Twelve were built. This one won.

In 1961, a group of engineers and managers walked out of Ferrari in the dispute that became known as the Palace Revolt. Among them were Carlo Chiti and Giotto Bizzarrini, two of the most consequential technical minds in Italian motoring. The following year, in Bologna, they founded ATS.

What they built was remarkable and short-lived. The 2500 GTS carried alloy coachwork to a Franco Scaglione design and was among the first mid-engined road cars ever made, capable of nearly 160 miles per hour at a time when that number belonged to racing machinery. Twelve cars were completed in total before the company collapsed.

Chassis 2008 is the alloy-bodied competition specification, one of only two built to that standard. It came to Lugano from California, following a two-year restoration in Connecticut and an appearance at Villa d’Este in 2024.

On 23 May, in Piazza Riforma, it was named Best of Show.

The choice says something about what the M100 rewards. This was not the largest car on the field, nor the most decorated, nor the one with the longest unbroken ownership record. It was a car built by people who had just lost everything and were trying to prove a point, and it survived when the company that made it did not. Rarity alone does not win a concours. Rarity that means something does.