided that, as long as he had the car sort of stripped down, he might as well make it all right. In other words, Mark, never a man to be afraid of any automotive project, felt that he had to make the car better than it was when it was brand new! Mark sent the car off, minus engine, to the local metal massager.

There is nothing like coming to the realization that one is going broke on an automotive project, to make one lose interest. Slowly, but inevitably, that realization came to Mark. The car went on the market. None of us, locally, wanted to touch the project, as by now, the car was well and truly apart.

Enter one Ray Helm. Ray was an Aussie, tall and slim, with such a reserve of reserve that he hardly knew what to say after, "G’day, mate". Ray, with some of his hard drinking Aussie mates (was that a redundancy?) showed up at my house one year after Laguna Seca, beating the bush for an early right-hand drive Ferrari. (Remember, down under, its illegal to drive a car on the public streets that isn’t right-hand drive). I presented Ray with a list of half a dozen or so cars which fit that description, barely mentioning Mark’s car as it seemed like too big a project to recommend to anyone. But (wouldn’t you know it) Ray ended up buying Mark’s car.

Ray Helm and his band of merry men down under put in thousands of hours on 0195, but when they were done, they had a real car! For some years, now, the car has not only been a show winner, but a car which has afforded Ray and all the members of the Australian Ferrari Register countless hours of pleasure. And just as Ray has made a new car out of 0195, one can almost say that the reverse is true. Ray, for all his apparent shyness, has become one of the darlings of the Australian Ferrari Register, and has for some years now been one of its most active leaders.