Lance’s race car is called the Scarab, it was fast and won many of the races it entered.

The Scarab sports cars were very successful and dominated United States racing in the late 1950′s and early 1960′s and were the best of the best sports race cars. Not only were they great race cars beating Ferraris, Maseratis and Listers but they were beautiful too.

Lance Reventlow was the leader, and funder, of the team that built and raced these cars. One of the important keys to his success was the team that he assembled. Bruce Kessler, who raced with Lance in the United States and Europe, was the first member of this special team.

Together they toured some of the racing factories in Europe and were influenced by what they saw there, in particular at Lister in Cambridge, UK. Reventlow decided that he could build a better chassis so rather than buy a chassis from Lister he struck out on his own with his company, Reventlow Automobile Inc. (RAI), to design his own chassis.

RAI chose their engine – the Chevrolet small block V8, starting at 283 cid, they went to 301 cid and soon were at 327 cid and later 339 cid. With fuel injection they produced around 360 hp. They used aluminum Borg Warner T-10 transmissions. The beautiful Scarab body was designed by Chuck Pelly and built by Emil Deidt who had experience making Indy cars. The paint scheme was a pearl blue with white stripes and was pinstriped by Von Dutch himself.

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