1928 Isotta Fraschini brings pre-war Italian luxury to Jay Leno's Garage

Ferrari and Lamborghini are among the best-known Italian automakers today, but before either of them existed, one company set the standard for Italian engineering excellence. This 1928 Isotta Fraschini Type 8A Landaulette, now part of the Nethercutt Collection in California, is a testament to that bygone automaker. Nethercutt Vice President Cameron Richards presents this car.

Instead of building sports cars, Milan-based Isotta Fraschini built its reputation on luxury cars. The Type 8A was targeted at the American market, which at the time was already crowded with luxury cars like Cadillac and Lincoln, and now-defunct luxury car brands like Duesenberg, Pierce Arrow, and Packard.

Isotta Fraschini brought to the fray an overhead cam 449.5 cubic-inch inline-8 that drove the rear wheels via a three-speed manual transmission. When this car was built, it produced 135 hp and eventually 180 hp. Neither of these numbers are significant by today's standards, but they were quite powerful for the time. Nevertheless, the Isotta was beaten out by the Duesenberg's inline 8-cylinder, which produced an astounding 265 hp for the time. Cadillac would also soon introduce a V-16 engine that produced 180 hp.

Still, Isotta Fraschini acquired wealthy American customers, including actor Rudolph Valentino, but his car was not delivered until after his death. The car shown here was delivered new to Signa Lynch, wife of Merrill Lynch co-founder Edmund Lynch. The car was priced at $12,000 when new, at a time when a new Ford Model A cost less than $400.

Finished in an unusual three-color paint job with bright green highlights, the car had a randlette body by Italian coachbuilder Castagna with a folding roof and permanent window sills for a semi-convertible experience. This style almost fell out of fashion after the coachbuilt car era ended, but Mercedes-Maybach briefly revived it with the limited-edition G-Class.

Designed to be driven by a driver, Isotta Fraschini did not bother to move the steering wheel to the left side, even though the car was developed for the American market. The car also has a buzzer, which allows rear-seat passengers to give instructions to the driver. Instructions such as "turn," "stop," "turn left," "turn right," and "go home" were all indicated by lights and an obnoxious sound that likely provoked class warfare.

The Type 8A would not have been the only huge luxury car roaming the roads of America on the eve of the Great Depression, but it would have been out of place on the narrow streets and cramped city centers of its home country. And while the Italian automaker had become known for its sweet-handling sports cars, Leno described the driving experience as "like a truck."

Isotta Fraschini stopped making passenger cars shortly after World War II and was absorbed in a 1955 merger. However, its cars are still coveted by collectors and rare on this side of the Atlantic, winning awards at Pebble Beach in 1976, when the collector car hobby was still a fairly novel idea. They are still athletic enough, as evidenced by the video of Leno taking them out for a drive.