When Peter Wolfers and his wife Estelle drive their 1966 Iso Grifo GL350 onto the verdant lawns of Wilton House for the inaugural Concours des Légendes (19-21 June 2026), it will mark a significant chapter in a journey that has taken almost four decades.
The Wolfers’ car, chassis 049/D, is the fourth of just 24 to 26 right-hand-drive examples believed to have been built. That it looks as good today as when it rolled off the marque’s Bresso production line 60 years ago is a testament both to the beauty of Giorgetto Giugiaro’s design and to the man who has devoted the majority of his adult life to its restoration.
Iso’s evolution from white goods manufacturer to exotic car builder is one of the most unlikely stories in automotive lore. Founded by Renzo Rivolta, the company entered the post-war era building refrigerators, heaters and scooters before designing the Isetta microcar that was subsequently licensed to BMW and others.
The microcar’s success provided Iso with the financial means to attempt something far more ambitious. In the early 1960s, Rivolta enlisted Giotto Bizzarrini, the ex-Ferrari engineer who had departed Maranello following the ‘Palace Revolt’ of 1961, to consult on suspension geometry and weight distribution for a chassis developed by Iso’s chief engineer Pierluigi Raggi – one capable of underpinning both a luxury GT and a competition car. The styling, meanwhile, was entrusted to a young Giorgetto Giugiaro at Carrozzeria Bertone.
Chassis 049/D was completed on 10 June 1966 and arrived on UK shores just five days later, having been ordered by British concessionaire Trojan for the Eton Motors dealership in Knightsbridge, London. Finished in Monthlery Bleu over beige upholstery, the Grifo was equipped with a Chevrolet small-block 327 (5.4-litre) V8 that sent 300bhp to the rear wheels via a Borg-Warner four-speed manual transmission.
Even in standard form, the Iso was among the fastest GT cars of its era. Within a year, however, chassis 049/D had been upgraded to the more desirable 350bhp Chevrolet L79 unit mated to ZF’s five-speed manual gearbox – the specification in which Peter acquired the car two decades later, and in which it remains to this day.
Peter acquired the Grifo in May 1986 from Bill Dick – a Concorde pilot with a collector’s eye for an eclectic range of machines. Dick’s stable included Maseratis, Jensens and Isos alongside a Cisitalia and a clutch of Reliant Kittens – the Robin’s four-wheeled sibling. Dick had owned 049/D for seven years, during which time it hadn’t turned a wheel.
Before Peter bought the car, it had already suffered a series of indignities. Plexiglass side windows had replaced the glass following a break-in, a Lucas tractor ignition switch was installed where the steering lock had been, the front bumper was missing and the sills had been welded with the quilted leather inner trim still in place, leaving the bottoms charred. Worst of all, the engine and transmission were not even in the car – and weren’t when Dick bought it.
Undeterred, a 28-year-old Peter couldn’t resist. He’d recently returned to the UK following a four-year stint in New Zealand, working in the workshop of the Ferrymead Trust Historic Transport Museum. ‘My head said it has an American engine and is a monocoque,’ he recalls. ‘My heart said it was achingly beautiful.’ So he pulled the trigger.
And so began what would become a near 40-year restoration saga. In the early 1990s, Peter stripped the Grifo to a bare shell and took it to Chris Lawrence of Wymondham Engineering – a craftsman known for his high-quality Maserati 450S replicas and the only person sanctioned by Lamborghini to create the official Miura Jota replica. The bill, however, came in at three times the agreed maximum and the project stalled. ‘It was more than I had in the world,’ Peter laments.
For almost 20 years, 049/D remained largely untouched, aside from occasional minor jobs Peter could carry out himself. By his own admission, he had lost his enthusiasm. The turning point for the dormant project came in the early 2010s, when Peter and Estelle agreed that once she had completed her self-funded law PhD at Cambridge, their spare resources would go towards getting the Grifo over the line.
‘I just had this horrible thought,’ Peter recalls, ‘that if I didn’t push on with this in a timely way, I might never complete it.’ With renewed impetus, Peter began working on the car in earnest in 2016, stripping, assessing and rebuilding almost every component. The powertrain was sent to specialists, but Peter completed the mechanical assemblies himself and even fabricated the wiring loom on the living room floor with Estelle holding spanners on the other side of panels. He painstakingly restored every switch, regulator and trim piece by hand.
Unsurprisingly, sourcing parts for an obscure Italian exotic isn’t straightforward, and 049/D is no exception. The footwell lights, for example, are shared with just two other production cars – the Lamborghini Miura and Fiat 850 Spider – and finding them proved no simple task. After years of searching, a German contact advised Peter to reach out to Los Angeles-based lawyer and car collector Vince Finaldi, who had previously restored a Miura. Finaldi had already made moulds for replacement lenses some years earlier. Although that particular chapter of his own restoration had long since closed, he agreed to rummage around in his attic. Fortunately, he found a pair of near-perfect bare lenses that now sit exactly where they should in Peter’s Grifo.
The most remarkable aspect of 049/D’s restoration story, however, concerns its original engine and transmission. In 1967, the matching-numbers Corvette V8 and Borg-Warner four-speed ‘box were removed and transplanted into an Iso Rivolta GT, when 049/D received the more powerful L79 engine and ZF transmission. When the Rivolta was scrapped in the early 1970s, the drivetrain moved into an Aston Martin DB6, where it was used to tow competition cars and bikes to circuits. It then found its way into a Cobra replica built as a demonstrator by a car builder based in Newmarket, Suffolk.
Peter eventually tracked down the individual responsible for the original engine transplant and, remarkably, discovered that he had kept the decorative exhaust heat shields from 049/D’s original engine in his parts store. After around 50 years apart, they have been reunited with the car.
‘It is a great feeling when you can reunite original parts with the car, especially Iso-fabricated parts,’ Peter adds. ‘Some parts are very difficult, but anything that has been made can be made again. These projects were the genesis of friendships with Iso owners across the globe.’
Despite Peter’s extensive research – and intimate knowledge of every nut and bolt – one chapter of 049/D’s backstory remains mysteriously blank. Nothing is known about the car’s history between its arrival in the UK on 15 June 1966 and its passing into Bill Dick’s ownership in 1979.
The gap is all the more surprising given the Grifo’s rarity and the circles these cars moved in. Contemporary Grifo owners included the Earl of Lichfield, Twiggy, Tony Iommi and Mike Hailwood – all high-profile figures who are unlikely to have owned a car anonymously. Adding to the intrigue, 049/D had already covered some 50,000 miles by the time Dick acquired it and had been subjected to several resprays.
After 37 years under Peter’s custodianship, 049/D finally turned a wheel in anger in 2023, before being shown at the London Concours in 2024, where it won the Classic & Sports Car Editor’s Award recognising outstanding originality, history or restoration.
Unlike many concours cars, however, Peter continues to use 049/D as it was intended. In September 2025, he and Estelle drove it back to the factory that built it in Bresso, covering 550 miles in one day and 700 the next.
In 2026 – the car’s 60th year – it will take pride of place at Wilton House for the inaugural Concours des Légendes, a fitting venue and occasion for a car with such a remarkable history behind it.
‘It is a great pleasure to be able to bring our Grifo and share it with the visitors to the concours,’ Peter reflects. ‘With the focus on people and cars, the Iso fits the bill, with more than its fair share of magic provided by industry legends. I am really looking forward to this.’
Concours des Légendes takes place at Wilton House, Wiltshire, from 19-21 June 2026. Tickets are available at concoursdeslegendes.co.uk.
