Audamotive

Author’s note: I met the artist Bob Mittenmaier last spring at a relative’s 90th birthday party. Years before that, the relative, my wife’s Uncle Joe, had told me about his friend “who does paintings of Ferraris.” Bob and I finally got to sit down for lunch in January this year. Just a couple of weeks before, I had come up with the idea for my e-newsletter, Wheel People. After that lunch, I knew I had my inaugural story.

275 GTB/4 NART Spyder, Chinetti Motors, New York ... and "Lady"

If you’d like to tour the Ferrari factory, you need to own a Ferrari, or at least be a strong prospect. Bob Mittenmaier’s “Italia,” a Mazda Miata with a Ferrari-esque makeover by Simpson Design, would hardly qualify.

Yet Mittenmaier, from Demarest, N.J., has toured the original Ferrari factory at the invitation of Enzo Ferrari’s trusted lieutenant, Franco Gozzi. The VIP treatment was a thank-you for allowing Enzo to reprint one of Mittenmaier’s paintings in his autobiographical tribute to Ferrari race drivers, Piloti, Che Gente.

The painting, “48 Mille Miglia,” depicted the great Tazio Nuvolari driving a 166C in that race, in the pouring rain and with the car literally coming apart. The acrylic-on-Masonite work is one of about 40 Ferrari paintings that Mittenmaier has completed from his tiny basement studio since the early 1980s.

"48 Mille Miglia"

Painting, though, is not Mittenmaier’s day job. After earning a degree in fine arts from the University of California Berkeley in the 1970s, he went on to work in retail. He painted for his own enjoyment. For some 30 years, he’s been involved in home design. Mittenmaier has sold his paintings through Jacques Vaucher’s l’art et l’automobile gallery – the world’s first gallery devoted to automobile art – since its inception.

From Casino Royalty to Art Royalty
After college, Mittenmaier took a job in Harrah’s casino in Reno. As an employee, he had free entry to Bill Harrah’s amazing car collection. He made his first painted subject Harrah’s Thomas Flyer, the car that won the 22,000-mile New York-to-Paris Great Race in 1908.

Thomas Flyer, Winner of The NY-to-Paris Great Race

Upon moving to the East Coast with his wife, Jeannette, Mittenmaier sought advice from the automotive art master, Peter Helck. When the couple showed up unannounced at Helck’s studio in upstate New York, the acclaimed painter invited them in for tea and at the end of the visit invited Bob to paint in his studio.

Helck later invited Mittenmaier to paint his “Old #16” Locomobile. It was the first American car to win an international race, the Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island in 1908. Helck had used it as a subject himself. At an art exhibition at Lime Rock Park, Paul Newman tried to buy Mittenmaier’s “Old #16” but was too late. A woman who had bought up much of the artist’s early works had beaten him to it.

Picasso and Mittenmaier?
Mittenmaier’s paintings hang on the walls of Ferrari collectors around the world. Anthony Wang, former president of Computer Associates, reportedly owns most or all of Mittenmaier’s “Chinetti Impressions.” The dozen or so paintings in the series – two of which are shown here – depict Luigi Chinetti’s various Ferrari dealership garages in Manhattan.

Chinetti Motors, New York

A Japanese art collector once came to New York and went home with a Picasso … and a Mittenmaier. When Piero Ferrari organized an art exhibit to honor his late father, he invited Mittenmaier to send a painting and attend the opening at a palace in Modena, Italy.

Mittenmaier’s favorite subject, though, might be the scruffy shepherd mix seen in many of his Ferrari paintings. “Lady” was the friendly shop dog at the small Paterson, N.J. garage where he had his Fiat X1/9 maintained. When Lady died, Mittenmaier promised the shop’s owner he would make her famous. He did.

Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien won the 1958 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Testa Rossa.