Spaghetti Western

Our story begins in Italy in the 1950s, in the small Sicilian village of Brolo. Young Basil Ricciardello has left school to start his motor mechanic apprenticeship. He is 11 years old…
Going into the workforce at such a tender age was more a matter of necessity than choice for young Basil. Life in Europe after the Second World War was hard for a lot of families, but it was particularly hard for the Ricciardellos. Basil’s father, Antonio, had been seriously injured in a landslide while working on a road construction site, leaving Basil’s mother to feed and clothe eight children. The nearest school was 20km away.
“My mother didn’t have the ability to send me to high school,” Basil explains to us, “so I decided to be a motor mechanic. I started my apprenticeship in the old fashioned way: you sweep the floors, and when you have learned how to sweep the floors, then you get to clean the spare parts, and when you have learned that, then you start to assemble them.”
Once he was a qualified tradesman, Basil sought to make his way in the world. With only limited opportunities in his small village, he decided to look further afield.
Basil Ricciardello arrived in Perth in 1963. It didn’t take long for the young mechanic to get involved in the local racing scene, firstly with an EH Holden, then a Fiat 2300 and later an Alfa Romeo GTA. Basil raced for about four years before taking a back seat to concentrate on establishing his own service station business.

The first Ricciardello Alfa Sports Sedan was the ex-John French 105 series with Ford 302 Windsor V8 – which fitted into the little Alfa’s engine bay just nicely!

“I became more heavily involved in the business, and the car started to go slower!”
But Basil loved his motor racing too much to stop completely. He had been hooked on the sport at a young age growing up in Sicily, where he had witnessed first-hand the Giro di Sicilia road races. He saw his hero, Piero Taruffi, competing in these events – Basil even got to help Taruffi get his car back on track after the Italian Formula 1 star crashed it in the Giro di Sicilia.
So, no thoughts of quitting the sport: he would continue as a car owner/entrant. Initially it was Neville Cooper – with whom Basil had co-driven to fourth place in the 1972 Wanneroo 6 Hour – who would race Basil’s GTA.
Then Neville crashed the Alfa. So he bought another Alfa, a Sports Sedan, from Queensland. This was the John French car raced briefly by Brian Michelmore. The little Alfa had a 302 V8 Ford – apparently it fitted into the engine bay just fine!
“We raced with that for three or four years,” Basil says. “After a while we replaced the Ford engine with a Chev.”

Around this time WA boasted a vibrant Sports Sedan scene. Among the frontrunners were Paul Kelly’s Falcon XA hardtop and Brian Smith’s Valiant Charger, along with, curiously, a bunch of Alfas – all of them the classic ’60s 105 series. There was Ricciardello’s Chev-powered car, Gordon Mitchell’s with a turbo Rover V8, and a turbo four-cylinder driven by one Joe Ricciardo, whose son would go on to achieve quite a bit in international racing some years later...
Neville Cooper retired at the end of ’81, so a new driver had to be found for Basil’s Alfa-Chev.
“Neville was driving the Alfa, and Brian Smith was driving the Charger,” Basil recalls. “We were both sponsored by Shell and we used to race together. Brian was quicker but the Charger would only last four or five laps and then would always have some kind of problem. Anyway, we made the partnership with Brian, and then he raced our car.”
For 1984, that would be an all-new car. This would be the first of two B&M Ricciardello Motors Alfetta GTVs with Chev power.